Title: Country pays heavy price for infrastructure neglect'
1 Corridors of Excellence S Viswanathan Editor
Publisher, Industrial Economist
A seminar by
2About Industrial Economist
- Forty Years young
- Focusing on business and economic issues of
South - Initiative to expand awareness on economic issues
- Several dignitaries have been part of this
endeavour
3India has neglected infrastructure development
for many years
- Power generation
- Freight / transportation
- Highways development
- Let us look at a few of these
4Paying the price for being power-less
- Less than 50 of targets set for power capacity
additions achieved in Eighth, Ninth Tenth five
year plans - Average additions made by Tamil Nadu over last 16
years barely touched 100 MW per year - Proposed power cuts in 2008 may drastically
retard growth
5Freight transportation industries suffer
stunted growth
- In the Sixties, visionaries in shipping dreamt of
carrying up to 50 of foreign trade in Indian
ships - Against this, after 40 years, Indian ships carry
just around a tenth of the import and export
freight
6Highway development neglected for more than five
decades
- Impressed by the Autobahn road network in
Germany, US president Eisenhower initiated
eight-lane road construction in early 1950s - India has taken 50 years to appreciate need for
well networked highways
7Implementation delays cause chaos
- Example the busy Kathiapara junction in
Chennai. This junction leading south to the
airport is possibly the busiest in the city - The grade separator at Kathipara, due in April
2006, is still far from completion - Decision to cast heavy concrete blocks in situ,
among major contributors to delay
8Connecting India is now a success story in
progress
- Investments in infrastructure is jumping from
12.5 million in the 1990s to an estimated 500
billion in the Eleventh Plan Period that
translates to a mind-boggling amount of Rs.45,000
crore per year!
9Big investments are being made by Railways
- The Delhi-Mumbai and Delhi-Kolkata dedicated
freight corridors involve massive outlays - Prosperous industrial corridors are being planned
along these routes - 185-km Metro rail aiding mass transit in NCR
10As a PR initiative, why cant oil and auto
companies be more involved?
- Tamil Nadu has notoriety for largest number of
road accident deaths - Three per day on city roads.
- Close to 14,000 across the state in 2005)
- TN accounts for a seventh of the all India figure
of 100,000 deaths on roads
- Auto makers and oil companies can campaign
for road safety - Helmets for two wheeler riders
- Seatbelts for four wheelers
- Driver training
- Traffic planning for cities
- PR expertise can help in such initiatives
11The South needs to shout for more attention
- Major development programmes are often
Delhi-centric - Freight corridors, Metro, Gas Grid are all
focused around NCR and in the North West - South is not in the radar of such massive
infrastructure development
IE Seminar will focus on Chennai-Bengaluru
Industrial Corridor and the OMR IT Corridor
12A strong case for a Chennai-Bengaluru high-speed
rail industrial corridor
- Think of reaching Bengaluru in 90 minutes flat
- Reach either city from any point on the corridor
in 60 minutes! - Such dedicated trains can ply Chennai-Hyderabad
and Chennai-Cochin
PR professionals can be a vital link in
projecting such concepts!
13Remember
- We can't solve problems by using the same kind
of thinking we used when we created them- Albert
Einstein
14S Viswanathan Editor Publisher
www.IndustrialEconomist.com viswanathan.ie_at_gmai
l.com