Right on track

As Delhi prepares to begin Phase-II of the Delhi metro project, the Delhi government deserves to be congratulated. In a country where urban ...

As Delhi prepares to begin Phase-II of the Delhi metro project, the Delhi government deserves to be congratulated. In a country where urban infrastructure is falling apart and where political and bureaucratic hurdles prevent the successful completion of projects, this project stands out as a sparkling success story. The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation DMRC, a special purpose vehicle, was created solely for the implementation of the project. The project was not dumped on existing government agencies. This delivered outstanding results, beyond all expectations. The DMRC has been run along professional lines. Projects have not only been completed on time, cost overruns have been contained and the quality of the service delivered has been world class. The construction has been done at minimum inconvenience to citizens in contrast to other metros 8212; such as the one in Kolkata, which took 25 years to build. The collection of user charges has allowed the corporation to become one of the world8217;s few profit-making metros.

The success of the metro is linked to the issue of bijli-sadak-pani, whose provision is one of the biggest challenges facing governments today. While big infrastructural projects like the metro need money from the Centre, as they need far more funds than a local government can provide, the implementation is often weak because it is to be done by the state government. In most cities, such as in Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai and Kolkata, the implementation is in the hands of the state government as there is no city government. The fate of the state government does not rely on the success of the city. In fact, as in the case of Bangalore, there may be attempts to play down the development of the city and appear to favour the rural voter. Similarly,the decision to divert electricity from Mumbai to rural areas of Maharashtra was a pro-rural political decision which clearly went against the interests of the city.

Delhi is fortunate in that the interests of the city are not separate from the state of Delhi. This allows the state government to focus on the development of the city unlike other states. With economic growth and in-migration, the populations of cities across the country are growing very fast, putting existing infrastructure under great pressure. The success of the Delhi Metro not only offers a good institutional model in terms of financing and implementing urban infrastructural projects, it also indicates that if India is to solve the problem of bilji-sadak-pani, it needs to start thinking of having city governments, where political futures are linked to the successful provision of services to city dwellers and whose interests do not get submerged under the political interests of the state government.