Road to nowhere

Published : Oct 21, 2011 00:00 IST

The stretch of National Highway 17 at Kumbla in Kasaragod, Kerala, in July. -

The stretch of National Highway 17 at Kumbla in Kasaragod, Kerala, in July. -

Roads of international quality will invite entrepreneurs to locate new units near them and in turn bring prosperity to areas otherwise deprived.

SOMETHING very strange seems to be happening. The government seems to have lost its sense of direction despite the talent at its disposal. There seems to be, right at the top, some uncertainty, for reasons that are inexplicable.

Take one example roads. National Highways, in fact expressways, built to international standards ought to have been a priority with this government. It has, in the past, executed public-private ventures successfully, and there is no reason why there should not have been on the ground by now several such projects which would have ensured a durable road system linking cities with ports and major railheads, smaller towns with larger cities, and district towns to a number of major villages. Some roads and highways are being constructed, but at a painfully slow pace. One knows of no expressway in the process of being constructed, though one hears of a number either being planned or being tendered for. The standards of construction do not appear to have changed they are just as flimsy as ever, the surfaces washed away with just one shower, the road being reduced to a slushy bog, which only the sturdiest sport utility vehicles and tanks can negotiate.

Will no one ever come forward and tell the people just what is going wrong? Does no one realise the crucial importance of roads to the building of infrastructure in the country? If there are good roads roads of international quality, not the disgraceful bitumen-painted surfaces that are brazenly called roads by those in authority then entrepreneurs can locate new units beside them, knowing their products can move quickly to ports and railheads. That would push up land prices in the area, which would benefit the rural folk who own land next to the new roads, which in turn would bring greater prosperity to areas otherwise deprived. This is simple enough for the most dim-witted official to understand. But nonetheless, nothing is done.

And it is not just that. Nobody seems to worry about it; it is just another issue to be written up in files and sent from one desk to another in some office or the other. And yet, not so long ago, this sector was one of the busiest front. The Golden Quadrilateral, the East-West-North-South links, expressways from growing industrial areas to ports, from special economic zones to major cities, ports and airports, and much else. Why has it all slowed down? One has no access to actual statistics, but that is not the point here; new enterprises are not coming up, or the rate at which they are has slowed down greatly. Not that roads are the only reason; but activity on that front would have given new enterprises a tremendous boost. It does not need a knowledgeable economist to see that none of this is happening.

As I said, there is no dearth of talent in this government, and it has access to some very gifted people in different fields who can advise them. But it does not seem to be interested in putting all this to use. It seems to be mesmerised by the media, who are caught up with the social activist Anna Hazare, the Lokpal Bill and the Jan Lokpal Bill. It seems more anxious to counter Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi and to issue defensive statements on various issues that call its probity into question. They can do all that, certainly, but there is other work to be done, for heaven's sake. Redoing our security apparatus, getting the equipment and weapons needed, devising training systems and putting our security personnel through those systems, developing newer techniques of information gathering these are priority areas where it seems several States have done little and they do not seem terribly bothered by their inefficiency.

That wretched organisation Air-India, now. Changing the Chairman and Managing Director was made into an agonising process, as if it was infinitely complicated, and at the end of all their mighty labours they produce a mouse a Joint Secretary from the Ministry of Civil Aviation. Will they never learn? Does the Minister not have the elementary sense to see that he needs professional people to head an airline, not an Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer? If he still prefers to get one that means his motives are suspect. Does he not really want Air India to survive and develop into an airline that is in good financial and operational health?

It is not a government's business to run an airline or a hotel for that matter, though that seems to be taken for granted by the senior-most government officials. By that token why is the government not running cinemas? It ought to be easy; a National Multiplex Corporation of India with lovely, juicy jobs for a number of IAS officers (and some others, if the ones who count are feeling magnanimous) and lots of plans to set up multiplexes, which, when they come up, incur losses running into crores of rupees it is all so easy that it is a wonder no one thought of it earlier.

This is not just a feebly funny statement. The governments State and Central run bus services, railways, catering establishments they are, in fact, involved in all sorts of activities they should not be in. The heritage is not of any kind of socialism-based ideology; it is a legacy of the colonial way of managing the country's affairs. The colonial mindset is being aggressively confronted by various groups and the media, but there are no set answers for this. Yet, ironically, the answers, if one can call them that, are so obvious. There were certain objectives they had set themselves, and these are still valid today. All they need to do is go back to them. Yes, there is the menace of corruption that lurks in every shadow cast by these objectives. It should not take the focus off the work to be done; instead a mechanism to deal with it can be put in place without fanfare, a mechanism that is effective and yet does not create a huge procedural labyrinth through which the essential work has to pass.

Beyond this, there is the other imperative of the sense of shared urgency being restored. One gets the feeling it has been lost in some areas, and that can result in objectives not being realised. It is, for example, fairly commonly felt that the urgency has gone from the whole drive towards providing a network of highways and roads, which until recently was very high on the list of priorities.

The concept of governing through Groups of Ministers (GoMs) is practical enough, but these GoMs can easily become bureaucratic monsters. One such is the monster called the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB). It promotes nothing; it is, in fact, a formidable hurdle that all new proposals involving foreign investment have to negotiate, as persons are supposed to, fearfully, edge past Cerberus, the three-headed dog guarding the gates of Hades. One false step, and down into the darkness you went. When the FIPB was set up, the idea was, obviously, to facilitate new investment; it is just that the carnivorous instinct of the babus got the better of them.

It is not too late. In fact, it is the right time to change course and go back to the essential objectives. It means that there must be a return to a calmness, a refusal to be stampeded into hasty acts and decisions. A return to statesmanship, in fact.

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