The vast swathe of India’s infrastructure deficit wasteland is crying out. The cry is ominous and hurtful. For years now, India has been like a wailing widow, going from one global pit stop to another, asking for investment into the country.
What began in 2004 as a $ 500 billion deficit has over time transformed into a trillion dollar gap. There have been road shows and more road shows, but firang bulge bracket investors have shown no interest whatsoever in engaging with India. The policy-judicial environment has made investors wary and the general thinking has been determined by the fact that there is an all pervasive pall of uncertainty.
Meanwhile, the investors who have other fish to fry have sought newer avenues and fresher pastures.
The deceleration has been most stark over the last four years with infrastructure investment grinding to a halt in the recent past. What is perhaps even more worrisome is that the investment pipeline has dried up. The US economy is reviving, this quarter, it is expected to log 2.5 per cent which for a 15 trillion dollar economy is gangbusters.
Conversely, India which for long considered itself an island of tranquility is growing at anything between 4.5 and 5 per cent. We are back to our old Hindu growth rate ways. After dabbling with old style socialistic dogmas since 2004 and more so after 2009. This socialistic overhang working in conjunction with a peculiar odour of Congress arrogance vitiated the economic and investment climate completely. The Supreme Court’s landmark ruling cancelling the 120 odd telecom licences only accentuated the agony.
That corruption was rampant in India was now a given. In fact, the licence raj was dead, but long live the licence raj was never truer than over the last few years. Out of turn allotments of telecom licences, preferential allocation of coal blocks to those who had influence and sundry forms of corruption were hurting India’s image like never before. The run up to the showcase Commonwealth Games was probably the most horrific time as a scandal a day rocked the news media.
That the fortnight long event went off smoothly meant that God was merciful and kind.
As the problems with India’s infrastructure woes have got more acute over the last few months, a new deadly and dreaded J Virus has run riot. There is no cure yet for this J Virus — Jayanthi Natarajan, Jairam Ramesh, C P Joshi and Sriprakash Jaiswal. Bottlenecks, logjams, gridlocks call it what you will, if infrastructure is not kosher in India, the J Virus is responsible for debilitating it. This new affliction has played havoc with roads, forest clearances, coal movement and other stuff connected with infrastructure.
Why should an investor invest is the fundamental question? Any domestic and international investor works on the principle of rate of return. It is not that roads and highways have not been built out in India — on either side of Delhi, I can name three projects which are working like clockwork and which have resulted in the death of distance.
Travel from Jaipur to Ajmer for a darshan at Khwaja Saheb’s dargah or drive down from Panchkula to Shimla or zip down from Bangalore to Mysore, the roads built by private operators are exceptional.
Closer to home, when I returned to Delhi 12 years ago to take up residence in Gurgaon, a distant outpost of a swanker Delhi, the roads were in a shambles. Now M G Road managed by NHAI and the Delhi- Gurgaon Expressway have changed the commute between the two NCR principalities.
Yes, infrastructure development has taken place, but this is in and around Delhi. What was achieved by the Golden Quadrilateral during Atalji’s time was phenomenal, the rapid pace and speed bordering on the sensational. Between the J Virus, nearly all developmental work has come to a virtual standstill. Indian industrialists who are in the smokestack and brick and mortar business are mortified of this quartet.
Systematically stalling the process of development in different ways has been their forte. There is a fifth man to this Virus equation, but his name doesn’t begin with J. Gajen- dra Haldea as the presiding deity over concession agreements in the Planning Commission is another who loves to stall.
The great paradox of Indian infrastructure is that while the finance and commerce ministers P Chidambaram and Anand Sharma visit investment hot spots around the world, practically begging investors to line up for the starter’s gun, the J Virus with its delaying tactics refuses to entertain project clearances.
Obviously to the utter consternation of those involved in building out infrastructure.
The roads and highway programme has been a bane, rather than a boon under Atalji and Gen Khanduri’s time. First T R Baalu created widespread chaos, changing NHAI bosses, not giving speedy clearances and generally leaving behind a graveyard in his wake. Now Joshi sits on files and projects.
The woeful and inadequate infrastructure matrix in the land is in such a precarious state that between these four mantris, they have wreaked ‘ red tape’ havoc.
And sadly they are all connected, for without forest and environment clearance, you cannot proceed.
To Jaiswal’s credit, he battled Jairam with great elan on no go areas. He fought relentlessly on corruption, letting the CBI loose on corrupt officials in the coalfields, but since the coalgate scam, he is nowhere to be found.
Sushil Kumar Shinde as power minister was an able ally to the quartet, for all he did was make the necessary noise at the right platforms, but in terms of policy roll outs, the power ministry was caught in an abject time warp.
This lockdown in infrastructure is going to cost the country. While we moan over a travesty called manufacturing, it is infrastructure which falls short on all parameters, crippled as it is by the J Virus.
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