Rs 6,000 crore boost for metro

The day President Pratibha Devisingh Patil outlined infrastructure as key for India’s economic growth, the government decided to provide a special package of Rs 6,000 crore for development of metro networks in smaller Indian cities via the Public Private Partnership (PPP) mode.

Updated on: Feb 21, 2011, 22:47:59 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The day President Pratibha Devisingh Patil outlined infrastructure as key for India’s economic growth, the government decided to provide a special package of Rs 6,000 crore for development of metro networks in smaller Indian cities via the Public Private Partnership (PPP) mode.

Metro trains have been found to be a viable alternative to personal vehicles in Delhi and the network has been expanded to cities such as Mumbai, Hyderabad and Kochi. Except Delhi, the metro services in other Indian cities have been implemented in the PPP mode.

The Planning Commission recently formalized a broad proposal for encouraging more private investment for metro networks in small cities with a population more than 50 lakh.

The success of PPP in some cities has been the reason for the new policy initiative, even though Delhi Metro chief E Sreedharan had opposed private participation. He had cited the problems faced by Delhi Metro with Reliance Infrastructure, the company operating the Airport line, a reason for not allowing PPP in this vital transport sector.

Moreover, Sreedharan believes that a public sector unit can perform better, if they are allowed similar concessions as being proposed for the private bidders. His objections have not found much ground with the commission, which has decided to pursue the PPP mode.

“For this the government plans to provide Rs 6,000 crore to the state governments in the next budget,” a senior government official said. An announcement in this regard is expected in the budget next Monday by Finance minister Pranab Mukerjee.

To provide further impetus to urban infrastructure, the government has decided to allocate about Rs 13,000 crore to the Jawaharlal Nehru Urban Renewal Mission. Most of the money will be provided to improve transport and urban facilities in smaller Indian cities, where there has been a growth in population due to migration.

Another urban sector scheme for the poor, the Rajiv Gandhi Awar Yojana is set to get Rs 1,000 crore to provide housing to urban poor. The scheme was launched recently following the success of a similar programme for rural India.

Patil, in her speech, said infrastructure was critical for development and a high level national transport policy committee has been set up to provide policy direction for an intergrated and sustainable transport development.

The emphasis on infrastructure and social sectors could result in the budget cuts for ministries such as environment and rural development.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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