Are Infrastructural Shortages stiffling India

Two seemingly unrelated news articles in Mint today and yet the connect between both of these is mighty and huge.

The first one is about World Bank raising the its forecast for China’s economic growth from 6.5% to 7.2%. This was due to strong government investment supporting growth of the economy.

The second article was a report on the delays in Mumbai’s Bandra-Worli sea link. The project is being opened this month after a four year schedule delay.

Yours truly, had the opportunity to visit China early this month and the two things that impressed me about China were:
Infrastructure that is at-least 10 – 15 years ahead of India.
The investor and business friendly legislations. The scale of Industry and SEZs and the tax exemptions to the industry.
China had embarked on the journey of open market economic liberation 12 years before India had. However, what seems evident in China is the way they have managed the madness of trade and economic liberalization. They built roads and bridges and power stations and ports and aerodromes to handle growth. India went about all this in a pretty unstructured way vacillating between governments and politics. The result is obvious: China, the most populous state in the world, the third largest economy in the world grows fastest, while the Indian Juggernaut is still taking off.

Hong-Kong Macau Sea Bridge

Bandra Worli Sea Link
The case in point is the Worli Bandra sea link. Conceived in 1990s, the 20 Kms Western Freeway project was designed to reduce the traffic choke on Mumbai road arterials as well as reduce the traveling time for commuters in the commercial hub of India. 8 years after the project had progressed, only half the number of lanes (4 out of 8) on a quarter of the actual length planned (5.6 out of 20 kms) is complete. That’s a project completion rate of 12.5% only in double the allotted time. Compare that with China, which has built 10 such sea links in 8 years. The Hong-Kong Macau sea bridge and the 32kms long Donghai bridge in Shanghai was completed in 3.5 years. The 43 Kms Hong Kong – Macau – GuangDong bridge will be built in 6 years.

Elsewhere in India, Delhi, the Metro Rail system is a better example of project management even though the same cannot be said for Common wealth preparation in Delhi.

Its time that all such projects are thoroughly examined by the state and centre governments and all and any causes of delay are penalized for incompetence. It is imperative that infrastructure projects are completed on time and schedule, for supporting the significant strides made by the Indian private sector.