Infrastructure Development – The Key to India’s Success

India’s economic scorecard has been impressive in recent times. This veneer of progress, however, conceals an ugly reality. The country continues to fare dismally on the human development scale and the need of the hour is rapid infrastructure development, if our growth is to be sustainable and inclusive. The Energy, Manufacturing Operations Club (EMO) and the Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital Club (EVC) at the ISB organised a panel discussion on the theme “Infrastructure Development: The Key to India’s Success.”

“Government should allow sweat equity for the developers, if not it results in kickbacks” said Y Harish Chandra Prasad, Vice Chairman and Managing Director, Malaxmi Energy and Infra Ventures. While there are exotic insurance policies available today for infrastructure contracts, timing is very important for infrastructure and support. Prasad pointed out that in India per capita consumption of power is 500 units compared to 7000–10,000 units in the US. It is imperative for us to concentrate on power highways in the next decade along with national highways. Prasad was of the opinion that India should follow the model adopted by China. By focussing on power and infrastructure, we would be able to compete with China on the GDP growth.

Sudhir S Ragnekar, Chairman, SICAL Logistics stated that while the national highways constitute only 2% of the road network, they handle 40% of the trade. The golden quadrilateral, according to him, was a well thought out project by the Government. He also stressed that the quality of the infrastructure in a country is as important as its quantity. The most developed countries have the least cost for rail transport due to efficient use of technology. The success of the Indian Railways can be attributed to the implementation of the Freight Operation Implementation System for integrating and monitoring the freight movements. He pointed out that the growth in the Indian retail sector is a driver for growth in container shipping. ”The need of the hour is to benchmark our country against the best in the world,” he concluded.

K Raja Gopal, CEO and Director, LANCO Amarkantak said that highways, ports, airports, railways, and power are some of the key elements of infrastructure. He also drew attention to the fact that more than 50 crore people in India do not have access to power. In such a scenario, the fund requirement for the power sector in the eleventh and twelfth Five Year Plans would be around Rs 15, 000,00 crore. He maintained that while hydro power is cost-effective it can be adopted only if there is sufficient infrastructure for evacuation.

The discussion brought to the fore the numerous challenges facing infrastructure development in India and the opportunities for effective Public-Private cooperation that will set the nation on the superhighway of long term prosperity.