I did a trip by car recently from Bangalore to Neyveli and
Thanjavur and came back via Tiruchirappalli. In one place, Bangalore, I paid the toll electronically. Everywhere else the car had to stop and the toll had to be paid
manually. I paid a total of Rs 619 at 11 places. The whole trip was about 1100
km long. This made me read up on reports of such inefficient practices
elsewhere in India. This country prides itself on its software export earnings,
but its own domestic economy is often a decade or more behind adopting simple
technology to save its people time and money. It is a bit like the case of
workers in the construction industry, who build huge multi-story apartment complexes
for others. But they and their children usually live in the buildings under
construction, often without drinking water, lighting and access to toilets.
Sometimes their toddlers wander around such buildings, fall down and die.
The Centre for Internet & Society has done us a service by
republishing in its February 2016 Newsletter an insightful article by Shyam
Ponappa in the Business Standard of Feb 3, 2016 http://www.business-standard.com/article/opinion/shyam-ponappa-bottled-up-national-assets-116020301314_1.html
Ponappa points out that the
Indian Highways Management Company was tasked in 2012 to implement Electronic
Toll Collection (ETC). He also reports that a study by IIM-C and Transport
Corporation of India in 2012 reported an annual loss of Rs 87,000 Crores due to
delays of the Delhi-Mumbai truck traffic. The study is reported to have
indicated that the average speed of the Delhi-Mumbai truck traffic to be 21
kmph! It would be worth reading up the basis for these loss calculations; they
seem to be of the order of 2% of India’s GNP in 2012!
ETC is reported to have
been introduced in 2014, but the goal of having it implemented all over India
remains a dream as of now. The transportation sector contributes over 5% of the
GNP and the road sector handles over 60% of the freight movement (these numbers
are based on relatively old information – visit http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/COUNTRIES/SOUTHASIAEXT/EXTSARREGTOPTRANSPORT/0,,contentMDK:20703625~menuPK:868822~pagePK:34004173~piPK:34003707~theSitePK:579598,00.html )
While doing research for
writing this article I came across this website of ICICI Bank
It says that an
electronic tag can be bought for use on the Bangalore-Chennai route at Hosur,
but the publicity for this has been very poor. I have travelled on this route
several times but have never seen a sign advertising this tag. I am a Bangalore
customer of the ICICI bank but I have never received an email about this.
There are many other
examples in the Indian economy, as readers can guess, of poor management
causing huge losses. Major reforms pose their own problems, but a concerted
effort to identify easily addressable problems could speed up the growth rate
of the GNP by one or two percent. There was a time when productivity was given
national attention, but now we hear little about productivity in general. The
Niti Aayog seems to be concerned with agricultural productivity, but we do not
hear about attempts to improve productivity in other sectors of the economy.
