It is good that Dr. Manmohan Singh has begun his second innings with a promise to focus on education and infrastructure. The ruling party has at last identified these as powerful engines of growth and promised increased public spending to propel investment in these areas. The PM has chosen two of his relatively brighter cabinet ministers to handle these areas.
It is not the right thing to talk about the failures of the previous government immediately after it is reelected with a resounding mandate. But history demands a factual assessment of the five years of Manmohan Singh government in these areas before we proceed further on the spiral of aspiration and hope. Let’s be clear, Dr Singh has the most abysmal record in these areas if we compare it with that of five years of Atal Behari Vajpayee, who preceded him. On road building, rural electrification, power generation, water resources, transport and education infrastructure building from 2004 to 2009 were wasted years for India. That perhaps is the reason for Surface Transport Minister Kamal Nath now to promise a revamped highway sector where performance will be assessed on the kilometres built, not in terms of planning and awarding of contracts. Similarly, HRD Minister Kapil Sibal was furious when he assessed the programme for the first 100 days put up by his officials. Because there was practically nothing new than what the ministry used to repeat in the last five years.
The HRD Ministry under Arjun Singh had the most dubious distinction of a total absence of innovation. It did not bother to build additional infrastructure to cope with the growing demand for quality education. For instance, during the five years of NDA, there was a ten per cent increase in literacy level, 300 universities and thousands of colleges were networked with world’s best quality academic courseware, University of Roorkee was converted into an IIT, two new IIITs were founded, number of engineering colleges which was 562 in 1998 increased to 1203 in 2003 with a corresponding student intake from 1,34,298 to 3,56,268, and all the 17 regional engineering colleges and Bihar Engineering College upgraded as NITs.
India had one of the most brilliant education ministers in Dr Murli Manohar Joshi under the NDA. In fact, it was he who identified and made the country aware of the great potential of education as a dynamo of growth. But the partisan politics in India understated his achievements by emphasising only on curriculum review, which in itself was innovative and an attempt to update and modernise textbooks.
Similarly, during the NDA regime, in five years 25,000 kilometres of four and six-lane highways were built at a rate of 11 km per day. In the first fifty years of Independent India only 556 km of four and six-lane highways were built at a rate of 11 km per year. If we examine the UPA record in the last five years we see that the Manmohan government sincerely kept the pace of “Congress rate of road building”.
The Golden Quadrilateral did not make any progress after the Vajpayee government left, completing 90 per cent of the work. Same is the fate of the North-South and East-West Corridor project launched by the NDA. Completion of Golden Quadrilateral alone will save Rs 8,000 crore annually in fuel costs. To grapple with the delay plaguing the road sector Kamal Nath called a meeting of the private players last week. The Golden Quadrilateral completion is behind target by six years. It is languishing mainly because of land transfer delays.
The ambitious NSEW project is late by four years because of similar reasons. This is the challenge before the new minister. Going by the past record there is not much promise in other infrastructure ministries like railways, civil aviation, energy, power and water resources. It will prove a big blessing if the government is able to streamline education and road transport.
Experts say that India’s GDP growth is dragged down by at least two per cent because of poor infrastructure. Better infrastructure will boost investments and create job opportunities.
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