PUBLIC PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP IN INFRASTRUCTURE

PUBLIC PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP IN INFRASTRUCTURE perspectives     principles     practices RN Joshi Vision Books 2010 Rs 995 Pages 540

A story is told, and bears re-telling, of Bernard Shaw and an unnamed actress/dancer who made bold to propose marriage to Shaw with a highly logical argument: With my beauty and your brains, we will have a perfect child. Shaw, the incurable bachelor, had the most perfect repartee: But if our child should get my beauty and your brains, we would have a disaster! The concept of PPP like the aforementioned unnamed party, seeks to take advantage of ‘the best of both worlds’. It assumes, and unfortunately admits, inefficiency and corruption among public servants on the one hand, and efficiency and transparency in private organisations. RN Joshi, in his starry-eyed account of why-and-the-wherefore of PPP, has failed to see the distinct possibility of the ‘disaster’ lurking just beyond the proverbial nose. Joshi also draws upon a colloquialism to support his argument: one and one make eleven. We have a numerical equivalent, which might be more appropriate: sixes and sevens.

That the private sector has no qualms about corruption (who, for one thing, corrupts the bureaucrats?) is not worth elaborating upon. Nor is it rare to find extensive bureaucratic behaviour in private organisations. Private ownership per se does not guarantee efficiency; and there are government units today that are far more customer-friendly and effective than their ‘private’ counterparts – particularly after 1991. Even before the reforms, a State Transport bus from Mumbai to a remote town in the interior scheduled to leave at 0700 hrs, would leave even with a single passenger on board, while a private service bus will, in similar circumstances, find ‘technical reasons’ for cancelling the day’s trip.

Which brings us to the central question: what is the purpose of public service? Is it mere output, or is it the outcome. The latter is a broader concept which includes, and is a consequence of, output. This difference, although it smacks of hair-splitting, is far more significant than it appears at first glance. Consider the immediate output of infrastructure building – the theme of the book under review – the output of which would mean the specific facility created. The outcome would have to be seen at two levels.

The first is the kind of service available to the users by the new facility. An elevated corridor/fly-over may result in faster movement of vehicles on a longer round-about without saving of much time while increasing the distance and therefore the expenditure on fuel; it also means carrying vehicular pollution to higher levels for greater dispersal. It would also mean demolition of shops (read livelihoods) of scores of people.

The second, and certainly a much more important aspect of the outcome, is the exploitation of manpower that goes under the name of PPP/privatisation/outsourcing. The fact that the unorganised/informal sector with its unorganised labour – comprising more than 86 per cent of total employment – are the most exploited lot in the country needs no elaboration. And a major part of the 86% are migrant labour working in shifting, construction activities. Joshi however chooses to wax upon the wonders of PPP.  To the government, he says, it is a solution to decades of neglected and antiquated infrastructure; to the private investor it is a long-term inflation-linked revenue system. But have we looked at India’s HDI? Joshi does not even feel the need to analyse the ‘benefits’ to the millions at large, as we stand at 134 out of 182 countries. And everyone’s aware of the seriousness of the situation.

The Law Commission (184^th Report) considering the up-gradation of legal education mentions ‘new challenges, new legal issues concerning ways in which the poor and marginalised sections can protect themselves from further impoverishment’. In a Foreword for a 2009 publication, Mr. Kirti S Parikh, Member, Planning Commission, recalling Gandhiji’s talisman, says unequivocally that the ultimate emphasis in transition should be placed on the betterment of social and human development indicators, and not on liberalisation for its own sake.

Joshi goes about treating the subject with the ivory-tower attitude of a pure text book writer – definitions, applications, etc. In fact, Mani Shankar Iyer’s statement may be more than right when he says: Our new mindset is so excited about the successful Indian that the unsuccessful Indian becomes an irritating distraction. 

Certainly, it’s not a miracle we are looking for. PPP is not a panacea but the worrying fact is that we are not much higher on the UN Human Development Index than we were in 1994. Let us not be misled into taking the sound of the axe as the sound of progress (Ref: Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard). The quality and quantity of human capital matters far more than those of physical capital for sustainable economic development. It is sad to find that in an otherwise comprehensive book there is no reference whatsoever to what has now come to be known as the Other India.