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Showing posts from June, 2010

New Ministry of Rail Infrastructure can help progress PPP in railways

PPP projects Indian Railways> - Those who do not know can be taught if willing to learn. Those who know but unwilling to do, you cannot teach them. Our case is the later. Extreme intelligence, perhaps best in the country, and full awareness represent our railway engineers. Our finance officers too lead and head other BOT organisations successfully in the country. Our Traffic officers successfully played in the market to leverage market forces to get what their organisations which they were heading to get what they want. Our mechanical engineers too played the game of export markets. It is not a matter of knowledge. It is a matter of system. A predominantly operations & maintenance organisation designed to maintain status quo to keep the wheels running day in and day out, where even the Cabinet Minister is under tension, of getting a mid night phone call and truly scared of it, ( as confided to me by a Railway Minister, who told me it is so easy to manage other ministries but in

Energy from gravity : US Rail roads case study

Fiscal Deficit, PPP, tightening of belts

Montek Singh our man, is recently honoured in LSE and the lecture he gave was excellent. India will concentrate more on domestic demand growth rather than depend on export promotion. If all outside countries are poor, and cannot afford, then what is the point in expecting export oriented growth? PPP models will have to be reviewed too for the excessive capital costs wantonly built in, expecting lots of aid money and also financed by the government through increased fiscal deficit. The real capital cost is getting boosted by two to three times to take care of interests of political, bureaucratic and business players serving the development of infrastructure in the nation. The simplest example is to compare the figures cost of Delhi Metro itself--our show piece. In Goa, at a total cost of Rs 34 cr per r. km( double line) elevated metro for Standard and broad gauge , with very deep pile foundations, all pre-stressed structure, was constructed which included station, air conditioning , rol
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Govt looks at direct role for Army against Naxals Article Comments (16) Post a Comment TOP COMMENT B Rajaram Hyderabad/Herndon 2 Jun, 2010 0347hrs IST Back seat driving by politicians made police ineffective in fighting the Maoists/Naxals. Now talking of deploying Army is fraught with lots of concerns. Army will also get demoralised soon. Rapid action forces, commando trained special units, CRPF are all well well trained but caught in the web of limited mandate as per our more than equal status of Naxals who enjoy all the constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech and action, including carrying arms against state(?), whereas the men in uniform suffer the indignity of having to account for every bullet that exits from his rifle and has to be extremely cautious while using his fire arms., afraid of some special investigative team of Supreme Court also going after them for some alleged abuse of power. In all likelihood being thus sandwiched between Naxals and the state law, the troo