The past ten years witnessed impressive growth of the infrastructure sector. Most notable of these relates to telecom and roads. After the dismal additions to power capacity during the last three five year plans (8th, 9th and 10th), the Manmohan Singh government took several new initiatives to attempt a quantum jump in additions to power capacity through the current plan. The high rate of economic growth experienced during the last three years with the manufacturing and services sectors doing well, demand for power far outstrips capacity. Tamil Nadu suffers one of its worst power crises with scheduled and unscheduled load shedding for long hours.

The global melt down, with the attendant resources crunch, is bound to impact severely on the impressive plans of infrastructure development. The UPI government estimated the requirements at around $500 billion for the 11th plan and was enthusiastic about garnering the resources. A recent global conference on infrastructure held in Mumbai pointed to the difficulties in accessing funding of this order. On current sights, availability of funds may be restricted to around $300 billion. Thus the impressive phase of infrastructure development witnessed in recent years may suffer a slow down.

Long neglect of the power sector in TN

The impact of past sins of omission are pretty severe on Tamil Nadu. Right through the liberalisation era that began in 1991 Tamil Nadu stubbornly refused to reform its power sector. Neighbouring Andhra and Karnataka and most other states restructured their electricity boards separating generation and transmission to good effect. Most other states also set up fairly early their state electricity regulatory commissions with power to act independently of the government. In Tamil Nadu the SERC has been ineffective even after the late start.

There has practically been no capacity addition at the state-owned power stations at Ennore, Tuticorin, Mettur and North Madras. The Neyveli Lignite Corporation that has been the top performer amongst public sector undertakings, suffered long years of neglect at the hands of both Central and state governments. The atomic power station at Kalpakkam has been performing to less than half of its installed capacity.

All through the profligacy of the administration expanded: the suicidal policy of providing free power for agriculture introduced in 1989 with a modest subsidy of around Rs.200 crore per year, has snowballed to close to Rs.4000 crore in course of time denying essential resources for capacity addition. To attract investors, the government has been pursuing policies that are singularly inequitable: multinationals like Ford Motor Company and Nokia are offered assured supply of power on pain of penalty for disruption and low tariff. One witnesses the paradox of hundreds of small and medium units forced to invest on inefficient small capacity gensets and there has been no guaranteed supply either. On an average, the tariff paid by the small scale industrial units is more than double that paid by Ford Motor. And from November there is the spectre of penalty of much higher tariff for units that do not cut 25 per cent of their current consumption. Of course there has been the sweet song of high priority to the beautiful small sector!

More publicity, less action
Union minister for roads, shipping and ports, T.R. Baalu can earn a lesson or two from the heir apparent to the DMK throne, M K Stalin. The latter believes in the imperative for building road bridges in the city to tight time and cost schedules. Both in his term as the mayor of Chennai in the late 1990s and in his current term as minister, Stalin has been passionately obsessed about this. A number of bridges planned in the earlier rule of DMK (1996-2001) were completed in less than a year by renowned contractors like L&T and Gammon India.The quality of these is also commendable.

In contrast, the large bridge works brought to Chennai by is Baalu, -the grade separators at Kathipara, Koyambedu and near Padi and a flyover near the airport -have suffered huge time and cost overruns. This should be surprising in the context of these liberally funded by the National Highway Authority of India. Baalu organized several public functions right from the beginning, stressing on his party being instrumental in winning these prestigious projects. It is true Chennai will have for the first time grade separators of the types one sees in Delhi for several years and they are bound to bring about a good deal of improvement to the city's traffic flow. But Baalu's enthusiasm has not been equally reflected in completing these projects to tight time schedules. Chennaites suffered thousands of hours of road blocks, congestion and traffic jams all through these four years of construction. Surprisingly the flyover near the airport is a much simpler project and is comparable to the flyover in Usman Road constructed in much quicker time by the state government. Why should it have taken so long?

Return of the native

A few centuries ago the ancestors of the Tatas landed in Gujarat. There has thus been a natural affinity of the Tatas to this state. The Tatas have a strong presence in the state with the large Tata Chemicals plant producing salt and caustic chemicals at Mithapur on the western coast of Gujarat. The first ultra mega power plant of the country, involving an investment of over Rs.16,000 crore, is taking shape at Mundra.

In January 2007 the usually reticent Ratan Tata said at the inauguration of the Vibrant Gujarat Global Investors Summit: "why invest in Gujarat is no longer an issue. If you are not in Gujarat you are stupid!" It was among the most impressive of the speeches made by over a dozen business leaders who are the who's who of Indian business. Chief minister Narendra Modi concluded the session with an evocative speech on the myriad attractions offered by vibrant Gujarat.

I was, therefore, surprised over Ratan Tata later preferring Singur in West Bengal to set up his dream Nano car project. Accustomed to the liberal industry - friendly atmosphere of Gujarat, why Ratan Tata should have chosen the communist - ruled state of West Bengal is still a puzzle. It is true, West Bengal chief minister Buddadeb Bhattacharjee has been known for his investor-friendly approach; but in the strange politics of India, parties to the right and far right of the leftists were not so.

There was understandable scramble for winning the Nano project by other states after Ratan Tata cast the die on shifting from Singur. Karnataka, also ruled by BJP, tried so hard, but the electrifying speed of Narendra Modi, on whom Ratan Tata has already been sold, offered large acreage of land and other facilities in quick time. So the Nano project will take shape in Sanand near Ahmedabad. One more feather to the crowded cap of Narendra Modi.

All through one witnessed the curious stand - aloofness of the Tamil Nadu government, showing little interest in winning this large project. Tamil Nadu has great credentials, with Chennai bandied about as the Detroit of India for over four decades. There is a strong cluster of automobile and ancillary units. There is the facility of two major ports near the city with one more by L&T taking shape.

The reason seems to lie in the indifference of both the AIADMK and DMK governments to attract the Tatas. The Rs.2500 crore titanium project cleared by the AIADMK government as early as 2002 has been mired in political wranglings and has been a non-starter for six years. In contrast to the speed with which Narendra Modi offered close to around 1000 acres of land, the titanium project is still a non-starter due to land acquisition problems.

One also wonders why finance minister P.Chidambaram, who took special interest in accompanying L&T top brass to get clearance of the engineering giant's shipyard-cum-SEZ near Ennore, did not evince much interest in getting Tatas' Nano project for Tamil Nadu. With dozens of banks crowded in his constituency, Sivaganga, perhaps, has the largest cluster of banks for a small town. Thus Tatas should not have worried about at least one infrastructure to consider moving the plant to this southern district.

He breathed standards...

It was the early 1970s. The interest in standards was just at its infancy. Expertise to set standards had to be drawn mostly from industry and business. Thus there was an inevitable element of compromise: industry representatives had vested interest in opting for minimum standards that were far less stringent than those in developed countries. Since the government was also a producer of a vast range of goods, often times the representatives of the government in the standards committees were also content to fix minimum acceptable standards.

With the regime of industrial licensing, with most goods in short supply and with limited number of manufacturers in each product category, the consumer considered it a privilege to be supplied with a variety of goods after considerable waiting. Remember the long interval between his depositing the money in full for his car or scooter at the time of booking and promised delivery a few years later?

It is in this background that the Indian Standards Institution (the Bureau of Indian Standards today) sought to crusade for standardization and quality certification. With products manufactured in collaboration with several countries with differing standards, there was a plethora of standards. Officials of ISI did yeomen service in spreading of consciousness for standards. I remember in particular the work done by S. Subrahmanyan, who headed the southern regional office of ISI as director. I had covered the annual standards conventions, held in different cities with great enthusiasm and dedication. More importantly, Subrahmanyan also launched the ISI Bulletin from Chennai that carried vital and interesting information on standardization and quality.

This brilliant chemical technologist served the ISI with great distinction for thirty three years and retired in 1991 as additional director general in charge of the southern and eastern regions. He had published over sixty technical articles and papers on standardization, quality control and laboratory management. Widely travelled, Subrahmanyan forged close links with standardization organizations in several developed and developing countries.

On several occasions I discussed with Subrahmanyan the need for making standards mandatory for a wide range of goods. Except for a few products, this has not been done. Luckily, competition that set in after liberalisation, has helped improve quality.

Subrahmanyan put his heart in many such issues and in his sad demise the standards movement has lost an ardent champion.