Navigating the obstacle course of India’s SimCities
The Indian government is belatedly waking up to the fact it needs to build new cities and industrial hubs in order to sustain the growth that is supposed to propel the country to super economy status in the 21st century.
But it might be a case of too much, too late as India sets out to build 24 new, industrial cities along a planned dedicated freight corridor from the political capital, New Delhi, to the financial capital, Mumbai priced at a cool $90 billion. Costs aside, it’s a big ask in a country known for its mulish bureaucracy and maddening red-tape, its violent protests over land, and endemic corruption. Even building a bridge (like the Mumbai Sea Link) or highways (like the Golden Quadrilateral) in India can be a struggle.
But a handful of Indian civil servants tasked with making the SimCity dream a reality seem determined to chart a path through the obstacle course of Indian development projects.
Here are six reasons why they might be successful.
De-risking Indian infra projects
“There is no poverty of funds in the world to my mind,” said Amitabh Kant, who heads the Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC) project. “There is a poverty of well-structured projects.”
In India that means two things: getting the land in place first – the number one hurdle for any development project – and then trudging through the slow process of getting the clearances, like the 44 clearances needed for a single power plant.
Amitabh Kant: India’s ‘can-do’ man
Amitabh Kant is a man thinking big things about India’s future.
Working from his New Delhi office, tucked away on the third floor of a government-run luxury hotel, he heads what may be the country’s most ambitious ever infrastructure project: building 24 cities from scratch along a 1483-km railway line.
“The vision is to create a manufacturing and trading hub with world class infrastructure,” he told Reuters.
Such an exercise is fiendishly difficult in a country as famous for its bureaucratic red tape, corruption and bloody land acquisition battles as it is for its stellar economic performance over the past decade.
Even building a single highway can drag on for years. Seen from that perspective, 24 cities, complete with new airports, slick highways and gobs of new factories, seems a tall order.
But Kant, an Indian civil servant who joined the service more than thirty years ago, could be a major reason for the project succeeding. A keen golfer who dresses more like a corporate honcho than a bureaucrat, he has a reputation for getting things done and having access to people who matter.
This would be a new era of India rising and I wish this project success like Delhi Metros By Sridharan,May Amitabh Kant can complete this with same zeal,we know this is going to be a humungous project, We wish you all success and you would be remembered as a New milestone in history of Modern India Building perhaps above than anybody else in building Modern India.
Indian women hard-pressed to relieve themselves
For an Indian man, the entire country is one easy-access urinal. Be it mustard fields, the national highway or the Himalayan foothills — unzipping, unleashing and relieving comes naturally to them. Indian women, unfortunately, do not enjoy the same privilege. For them, infinite patience is a survival skill and a big bladder a necessity.
Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan seems to empathise with the pain of the Indian woman. He wants to “dedicate” his life to building public utilities for women across India. “I want dignity and respect to be brought to women,” he said at an event in Mumbai.
It is a shame that the government has still not woken up to this disparity in India’s infrastructure. Be it urban areas or villages, clean public toilets for women remain an alien concept in India.
A not-for-profit organisation, Sulabh International, has tried to address this gap by “providing affordable sanitary facilities to masses throughout the country”. But more needs to be done.
Suitable toilets is not just a matter of convenience, but also integral to the economic growth of the country. A World Bank report last year estimated that poor toilets and lack of hygiene cost India, Asia’s third-largest economy, nearly $54 billion every year.
A further $10.7 million is lost in “access time,” the report said — time spent looking to access a shared toilet or open defecation site compared to having a toilet in one’s own home.
Nearly 36 percent of schools in Maharashtra do not have separate toilets for girl students — forcing them to drop out of the education system early in life.
Indian Govt and State Govt started to build public restrooms in the past. But eventually it becomes very unhygenic without running water and proper maintenance. Better approach would be to have a manadatory clause to build and maintain restrooms for public outside of the building in the license for Gas stations / restraunt chains etc.
In US, we have restrooms in every small shops and chains. But when we travel in freeways, we always stop at gas stations and rest assured that restrooms are available.
Lavasa: City of shared sensibilities?
It was with a heavy dose of cynicism I went to see Lavasa, one of India’s few attempts at building a brand new city, which has ambitions of being an IT and learning hub, as well as a tourist destination.
For a while, media outlets gushed with praise that bore a suspicious resemblance to Lavasa’s own marketing material. Then came stories which questioned Lavasa’s land acquisition and ecological proclamations. So when I drove through the hills outside of Mumbai to check out the place myself, as the quoted travel time of three hours turned to five, I was girded for disappointment.
Yet, I confess, I liked Lavasa.
Not because its lake was beautiful (it was an uninviting shade of orangey-brown), or its hotels were charming (common corporate fare) or because its views were breathtaking (they were nice, but only one trail exists from which to see them) but I liked Lavasa because of its work-in-progress ambition to get all that right and offer affluent, but not filthy rich, India something very fine: modern amenities and working infrastructure, brightly-coloured buildings of style and flare, attempts at being eco-friendly and above all, the one thing that is missing in too many dog-eat-dog/developer-eat-developer urban areas of India — planning.
A fellow foreign journalist complained that Lavasa was too “Stepford-wives, too cookie-cutter perfect”. Yeah, bring it on, I say. In a country where chaos reigns, a little planned perfection wouldn’t go amiss.
“Yeah, but it probably won’t last,” the foreigner and locals have snidely said. Perhaps. But while one hotel bathroom I visited was already dingy, and some restaurant chairs already tired and worn, I was more than impressed to see the windows and doors of the new conference centre being cleaned, not only with modern tools but — most crucially — five days ahead of any scheduled event. Why, I asked, surprised the usual leave it till the last minute ethos wasn’t being applied? “Because it’s that person’s job to clean the windows and floors every day”. Well, yes, of course it is.
It is surprising that a project with such high demand requires a $425 million IPO to raise itself. In the last decade the Sahara Group, now a shadow of its swashbuckling self, had created a project called the Amby Valley not too far from Lavasa. I don’t remember reading too many articles since then about its success though many have been generous in their praise of it’s beauty. Let’s see whether Lavasa manages to do better.
Survey says doing business in India is tough
Even as India Inc celebrates U.S. President Barack Obama’s recognition of the country as a world super power, a recent study by the World Bank presents a contrasting view.
India ranks 134 among 183 nations in a survey called “Doing Business 2011″ — that gauges the ease of doing business in a country — and is ranked behind countries like arch rival Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.
Singapore leads the pack, while Hong Kong grabs the second position in the list.
The report investigates the regulations that enhance business activity and those that constrain it.
It takes into account areas like starting a business, dealing with construction permits, registering property, getting credit, protecting investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts, closing a business, getting electricity and employing workers.
Although India has carried out major economic reforms since liberalising its economy in the early 1990s, many of the reforms are still in the planning stages, and unless it quickens such reforms, doing business in India may remain troublesome.
I am a Indian and I am ashamed to call myself an Indian. I will tell u the reason . It is simple bcos almost the entire country has changed from being honest to dishonest. Almost the entire government,politicians are totally corrupt. But more danerous than this is the fact that ordinary Indians have turned themselves into cruel animals and are feeding of each other everyone has accepted corruption and bribery as a part and parcel of their lives,U look around u find corruption and bribery around u in this vast nation even private sector is also corrupt and people want to sleep tonight and wake up tomorrow morning extremely rich and people blink when u refuse to bribe the system and people think of you as crazy . time and again corrupt people are getting elected bcos the general electorate is corrupt and only a corrupt electorate can elect a corrupt representative. Almost all politicians are facing criminal or corruption cases and are bribing and getting out of them .In the current scenario I have no hope for india .
I feel that India is bound to crash and fail and it will crash not bcos of a outside country invading it.All investments into India will dry up when outsiders realize what a corrupt country India is. It will happen because of her own citizens greed for money and wealth and finally the India story will end in a very bad way , way with riots and revolutions occuring across the sub continent .People will realize that the current system can no longer deliver a proper standard of life . It will be on the lines of the French Revolution .
This scenario is not doubtful but a certainity . but the question is not if it will but the question is when. but when it happens it will really be huge and will bring about a change for good.
from Summit Notebook:
Infrastructure still top-of-mind in India
On Monday, we kick-off the 2010 India Investment Summit. We'll have exclusive interviews in Mumbai and Bangalore. In 2006 we held the first Reuters India Investment Summit. It was my first time in India. I've had the privilege to return every year. How time flies. Here we are four years later. Some of the key players may have changed but the big, over-arching theme is still the same: Infrastructure. It's the key to realizing the country's potential but bureaucracy, tough financing and hesitant overseas investment have slowed development in the sector, calling into question the future of India as a powerhouse.
India has had only mixed success in its efforts to accelerate construction of roads, bridges and power plants. The statistics are mind-blowing...the country is growing at 8.5% and has a population of 1.2 billion that is making a mad-dash from the countryside to sprawling cities. Call them growing pains...in India's expanding cities there is an acute need to speed project approvals, implement new financing models and attract overseas investment for much needed infrastructure. But, while the business opportunity is tremendous investors looking to India as a way to play the emerging markets are wary given the history of missed deadlines and red tape that makes getting projects completed a challenge.
Is red tape getting better or worse? Which sectors are attracting most interest? How do returns compare with similar projects globally? How do sector companies attract foreign investment in large projects? Are the challenges forcing investors and developers to look overseas instead?
These topics and more will be the key points of discussion at the Reuters India Investment Summit in Mumbai and Bangalore September 27-29.
To read our exclusive stories and analysis starting September 27 copy and paste the link below to your browser: www.reuters.com/summit/IndiaInvestment10
Bangalore: Teething troubles on path to globalisation
It has been a rather uneasy transition for Bangalore from “pensioner’s paradise” or “garden city” to the information technology capital of India.
Longtime residents often complain of immigrants from other parts of the country ruining their paradise. Such complaints have been common in Mumbai, which has witnessed waves of immigration since the 1950s, but Bangalore old-timers tend to blame the city’s problems on the “IT fellows”.
It’s fair to say the city’s infrastructure hasn’t kept pace with the growing population. Traffic jams, as everywhere in the world, are incredibly annoying and travelling in Bangalore makes one wonder what exactly inspired Thomas Friedman to sing praises of this city in “The World is Flat”.
The much-maligned metro rail project is blamed for turning the city into an ugly mess. Gone are many of the broad tree-lined avenues and pretty neighbourhoods that gave the city a small town feel.
But isn’t the very existence of a metro system going to help people avoid the traffic in the future? Residents of Bangkok used to complain about the construction work on the sky rail and the elevated roads. Now, the toll roads and the sky rail are the pride and joy of Thailand’s capital.
In its zeal to become a global city, Bangalore should look eastwards. Kuala Lumpur, for example, has changed beyond recognition in the last ten years. This was a city which had a major problem with cockroaches before its makeover.
Nobody has benefited more from the arrival of immigrants than the locals. Local landlords are getting fatter and richer charging super-high rents.Local auto rickshaw drivers make a killing on those who don’t speak Kannada and local officials get lakhs from kickbacks.Local youth get more money working for IT companies than they ever would have for locally run businesses.The real problem is that locals don’t want to see others making money and living well. I see a bit of MNS in the locals that have posted comments here.Wake Up! India is ONE country.
Treating the PM: A Public Health Initiative
It’s been four days since Manmohan Singh underwent coronary bypass surgery. The prime minister is said to be making “rapid progress” and is well on his way to recovery.
Back in 1990, Singh had bypass surgery in Britain and later underwent angioplasty at a private hospital.
But this time, he chose to be admitted to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in New Delhi rather than go abroad or enter a private facility.
Is it a vote of confidence in India’s public health infrastructure and the stature the country’s doctors have acquired over the past two decades?
“I chose the All India Institute of Medical Sciences because I have confidence in your ability and to encourage the general public to come here for treatment,” the Hindu newspaper quoted Singh as telling his medical team after the surgery.
“I hope every patient receives the same care as you have given me.”
Prior to the surgery, health minister Anbumani Ramadoss was quoted as saying: “Our doctors are competent and we don’t need experts from outside.”
nice bro, ur concern and of primeminister too are genuine regarding the medical infrastructure of country. if u visit aiims, then u can understand the discrimination that is followed. vip’s have there seperate lobby’s and ward rooms. if u have seen the footage of hospital during pm’s illness of aiims can u make out is it same hospital that caters to the need of common man, sorry but it does not. the idea of choosing aiims for his treatment is fine since he has to built a trust in common man of this country about medical facilities of the country. but its a long way to go the projects about six aiims and other medical institutes of world level seems to have been on the paper only.
This would go a long way to de-congest the cities.
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