By Prashant Agrawal

This is the third post in a series analyzing India’s newly released Union Budget from CSIS Wadhwani Chair experts. In this piece Prashant Agrawal describes India’s infrastructure challenges. Part I on economics is here. Part II on defense is here.

Anyone landing into India’s financial capital, Mumbai, for the first time is in for a shock. The roads of Kigali, Rwanda are smoother, Beirut’s infrastructure seems to be building at a faster pace, and Pyongyang, North Korea may very well have more high-rises. On the flip side, someone landing into New Delhi will be met with a spanking new world-class airport, a metro connecting the city from end to end, and a six to eight lane ring road circling the city.  And in this tale of two cities lies the tale of India’s infrastructure.

India will spend more on infrastructure in 2012 than it did in all of the 1990s. Highways are being built, ports are coming up, new airports and metros are being constructed in cities across India. But the pace of construction is uneven, and planning remains haphazard.

In the 2013 Union Budget, Finance Minister P. Chidambaram said he would de-bottleneck the slow pace of road construction and appointing a regulator to help oversee the myriad disputes between construction companies and local governments. More than 15,000 crore rupees (~$2.5 billion USD) of projects are mired in disputes today. Road construction across the country is stymied.

So how and why did Delhi get it right and can’t India do the same for roads and infrastructure in general? India saw the Commonwealth Games of 2010 as a matter of national prestige. Never mind that the Commonwealth Games don’t get much global attention, India took it as a moment of coming out.   Infrastructure was put on war footing. A world class airport was built, roads, stadia, and housing complexes were built quickly.  India can build infrastructure projects when there is a perceived “national interest” or political will.  Money which used to be missing link is actually available today.

India has the money, it just doesn’t have the political will.

During the Vajpayee Regime, the National Quadrangle project, the equivalent of Eisenhower’s interstate highway system of the 1950s in the US, was seen as a matter of national priority.  A four lane highway was built connecting Delhi to Mumbai to Chennai to Kolkata back to Delhi.  Land clearances happened, contractors were paid and India for the first time in history had a modern highway system.  Over the last decade that four lane highway was supposed to be expanded into six.  That hasn’t happened.  It’s a priority for Prime Minster Singh, but eight years later, it still hasn’t happened.

And now Finance Minister Chidambaram has promised a regulator to jump start the slow pace of road construction.  Rather than a regulator, what is needed is stern action.  Officials not doing their jobs should be shunted, and contractors not performing blacklisted.  Right now there are few consequences to not doing the job, be it for the bureaucrats or for the private sector.  A regulator won’t change that, only political fortitude will.

In Mumbai, we bemoan the ritual digging up of roads.  Roads are torn asunder every year and repaved.  Tar is replaced by brick replaced by concrete. And sometimes the cycle starts again. A kilometer long stretch at the heart of Mumbai’s North-South connecting road is under perpetual construction.  There is money to be made and everyone is in on it.  When the gravy train ends so too will the perpetual construction. All it takes is political will.

Mr. Prashant Agrawal is a non-resident adjunct fellow with the CSIS Wadhwani Chair in U.S.-India Policy Studies.