The Hindu : Infrastructure initiatives stifled

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Nov 20, 2002

Southern States

Southern States - Tamil Nadu

Infrastructure initiatives stifled

By K. Ramachandran

CHENNAI Nov. 19. Political rivalry, a rigid regulatory mechanism and a general reluctance among people to pay user-charges are slowly killing any private initiative to improve infrastructure in Tamil Nadu.

Even the initiatives mooted by local bodies to create basic infrastructure by collecting funds from the user-population have not got off, thanks to political bickering between the local body and the government.

Having burnt their fingers in some ``build-operate-and-transfer'' projects, private entrepreneurs are reluctant to undertake new initiatives.

All this, along with the long-standing fiscal crisis, has led to a virtual standstill. Even the projects proposed in the short-term, especially for improving sewer and sanitation network in selected towns, are likely to run into cost and time overruns, going by the present record of government payments to contractors.

Urban planners, funding agencies and consultants are concerned at inadequacy of infrastructure in key towns including Chennai, Coimbatore and Tiruchi. It may be convenient to take cover under the fiscal crisis preventing the Government from taking up any capital-intensive project and waiting for better times. But by then, the infrastructure gap would become too big to bridge, according to the head of an urban financing agency.

BOT project takes its toll

Two major BOT road and bridge projects, one near Karur and the other in Coimbatore, have run into problems. Contrary to the expectations of the private builder/operator, the Karur bridge is fetching only 60 per cent of the projected revenue. This is also declining as the bridge users are either reluctant to pay toll or prefer to take a by-pass.

A similar problem plagues the Coimbatore project, funded and operated by a leading company.

In another bridge project across the Kortaliyar, north of Chennai, the Mumbai-based builder/operator faces a permanent shortage of toll collections.

All this only means the concession time (the period for which private operators can collect toll to recover the cost of construction) will become longer. For example, the Karur bridge operator planned to collect toll and operate the bridge for eight years. Now, it appears, the operator-company will have to collect the toll for at least 12-14 years to recover the investment.

Hassles in Chennai

Delays in clearing or completing these projects are only costing the people more, says an urban project consultant. At Alandur here, for example, work on an underground sewer network (cost: Rs. 34 crores) began three years ago. A crucial element of the model scheme was user-participation. Nearly 16,000 user-households paid Rs. 5,000 each. The builder completed 70-km of main and branch lines.

But by then the Government changed. So, two years after paying their contribution, the people of Alandur still await house (service) connections. Even a plant, capable of treating eight million litres of waste a day, has been completed and tested. But the DMK-headed local body has not been able to push the project further.

Still worse is the lot of Pallavaram and Tambaram here, where the underground sewer projects did not take off as the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board insisted on ``safe disposal of the treated sewage.'' But this would have meant laying pipelines for another 20-25 km, which job, in turn, would cost individual households Rs. 2,000 or 3,000, in addition to the upfront fee, officials say.

Another attempt at providing a composting yard using waste collected from the suburban municipalities could not also take off. For, the TNPCB insisted, for clearance, on the entire waste being segregated (into organic and inorganic) at source — at each household. While this might be a laudable concept, one could not wait until each household was educated about source-segregation, say urban managers.

By then the untreated sewer and unsegregated garbage would mount to unmanageable levels.

Urban planners say the local bodies would have to seek the cooperation of the people in solving the funding problems, convince them to pay charges for creation and use of infrastructure.

Otherwise, they will have to pay indirectly in the near future for damage mitigation.

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