Is development lopsided?

Government machinery is commissioning new projects without improving or expanding the present infrastructure, incurring unwarranted expenditure

One thing that is permanent is 'change'. There is no denying that infrastructure is vital for progress of the country and the people. But it appears that the planners are establishing a parallel infrastructure rather than using or modifying the existing network.
There are many projects nation-wide that are being implemented without developing parallel infrastructure. Two new mega road projects are in the pipeline – one connecting Delhi to Jaipur and another Yamuna Expressway connecting Noida to Agra.
The argument is that both the proposed projects would be world-class as the present Delhi-Agra and Delhi-Jaipur National Highways are clogged due to heavy traffic movement on these sectors.
If you approach the projects with a little objectivity, you can effectively see that the proposed expenditure seems superfluous and create many problems rather than solve them.
Both these projects that aim at establishing parallel infrastructure are in the Rs 10,000 crore bracket are vibrant examples of government’s myopic development.
They are being implemented before giving a serious thought to utilising the existing infrastructure to the optimum level. Yamuna Expressway has landed in problem due to farmer’s agitation in Greater Noida which has claimed four lives.
Should not the government think of removing encroachments, making small under passes at clogging points on the existing highways, and also undertake a host of cost cutting activities rather than going in for constructing the expressways.
Have our babus realised that if they need to stay in 'business', they need to bring in the required 'change'? It appears the bureaucrat-contractor-politician nexus stands to gain from the commissioning new projects rather than improving and enhancing the present infrastructure.
With infrastructure drawing the big bucks, it is bound that a lot of money will exchange hands. If you break up hundred rupees of government expenditure, it is said that 15 per cent is genuine commission, which the contractors or builders pay to the babus-mantris. Presuming that an engineer/official is dead honest, the contractor carrying forward a project is obliged to offer 15 percent cut. However, there are the ones who are slightly more 'ambitious'. Fifteen percent could not be enough as the mantri may have to pass the buck to his boss in Delhi or if the chain of middlemen and traders is long, the percentage cut can get fatter.
Nevertheless, a normal contracting company would like to keep a profit of 15-20 percent. If all the variables are dead static, the project will get 70 percent of the government expenditure. But reality is different. Former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi said hardly 20 paise of government expenditure out of a rupee reaches the intended target. So in the real world scenario, everyone involved will get a cut. The banker who gives loan or issues a guarantee, and so will those who will inspect the work, or accounting department who will clear the project… so on and so forth. Without a lengthy debate, you can safely assume on the conservative side, a 50-60 percent figure.
This is unpardonable and unacceptable. But given the rot in the system that has set in, it is unimaginable if the situation can be reversed under normal circumstances.
Minister or official wants to make a fast buck and thus come up schemes and projects that would change the lives of the citizens. Most often many of these projects are not required yet they are implemented with utmost gusto.
Take for instance Ghazipur flyover in Delhi, which is not on the same scale as Yamuna Expressway but has similar contours. There are no intersections on the stretch and there was no clogging of traffic when the project was initiated and when it was completed. The government then had plans to take Delhi chicken and fish market to one side of the road, which was done. It also took the MCD abattoir to the area and so also garbage dump. Another side of the National Highway 24, the government had planned to shift grain market. This has still not been done. Yet a flyover over has been build on a normal road. Why was the projected undertaken in the first place?
Similarly, during the Commonwealth Games, the costing and expenditure of the government was exposed, resulting in the Pune MP Suresh Kalmadi landing in jail. But even to this day, there are several projects that are being implemented or were completed only after sucking the national exchequer.
The Ring Road connecting Nizammuddin to Pragati Maidan in New Delhi is a good example. Government agencies would expand the road, construct footpath and then do the beautification drive by planting trees. In six months, they would be uprooting the whole construction and starting afresh. This they did thrice before the Games.
The most glaring example is that of flyover that was constructed on National Highway 24 to facilitate the players who would stay at the CWG village. It was imperative that the players got uninterrupted movement to various venues. A flyover was sanctioned and built. Now the CWG village is itself mired in a controversy. If those who bought (or will buy) the flats at the village move in, they will have a flyover exclusively to their advantage.
Now having transformed Delhi from three-lane to four-lane city, government agencies are making two huge arches on the same stretch, totally unwanted and out of sync with the rest of the Capital. Similarly, government agencies constructed many footover bridges and still are making many where the footfall per day is less than what a flop movie would get after a year of release.
But with tenures of ministers and babus shrinking along with pubic memory, lopsided development will continue to change the landscape.