party to the loot
text of the letter sent to the Indian Express:
I refer to the report captioned "Metro rail: Officials face the music" in your columns today.
Upto as recently as just some ten years back, we were totally at the mercy of monopoly government service providers like BSNL, Indian Airlines, Posts & Telegraph, Doordarshan, the cartelised banks and insurance companies. With the facilitation of entry of private players into these sectors, the scenarios transformed in real quick time benefiting everyone concerned, except a handful of racketeers.
In very much the same way, the public bus transport services can also get transformed, in a matter of months, if the state governments facilitate entry of organised sector players like TVS into the sector to compete with the present-day government monopoly players, viz BMTC and the SRTC's. What is required is a Praful Patel like approach on the part of the state transport minister. Such a development, alongwith a few policy measures disincentivising usage of personalised forms of transport, can mitigate the city traffic problems to a large extent. And, thereafter, if necessary, one can look at the METRO, this being a very costly option.
The politicians will naturally go for the costliest of options, since the mega projects involved mean mega kick-backs. But, when the NGO's, who so vociferously voice their opposition to the METRO, simultaneously refuse to support the entry of the private sector into the field, aren't they willy-nilly playing into the hands of the politicians, and thereby guilty of acquiescing in the loot?
I refer to the report captioned "Metro rail: Officials face the music" in your columns today.
Upto as recently as just some ten years back, we were totally at the mercy of monopoly government service providers like BSNL, Indian Airlines, Posts & Telegraph, Doordarshan, the cartelised banks and insurance companies. With the facilitation of entry of private players into these sectors, the scenarios transformed in real quick time benefiting everyone concerned, except a handful of racketeers.
In very much the same way, the public bus transport services can also get transformed, in a matter of months, if the state governments facilitate entry of organised sector players like TVS into the sector to compete with the present-day government monopoly players, viz BMTC and the SRTC's. What is required is a Praful Patel like approach on the part of the state transport minister. Such a development, alongwith a few policy measures disincentivising usage of personalised forms of transport, can mitigate the city traffic problems to a large extent. And, thereafter, if necessary, one can look at the METRO, this being a very costly option.
The politicians will naturally go for the costliest of options, since the mega projects involved mean mega kick-backs. But, when the NGO's, who so vociferously voice their opposition to the METRO, simultaneously refuse to support the entry of the private sector into the field, aren't they willy-nilly playing into the hands of the politicians, and thereby guilty of acquiescing in the loot?
posted by Muralidhar Rao at
5:31 AM
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