Delhi Commonwealth Games: A super fiasco in making (Part III)

Government flouted the 7 year international Norms

There was hardly any method in the way the Games were approached by the planners, says CAG. The organizers were supposed to follow the seven-year project cycle as practiced internationally — two years for planning and approvals, four years for execution, construction and development, and the last year for test events and trial runs.After the event was awarded to New Delhi in 2003, the government instead adopted a four-phase approach. In the first phase, the entire plan for the Games was to be laid out. Two years were allocated for this purpose (January 2004 to May 2006). The second phase was for creation of infrastructure, between May 2006 and May 2008. The delivery of the completed projects was to be made between May 2008 to December 2010.CAG observed that there was no evidence of the four phase approach being translated into action from 2004 to 2006 (phase one), nor during a major part of phase two. In fact, in its response to CAG observations, the organizing committee said that till the appointment of technical and HR consultants in 2006, it had little or no experience in organizing an event of this magnitude.

Lack of governance and mismanagement is not new to India and Indians. As a nation, if India cuts a sorry face in CWG in October 2010, it will dampen the global perception of India and Indians. But, it will also probably awaken the system and authorities and bring in greater accountability and responsibility into the system. If the CWG fiasco manages to achieve a shake-up of that order, even that will be a positive outcome as far as India is concerned.

Delhi Commonwealth Games: A super fiasco in making (Part II)

The sorry state of infra-structure under-preparedness for CWG Delhi 2010

Games Campuses off the schedule

The games campuses that face “high risk” of non completion include Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Aquatic Complex for the swimming event which according to the plan should have been 93% complete by June 2009. Only 40% of the work has been finished so far. Interestingly, even completion targets for the SPM aquatic complex have been reset on documents from 93% to 40% to make the dismal progress so far look good.

Training venue for athletics, swimming, weightlifting and wrestling at the games village is also lagging behind with over 40% of the work yet to be completed. Other key projects lagging behind include the Shivaji Stadium for Hockey, The Ludlow Castle hall for wrestling, The Jamia Milia Islamia university which is the venue for rugby and table tennis and Talkatora Stadium, the boxing venue. All these venues have a work shortfall up to to 50%.

The lack of concern on part of the government and organizers in meeting deadlines reflect in the way planning has been done. While the organizing committee submitted its budget for the Games in November 2005, this was approved by the Centre only in April 2007 a full one-and-a-half year later.The organization plan was finalized in August 2007, project and risk management experts appointed in March 2008 and the Games masterplan finalized in November 2008 for seeking the approval of the Commonwealth Games Federation.As per the international guidelines, all CWG projects were to be completed by May 2009 and the last year should have been kept for trial runs. Au Contraire, Delhi has started work on most of these projects around the same time leaving doubts on completion times and leaving no time absolutely for trial runs!

The all too familiar finger pointing is on as CPWD, the project executing agency, has blamed the organizing committee and its consultants for delaying the projects by constantly revising and re-revising designs for every venue. This is far from the earnest search for real answers and efforts to get things right!

Delhi Commonwealth Games: A super fiasco in making (Part I)

China demonstrated its technological and organizational prowess by the stunning spectacle that Beijing Olympics’2008. It was the testimony of China coming to age, a final seal of global approval to China. India has a similar opportunity staging the Common wealth Games in 2010, 12 months now on. However, from the looks of it, the Indian effort will probably be borne out in ignominy, embarrassment and chagrin on the world stage. CAG reported large scale under-preparedness and financial mismanagement in the CWG projects.

Earlier coverages in this blog:

http://newspaper-posts.blogspot.com/2009/03/delhis-commonwealth-tamasha.html

http://newspaper-posts.blogspot.com/2009/03/delhi-running-out-of-time-on.html

Key Games projects badly delayed: CAG
Projects including the main stadium design, games venues, infrastructure for conducting the sports and major city upgrade plans are running so much behind schedule that there’s a real threat of India’s showpiece games turning into a non event. In at least 13 of the 19 sporting venues, the work shortfall is between 25% to 50%. 9 out of 16 major ongoing city infrastructure projects are at high risk of failing deadline with work shortfall of 55% to 97%. All 16 running late infrastructure projects are anyways running super late.This means all these projects would either miss the deadlines or compromise on quality in haste to finish on time.

6 projects have been shelved completely given the helplessness in terms of time schedules and hopelessness in the situation delinking them from the games. CAG says the first 3 projecst were critical to the Games and would impact traffic management during the event.

1. Shastri Park tunnel corridor connecting east Delhi to north and northeast

2 Elevated east-west corridor from east Delhi to CP

3 Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg flyover linking IG stadium

4 Masoodpur corridor upgrade & Mahipalpur tunnel

5 SP Mukherjee Marg corridor for easing Old Delhi railway station traffic

6 Signal-free right turn at JB Tito Marg-Siri Fort Road

Among the infrastructure projects shelved due to horrible delays, CAG says the east-west corridor, BSZ Marg flyover and the Shastri Park tunnel were critical for the Games on account of their location and that the decision to delink them would have adverse traffic management implications.

Metro constructions in Delhi have already shown cracks (literally and figuratively under the haste of meeting CWG deadlines).

Crisis @ BJP (From Bad to worse): The expulsion of Jaswant Singh

To my mind, BJP could have done without this Jaswant Singh episode. At a time, when the party is not able to come to grips with its identity in shaping India and RSS still tugs at the umbilical cord of ideology, the expulsion of Jaswant Singh who has been a BJP stalwart could be the beginning of the end of BJP. The reason of expulsion is cited as criticism of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, a BJP icon and praise of Jinnah which supposedly has irked the Sanghis and BJP leaders. Jaswant Singh had earlier criticized L K Advani for the poll debacle. The top brass in BJP are hoping that this action would serve as a warning to the deviators from the RSS-BJP ideological line.
Jaswant Singh’s book, Jinnah: India-Partition-Independence, upset the Sangh and the BJP not for its attempt to give the founder of Pakistan a flattering makeover, but for showing Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel in a poor light in the process. Allegedly, Jaswant Singh has blamed Patel for allowing the partition, backing the two nation theory and adopting a hard stand that “alienated” muslims. This is the second time someone in BJP has suffered on account of Jinnah. L K Advani lost his job as the party chief in 2005 for praising Jinnah while on a tour of Pakistan.

If the BJP was hoping to project itself as a democratic, moderate party which could accommodate differing points of view, this expulsion puts paid to all that.In an earlier post sometime back , I had written about how BJP and CPIM need to look beyond the hardline ideologies in order to stay relevant in changing times. This action goes to prove that BJP is still heavily biased by the RSS. After its electoral defeat, BJP simply is not able to get its act together. With squabbles among its leadership, BJP seems to have forgotten its duty to the country: that of holding a responsible chair of opposition. Sticking to Hindutva hardline could be a ploy with diminishing returns in the long term for the saffron party. For once it has to emerge from its Saffron mould and probably go green.

http://newspaper-posts.blogspot.com/2009/06/is-it-time-for-bjp-and-left-to-rift.html
http://newspaper-posts.blogspot.com/2009/06/bjp-imploding-part-i-lack-of-coherent.html
http://newspaper-posts.blogspot.com/2009/06/bjp-imploding-part-ii-lack-of-electoral.html
http://newspaper-posts.blogspot.com/2009/06/bjp-imploding-part-iii-lack-of.html

The virtues of a good drought!

It is now official. We are in the middle of the worst drought since independence.Ten states have declared 246 districts as drought hit. This is about 47% of the total districts in the country.Rice production is also expected to go down by 10 million tones. However India does have enough food reserves to meet any shortfall for the next 13 months. The fall in rice production works out to as much as 70% of what the country holds as buffer or emergency stock. Foodgrain demand for 2008-09 has been estimated at 219.01 million tones as against 233.88 million tonnes produced. India currently needs 7.2 million tones of Rice as buffer and has about 14.1 million tones. The current buffer for wheat is 7 million tones while the country has 15 million tones. This will help the country avoid the need to import. Congress party spokesman Janardhan Reddy has issued an advisory to the government to tackle the most important fall out of a drought season: the rise in food prices. Already, Congress has drafted a “drought-code” for its members, whereby Congress MPs, legislators and salaried officeholders will contribute 20% of their basic salary to state and central exchequer in a symbolic gesture of solidarity with those battling drought and price rise.

To a certain extent, the concerns about its impact on growth are valid but less so compared to the previous droughts: partly because agriculture accounts for much less of national income now than it did during previous droughts and partly because other sectors of the economy are less dependent on agriculture than they were earlier. The concerns are valid but are not as important for growth as they are for livelihood and food security, since at least half of India’s population still depends on agriculture for its livelihood and that is not much different from previous spells of drought.

This drought is a grim reminder of the fact that not all of boom in agriculture was driven by government policy. It is an altogether different matter that the rain gods hardly ever get credit for good monsoons. However, droughts have also presented the unique opportunity to governances in their time to innovate social solutions. Earlier droughts have now become landmark events for public policy depending on a government’s ability to convert challenges into opportunities.

The first major drought after independence was in the mid-1960s, with severe consequences for food security. But the government of the day was successful in converting the challenge into a golden opportunity. The opportunity was the green revolution and by the end of the next decade we were more or less self-sufficient in food. It was also successful in increasing irrigation on a much bigger scale than in the previous decades.

The second major public policy lesson was also a response to droughts. The much-appreciated National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) is a successor of such a policy initiative. It was the Maharashtra Employment Guarantee Scheme which was started initially as a drought relief programme that formed the basis of a unique experiment in the world to provide guaranteed employment to the rural poor.

The importance of public employment programmes was also appreciated in the 1987-88 drought, which incidentally also saw a significant reduction in rural poverty for the first time. This was ably supported by the public policy of keeping cereal prices low and providing food security to the poor.

The 2002-03 drought was again severe and manifested itself in large-scale farmer suicides, but it also exposed the limitations of credit delivery in rural areas. The rapid expansion of credit in rural areas subsequently has not been enough to correct the serious imbalances on that front but it was successful in emphasising the magnitude of the problem. But more than that, it did provide the background for emphasising the importance of public employment programmes. The result is NREGA.

So what kind of opportunity does this drought throw up? In the long run, this drought has highlighted the vulnerabilities of Indian agriculture to the seasonal monsoons, despite claims of record production in the last four years. There cannot be a better time to usher a second green revolution and create a sustainable food security environment. It is high time to take up the long-term challenge of investing in agriculture and particularly on creating long-term sustainable irrigation systems. These may not be large-scale irrigation systems alone but even small water harvesting and conservation works undertaken as part of NREGA. But, in the short run, it is the best time to strengthen NREGA and expand its scope to individual entitlement from the existing household entitlement.

This drought is also a golden opportunity to convert this challenge into a successful public policy initiative. This opportunity is the enactment of the Right to Food Act. There cannot be a better time to do this. There is already a political consensus. This is also the time when the government stocks are full of foodgrain and it is economically insulated because of high growth achieved in the previous four years. This government has the option of being remembered for having faced the worst drought since independence or being remembered for successfully fighting it by enacting the Right to Food Act.
Ref: http://www.livemint.com/2009/08/18234120/It8217s-time-for-a-New-Deal.html

Lessons from Swine Flu: Rebuilding State capacity and clamoring for administrative reforms.

Essential public services are in disarray. This is not a problem that the upper classes bothered about till now

Profiling Niranjan Rajadhyaksha commentary on the sorry state of Indian administration and its failings.

http://www.livemint.com/2009/08/11210747/Lessons-from-swine-flu.html

The swine flu scare has forced people like us to face the bitter truth: India’s public health system is an unholy mess.

The first swine flu infections have mostly been among people who are better off than the average Indian. Testing and treatment have been restricted to select public hospitals and institutes. So people who have had no reason to enter a public hospital in many years have suddenly been forced to do so. This has led to moments of epiphany.

This is a symptom of a larger problem. Essential public services are in disarray. This is not a problem that the middle and upper classes have been bothered about till now.

This column has previously cited the work of the highly original economist Albert O. Hirschman. He has argued that people respond to organizational decline in two ways: voice and exit. Voice involves attempts to engage the system and change it. Exit means opting out. There are no prizes for guessing what path the Indian elite that lives in gated communities, sends its children to private schools, never takes a bus to work and visits only swank hospitals has chosen: voice or exit?

The deterioration in governance is a problem that is rarely given its due. Bimal Jalan has been one of the few public policy experts writing and speaking about India’s governance crisis. In his book The Future of India, Jalan has cited fears expressed by reputed civil servant S. Bhoothalingam that the bureaucracy had become ossified as early as 1961, a mere 14 years after Independence. Matters have gotten worse since then.

Why does this matter? The lack of state capacity matters for issues that are more long-term than the current swine flu panic. It means that ministries and government departments are chronically unable to spend the money allocated to them in the annual budget. It means that fiscal stimulus packages focus on higher revenue expenditure rather than building new public works. It means that inefficient police and judicial systems raise the costs of doing business.

In short, the lack of state capacity is a drag on long-term economic growth.

One short-term test case of state capacity could soon be evident. India is edging close to its first drought in five years. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh did well to make clear on Saturday that the big policy goal in case the monsoon does not revive is to ensure “no citizen will go hungry”. But millions who are most likely to go hungry in times of drought also happen to live in districts that have poor connectivity and poor governance. Reaching food to them will be a challenge for the food security system.

The poor live with a dysfunctional government system every day: schools where teachers rather than students play truant, public hospitals and health centres without basic equipment and local officials who do not care.

The 1 August issue of the Economic and Political Weekly has a chilling account of what happened at Khairlanji, a village in Maharashtra where a Dalit family was killed by a mob of so-called higher castes in September 2006. The official response was callous. What is particularly troubling is that “a majority of the police (and) medical officers across ranks handling the case were Dalits. But they showed a negligent attitude towards their official duties...”
Swine flu fears, the long shadow of drought and the killing of a Dalit family: each story points to the same underlying problem. The Indian state is failing in its basic duties to protect citizens, provide justice and help the poorest.

There are two lessons here. One, a lot of the debate on government programmes tends to focus on how much money is being thrown at a particular problem. Corruption is a constant. But equally important is the incapacity to use taxpayer money well and deliver basic services.
Two, a system that cannot do its basic job well enough still wants to stretch itself and do stuff that the private sector is quite capable of doing, especially running enterprises that in the case of the public sector are usually loss-making.

Jalan has this to say in The Future of India: “The burden of weak administration naturally falls mainly on the poor because of the indifference of government staff to them… The insensitivity of the administrative system to the needs of the poor, even to prevent starvation, has been confirmed by first-hand surveys and reports by journalists and non-governmental organizations.”

It has often been said that the Indian state does too little in some areas and too much in others. That is the whole point of economic reforms: A free economy can boost growth and thus provide the government with tax revenues to spend on what should be its key functions.
Administrative reforms and rebuilding of state capacity have to be important parts of this transition.

India’s own Balochistan

Pakistan has implicated India and the Karzai government in Afghanistan to be instigating civil unrest in Pakistan’s wild west: Balochistan. This is again one of the many hundred subterfuges that Pakistan has resorted to in order to veil its ineffective, inefficient governance and its inability to break the nexus between ISI, Army and the Taliban. However, we are not talking of that in this post.

I intend to bring to foreground, the dirt, dust and trash that the Indian government has been sweeping under its carpet for many many years now. This is to deal with in home Militant movements. Sample this:

1.About a month ago, India released a list of 34 militant bodies who it had banned. At that number, India had the largest number of doemstic terror groups. Read: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/NEWS/India/India-has-largest-number-of-domestic-terror-groups/articleshow/4694618.cms
2.The Naxalite movements in Lalgarh in West Bengal and Chattisgarh have hogged the limelight in terms of the violence, killing for sometime now.
Read: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/NEWS/India/Op-Lalgarh-was-waiting-to-happen/articleshow/4664991.cms; http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/12-policemen-killed-in-Naxal-blast-in-Chhattisgarh/articleshow/4510576.cms
3.Naxalite movements are yet again on the up in many more states. Read: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-2494458,prtpage-1.cms
4.A considerable portion of our army is battling this in-home terror movement and the resources going waste are enormous.

My tours and travels have taken me around India and it is disconcerting how one part of India is so different/complete opposite from another part. This was the realization between glasses of Vodka at Hotel Hindustan International in Kolkata. Lalgarh was burning 180kms away from where I was sitting. Elsewhere, North Eastern states, have private militias and governments, which refuse to accept that they are the part of the Indian Republic. Private companies, which work in such areas exercise extreme caution in business and are frequently subjected to ransom demands. I have known such instances to happen. Bombs and deaths are commonplace. Travelling east of Guwahati and Jorhat is a peril that you and I can ill afford. Local police is inadequately armed against the AK 47s/56s brandished by these militants.

North Eastern states are to India what Balochistan is to Pakistan.
Corruption, under development, mis-management, bad governance and economic under development stoke the fire of hatred. The gun that fires is obtained from destabilizing external forces and yet the hand that fires it is Indian. An Indian neglected so long, he does-not care to be called one. Anti-terror tactics is good, but this has to be complemented by an all inclusive growth plan. Good governance is good economics and it is time that people from these neglected corners are given a better deal.

The virtues of Swine Flu

The death of 14 year old Reeda Sheikh has been a rude awakener for the lax health care and government officials. The emergency mode has now been activated meaning that a few hospitals, doctors and quarantine sectors have been put up in a jiffy and news channels are constantly blaring smallest tit-bits about Swine Flu and the H1N1 virus.Yet again, we seem to have missed the point. In hackneyed words, we are still treating the diseased and not the disease. We are still curing the outbreak instead of preventing it. As a nation we are woefully short of a plan, a policy to handle such outbreaks.

For starters, lets put up with two facts: Swine Flu is spreading fast. However, it is treatable. The Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome had a mortality rate 15 times that of swine flu. The Flu’s death rate estimate is 1%. Health officials point out that many more die from regular flu.

However a proper response to pandemic or in imagined worst case scenario of Bioterrorism is still missing. Widespread closures, isolation, quarantines are ineffective and impractical. It does-not solve the problem and instead ends up hurting the economic engine.

The focus of the health care systems in India would have to be:
1.Testing and Early detection: It would need to open emergency testing sites outside/away hospital areas with the equipment and manpower to administer early detection. Doing it away from the regular hospitals is imperative, to dis-allow infections to spread through people who already have medical complications.
2.Adequate stockpiles of drugs necessary to treat the virus strain are necessary.
3.Complete treatment should be taken up to prevent mutations of the strain which could render the present medications ineffective.
4.The mass media channels spread more mis-information than information. The government and the health care officials would have to tap this media to educate and disseminate information within the people.
5.One needs a SOP, disaster management system and a properly documented process documented on “how to” deal with such pandemics. This would categorize the “class” of the outbreak and who/how to mobilize support in face of such outbreaks.

Thus, in the whole, Swine Flu should serve as a template for the government to check on its emergency response systems to such outbreaks.

Web 2.0: How it is culturally influencing the growth of India

A recent nationwide survey of Urban students has some sharp revelations. Going by the trends suggested in this survey, India will emerge as a Internet super power sooner than expected. Urban students are digital natives, reveals the TCS Generation Web 2.0 survey.
Looks like the dawn of the new Indian

Highlights:

1. 63 per cent of urban students spend over an hour online daily
   
2. 93 per cent are aware of social networking
   
3. Orkut and Facebook are most popular online destinations
   
4. 46 per cent use online sources to access news; TV, newspaper users at 25 per cent
   
5. 62 per cent have a personal computer at home
   
6. 1 in 4 students own laptops in metros;
   
7. 2 of 3 own music players
   
8. IT and engineering remain overwhelming popular career choices
   
9. Media and Entertainment, Travel and Tourism are emerging careers
   
10. USA, UK top list of international destinations for higher studies Mumbai
    

A new survey of India’s school children shows that ”The Web 2.0 Generation” are digital natives, with high technology savvy, global in terms of aspirations and outlook as well as being increasingly optimistic about India’s economic future. The survey, conducted by India’s largest IT solutions provider Tata Consultancy Services, is among the largest youth surveys in India, and was conducted across 14,000 high-school children between the ages of 12-18 in 12 cities across India during 2008-09.

“Nearly one out of 10 people on the planet are under 25 years old and living in India. That is the significance of India’s next generation and what they do, think and aspire to hold insights for all those who aim to engage with this Web 2.0 Generation,” said S Ramadorai, CEO and MD, TCS. “The TCS Generation Web 2.0 survey confirms that today’s students are shifting their academic and social life online and embracing the digital world as true digital natives. This societal trend has important implications for parents, educators, policy makers, as future employers as well as companies and brands that want to sell to tomorrow’s generation.”

Mr Ramadorai added, “The Web 2.0 Generation will shape the next phase of India’s growth and success. What this group does and how it interacts with others, its interests and aspiration need to be considered as we all plan for the future. TCS plans to use some of the findings to understand the next generation better and it will help us not just to find the best potential employees for the future, but also guide us to engage and communicate with them more effectively.”

The TCS Generation Web 2.0 survey, conducted for the first time in 2008-09, highlights that urban school children in the metros and mini-metros are immersed online and have the technology at hand to access information through the net at all times. Over 80 per cent have access to mobile phones, find time for the internet alongside school, classes and extracurricular activities, and are starting to embrace Web 2.0 tools like blogs and social networking sites.
The desire to study abroad cuts across students nationwide with USA being the most preferred destination with nearly 40 per cent preferring to study there. For some students, physical proximity plays a part in the choice of overseas education destination, especially in the mini-metros. Singapore and Dubai are preferred by one in five students in Chennai and Cochin respectively as top choice for overseas education.

At a relatively young age, India’s urban students are thinking about travel, learning new skills, experience and salary as when they consider future careers.

TCS has identified the youth in four categories -

1. The Globetrotter: Today’s students continue to express a strong desire to be mobile like previous generations. The Globetrotter has global ambitions and wants to study and work abroad. However, a growing confidence in the economic future in India is also reflected in the survey as many students, though keen to study abroad and gain global exposure, are also keen to bring skills back to India and put them to use here.
   
2. The Gadgetphile: Students from both metros and mini-metros who love gadgets and aspire to have the latest products available. The i-Pod Indian is more likely to be found with access to a web-enabled mobile, the latest gaming console, i-Pods and if he/she doesn’t have one, then aspires to own an i-Phone.
   
3. The Nation-builder: The Indian student is focused on his/her career but is as much interested in the additional benefits that careers brings, such as travel, learning new skills, experience to be gained, interesting workplace, and salary. This Career Kid is also starting to branch out of the traditional career choices and going for some new options like gaming and animation. The Nation-Builder is optimistic about Indian companies and favours them over the most popular international MNCs. The Social
   
4. Networker: A true digital native, the Social Networker is likely to have as many online friends as real ones and these friendships go beyond the traditional boundaries of gender, caste, and geographies. The Social Youth communicates with anyone and everyone as long as they have the same interests. This child could mark the start of a new democracy where he/she reaches out to more people through social networks and is likely to be more socially active, willing to gather other like-minded youths or even form social network parties.