Wednesday, January 30, 2013

All roads lead to perdition...

UPA government’s record in augmenting its infrastructural needs can at best be described as pathetic, feels Sharad Gupta

India is part of the elite group of countries that have nuclear weapons. It has already sent a mission to the moon and is making big forays into space. Its military might matches any developed country. Yet, it doesn’t have proper roads, modern airports and enough port capacity. Its villages and towns are perpetually in dark while cities face a regular load-shedding. A quarter of its villages don’t have access to basic necessities like clean drinking water and sanitation.

UPA government’s record in augmenting its infrastructural needs can at best be described as pathetic. The national highway projects launched during Rajiv Gandhi’s tenure and accelerated during Atal Behari Vajpayee’s tenure, almost came to a grinding halt during the last five years – from 81% during 2004 to 19% in the first quarter of 2009.

Though Hyderabad and Bangalore airports were modernised during UPA regime, they had been planned and initiated before UPA came to power. It is another matter though that Union Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel ran against the time – laying 2-3 foundation stones for building new airports or upgrading the existing ones – 15 days before Election Commission’s Code of Conduct came into force in February.

The story was slightly better on the power front as India signed the Indo-US nuclear deal last year, ensuring uninterrupted supply for uranium to generate civil nuclear energy. But it would take a long time for the first of such reactors to be imported and made operational.

Out of a total installed generation capacity of about 145,000 MW of electricity in the country, 70% comes from thermal fuel. While 20% is generated as hydro energy, nuclear energy contributes just 3%. The remaining capacities come from non-conventional energy sources such as solar, wind, biomass and tidal waves. However, government plans to add at least 40,000 MW from nuclear sources by 2020. Though the government planned a number of ultra mega power projects with a capacity of 4,000 MW, during the past five years, power transmission and distribution have not made much progress. Financial losses in the power sector are to the tune of Rs.300 billion per year and subsidy bills have been consistently rising. The Electricity Act, 2003, which set into motion the rapid development of the power sector, was also formulated during the NDA regime. Much of the action that followed, such as the National Electricity Policy, also predates UPA government.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

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