The minister of surface transport Mr. Kamal Nath mentioned of constructing 20KMS of road per day. He means business and the ministry he goes sees lots of action. One question that comes to mind is, why 20KMS? I have been wondering it for some time and no one ever ask him this question. How was this arrived? Why not 25 or 15? In a recent interview he said that we will not achieve the target but are currently doing 9 KMS per day. So why not set a realistic and achievable target in the first place and gradually increase it? But there can be reasons for this.
We Indians like to over promise and under deliver. Ask the foreign investors? And why is so? Because one, we do not like to do our home work and two we do not like to say “I do not Know”. We become experts in no time, with out doing ground work or homework. The result? Our project execution is bad, because we spend very less time on the drawing board. This is true for in majority of cases. Have we not heard about affordable housing? Coming back to the roads example. Should we not have all the proposed roads mapped digitally? On the click of a button, we should know all the statistics from land acquisition, soil condition, topography, major urban and rural center along the way. The bidder can so very well then design the roads along with utilities and facilities. I know this is not easy as it will bring the question of digitization of land records to start off. But that’s happening and India has the IT strength.
So may be surface transport ministry start with 5KMS and gradually move towards 20 KMS in a well articulated execution plan completely mapped and digitized. They should set up a command center for the surface transport ministry. Now roads can also carry utilities gas, telephone, water, broadband etc. May be command centers for respective ministries to plan their things and coordinate among each other. Link these command centers to a central command center. Recently I think Cisco; Chief Technology Officer said that we need to understand the impact technology can have on urban planning. He is right. Infect the impact technology can have on nation planning, especially for India is huge. Roads will also require facilities and opportunity for hotel, petrol station, bus stands, container depots, railway station, cargo airport and list can go on. USA as a country on infrastructure planning is a good example.
This is a big assignment now. Some one need to do the homework. Do we not need a ministry of coordination and a ministry of homework? Who then set up a National Mission for Infrastructure Planning to map each square inch of India . Time to identify another Nandan Nilekani?
1 comment:
Bihar is a good example. and i am not saying this because of the recent press coverage that the state has got. Bihar has completely digitised its "file process". The nodal officer can now immediately track the status and location (in terms of which officer its pending with)of the file. All you need to do is approach the nodal officer to expedite the process...
Post a Comment