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Telecom Sector Is In Poor Health, But Here’s How It Can Recover

By
Indian Infra Hub Staff
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Snapshot
  • The major telecom players in India are reporting losses. One might feel inclined to blame Jio alone for the poor health of the sector, it all started before Jio’s entry.The sector needs government support, especially because it plays a critical part in some of the government’s key programmes.

The health of the telecom industry appears conclusively to be in the red zone. Vodafone India recently announced its fourth quarter 2017-18 results – as against a revenue of Rs 10,547 crore in the fourth quarter of 2016-17, this year’s revenue was Rs 7,902 crore – a 29 per cent drop.

Earlier, it was Airtel’s India operations that reported their first loss in 15 years – Rs 652 crore – in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2018. Idea’s losses were reported to be Rs 4,141 crore recently.

Jio to blame?

Widely, Reliance Jio is being blamed for the state of affairs in the telecom sector. Even the Economic Survey 2017-18 had said: “It is important to note that the telecom sector is going through a stress period with growing losses, debt pile, price war, reduced revenue and irrational spectrum costs. A new entrant has disrupted the market with low-cost data services and the revenue of incumbent players has fallen. The crisis has also severely impacted investors, lenders, partners and vendors of these telecom companies.”

Last year’s Economic Survey (2016-17) had said something similar. “The telecommunications sector has experienced its own version of the ‘renewables shock’ in the form of a new entrant that has dramatically reduced prices for, and increased access to, data, thereby benefitting—at least in the short run— consumers. But.. the near term implications for the viability of incumbents are serious…”

The Survey reported that the profitability of the incumbents had fallen “dramatically”, adding, “not only is the banking system exposed but so too is the government to whom the companies owe a variety of fees and taxes.”

Poor health of the industry is historic

The Reserve Bank of India’s Financial Stability Report, December 2016, had listed telecom among the three most indebted sectors along with iron and steel, and power. Significantly, Jio made an entry after this development.

The chart in the report is reproduced below, depicting risk profiles of industries as on September 2016. Note that telecom is the biggest bubble. The accumulated debt of telecom companies, or telcos, was already Rs 3.8 lakh crore, according to a report by industry body the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM) and consulting firm KPMG. The interest-coverage ratio for the sector stood at less than one. (Interest coverage ratio is an indicator measuring the debt-servicing ability of the borrower; a ratio of less than one indicates a company’s inability to honour payments). High debt levels also increase interest costs and impact debt servicing.

High debts in telecom are a universal phenomenon

Telecom needs large investments in infrastructure and networks, and thus ends up being a capital-intensive industry. ‘The Debt Report: the Telecom Sector in 2016’ talked about how debt was piling on for telecom providers in the United States (US), with the debt-to-assets ratio at 45-48 per cent on an average. Sprint Corp, for instance, even reported negative cash flows, making prospects for repayment bleak. And though competition has been pushing capital expenditures (CAPEX) higher, profits are falling. Operators are struggling with competition, and data services have eaten into voice and short message service (SMS) revenues. On top of all this, telecom frauds are increasing and affecting revenues of operators.

Consolidation is the flavour of this era – just last month, US wireless companies T-Mobile US Inc and Sprint Corp merged. The latter had been saddled by huge debt, and this combined entity now hopes to forcefully compete with AT&T and Verizon, both of who are also in the process of acquisition across sectors – like AT&T trying to acquire media giant Time Warner.

In the Indian context, Reliance Jio went ahead and did exactly what had been the norm across the world for years – increasing data availability, investing in long-term evolution (LTE)-enabled technology, buying over media networks and working towards supplying content, integrating it with other anticipated needs of the economy, and so on; in other words, provision of integrated telecom services. The other telcos lost out owing to their outmoded thinking, reliance on voice for revenues, and not investing in services – in other words, merely playing the role of giver of phone connections.

Way ahead for the industry and government

Deloitte in its 2018 ‘Telecommunications Industry Outlook’ especially emphasises that because revenue yield on data services continues to decline as consumers use more and more data, it is “critical to identify rapid investment opportunities across the telecom portfolio—including 5G, IoT (Internet of Things), and cross-industry partnerships (such as mHealth and mPayments), as well as a host of other growth opportunities”. Connected cars and other things like home maintenance, wearables, workforce training, entertainment – the sky appears to be the limit as far as IoT goes. Telecom carriers across the world are looking at partnerships with mobile content, infotainment, telemedicine, and so on for achieving growth. And mergers and acquisition, and consolidation are the order of the day, including in towers and network. Logically, this is the way Indian telcos need to look, and indeed, they are waking up to it – even if Jio showed the way.

Government’s role requirements

For decades now, there have been demands for rationalisation of various duties, fees, spectrum charges, and taxes by industry, as well as recommendations for the same by organisations with stakes in the sector, that is, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, Ernst & Young, KPMG, and others. Former State Bank of India chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya had voiced her concerns about the “unsustainable levels of debt” and asked for a bailout package comprising duty waivers, deferred spectrum payments, lower goods and services tax, and so on, to save the “bleeding telecom companies”. In all likelihood, the government will do all it can – because of its keenness to move to Digital India and the critical nature of the industry to the Indian economy. In the US, the government reserves spectrum for the smaller players currently; only the big players with deep pockets now survive in India. But at a later point, this could be a useful strategy for inviting smaller companies.

Investments related to core fibre network will continue to be in demand, says the Deloitte report. In India, this holds especially true with the large scope for rural penetration, currently at 57 per cent. Huge amounts will still need to be invested. According to Equitymaster telecom sector report in March 2018: “Given the low tariff environment and relatively low rural and semi urban penetration levels, demand will continue to remain high in the foreseeable future across all the segments.”

Also, the Modi government understands the potential of the sector in creating economic value and also direct and indirect jobs. Economic Survey 2017-18 had summarised the government’s aspirations thus: “Despite various bottlenecks, the Government is committed to extending the reach of telecom network to the remote and rural villages; …implementing the flagship ‘Bharat Net’ project, to link each of the 2.5 lakh Gram Panchayats of India through optical fibre network…the first pillar of Digital India Programme.

“It will facilitate the delivery of various e-Services and applications including e-health, e-education, e-governance and e-commerce. Major themes that new Telecom Policy shall try to address include Regulatory & Licensing frameworks impacting the sector, Connectivity for All, Quality of Services, Ease of Doing Business and Absorption of New Technologies including 5G and Internet of Things.”

There have been talks about plans to auction the 5G spectrum in bands like 3,300 MHz and 3,400 MHz to promote initiatives like IoT, machine-to-machine communications, instant high-definition video transfer as well as its Smart Cities initiative.

Because of the critical nature of the sector for the government’s Connect India and Propel India programmes, the sector needs to be supported. Interestingly, if the charges and levies are reduced, the companies’ ability to repay loans to banks and government increases – the government thus takes money from the left pocket and puts it into the right pocket.

With the government thus in their pockets, the companies need to act like partners to the government in connecting and propelling India; this will entail more and more imaginative solutions to problems that exist in the country, as also providing – importantly – better quality connections.

Swati Kamal is a columnist for Swarajya.

Loo Woes: Should Metro Stations Provide Toilet Facilities?

By
Indian Infra Hub Staff
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Snapshot
  • Metro travel may appear short, but there are instances where they turn into longer commutes.Toilets at Metros are clearly needed, but charging or not for their use is a decision to be made case by case.

Recently, the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) filed an affidavit with the High Court of Delhi stating that all metro stations had drinking water and public toilets available, but at a nominal fee. They also added that if a person was unable to pay, then all they had to do was to approach the staff.

This brings us to an important question: Should Metro stations have public toilets or not and should passengers be charged to use them?

When the Namma Metro in Bengaluru started commercial operations in 2011, none of the eight stations had public toilets. Officials of the Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Limited (BMRCL) argued that toilets were not required as Metro services were short haul trips. It wasn’t until 2013 when the corporation relented, after immense public demand and the intervention of the Karnataka State Human Rights Commission (KSHRC), and separated half of its staff toilet into a paid toilet for passengers to use. Chennai Metro Rail Limited (CMRL) too started charging passengers to use the toilets since they were located in the non-paid areas of the stations. DMRC has installed toilets at stations only in 2007 following a High Court order. Mumbai’s Metro on the other hand has had free toilets right from the start at all stations.

Between the time that Namma Metro’s first section was thrown open and toilets installed, no new stations on the system were set up. Both the operational lines are currently being extended while two new lines are under construction. While toilets are now available at all operational stations, would the BMRCL have been able to make such a justification after the new lines became operational had they not installed toilets earlier?

While officials may be correct in their assumption that metro rides are – relatively – short, what matters is the overall journey. A person may be travelling a long way before they board a train. It is not uncommon to see passengers of Bengaluru-bound buses from Mumbai board the Metro from the Nagasandra terminal to avoid city traffic.

As more lines open and the network expands, travel times increase for those making longer commutes. Further, many a commuter might be travelling additional distances to reach the metro station. For example, it takes an average of 90 minutes to travel from Dwarka Sector 21 to Noida City Centre on the Delhi Metro – a single journey with no changing of trains required. If a user has to change to another line and go further, the journey becomes longer.

Lack of public toilets on transit networks may force people to use public spaces. A 2015 report in the Wall Street Journal said that India has the world’s longest waiting times for people to use the toilet. Therefore, it is crucial especially due to the distance that metro stations are equipped with toilets.

Now, for the second half of the question: Should toilet use be charged?

Managing public toilets in India is a herculean task, mainly due to the sheer volume of people who use it. This makes maintenance a rather expensive affair.

While there are opposing views on charges for public toilets including arguments that it would dissuade people from using them to arguments that claim that it violates human rights, the general assumption is that a chargeable commodity would see users take better care of it. At the same time, a chargeable service would also be able to recover the costs of maintenance.

While Delhi charges Rs 2 and Rs 5, Bengaluru charges Rs 10 to use the facilities on its premises. Mumbai on the other hand does not charge users. However, it must be noted that the 11 km-long Mumbai Metro, with 400,000 passengers per day has managed to capitalise on the station’s real estate well. The Mumbai Metro One Private Limited (MMOPL) has gone the extra mile by leasing out space on the concourse level to many a food joint, along with advertisements on trains, platforms, stations, and the pillars below on the road, thus giving them a major non-fare revenue boost that allows the organisation to keep the station clean. Further, with the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) deciding in February to make all its public toilets free-to-use, it makes little sense for the Metro to charge users. The BMC, while it has allocated Rs 10 crore in its 2018-19 budget to maintain these toilets, is looking at additional means including advertisements to raise revenues for their maintenance.

If Metro operators are able to make additional revenue through non-fare means, then it makes sense to have free-to-use toilets rather than charging for their use. This will certainly ensure that people do not use public spaces to do so. However, the question remains one that can only be answered on a case-by-case basis.

Srikanth’s interests include public transit, urban management and transportation infrastructure.

Uttar Pradesh After One Year Of Adityanath Government

By
Indian Infra Hub Staff
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Snapshot
Turning around Uttar Pradesh’s prospects is no mean task, but after one year in office Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath is proving that he is firmly in command.

In the last week of February, I had the occasion to traverse, what could justifiably be called, the length and breadth of Uttar Pradesh. Starting from Agra and crisscrossing the state through Ghaziabad and Meerut in the West, Pilibhit and Lakhimpur Kheri in North to Ballia and Gorakhpur in the East, this week long, 2,400-kilometre journey covering 25 of the 75 districts provided a good opportunity to sense the situation on ground after one year of Yogi Adityanath government in the state.

A surge in the number of morning walkers not only in cities but in small towns – some of them notorious for crime – even on highways away from city and town limits, affirmed the improved law and condition in the state. This innocuous looking fact might appear trivial to a person sitting in Mumbai or Bangalore but is hugely significant to someone who has lived his life in Firozabad or Meerut. The brouhaha over encounters in media and political circles notwithstanding, Uttar Pradesh has never felt so safe in the last three decades.

According to UP police, 44 criminals have been killed in 1,322 encounters between 20 March 2017 and 5 March 2018. Despite the uproar by leaders and activists, both Chief Minister Adityanath and Director General of Police O P Singh have made it clear that encounters of criminals were going to continue. An important fact which has been suppressed by opposition and human rights activists is that as per legal stipulation, all encounters are subjected to police and judicial probes and that not one encounter has been found to be staged in these probes. Another fact which is ignored is the number of casualties on police side. Besides four policemen losing their lives, 283 men in uniform have been injured in these encounters.

The second marked difference during this journey was visible at examination centres. Earlier, during exam times one could see large crowds of family and friends of the candidates surrounding the centres and trying to smuggle copying material through windows. This year, none barring the candidates taking examinations could be seen in the 400-metre periphery of centres.

The whole process for state board examinations has been revamped. Papers were being received just an hour earlier at centres. Schools which had inordinately high enrolment of students in Class X and Class XII were deemed suspicious and taken off the list of centres. The number of such schools taken off the examination centre list is a whopping 1,934. In another jolt to education mafia in the state, centres were alloted by an online draw. Exams were conducted under CCTV surveillance and students were frisked at the entrance of the centres. A special task force consisting of policemen had been constituted to check copying and malpractice in exams. Elaborate preparations had been made by government for “copying free” exams in the month of September itself.

The third significant sight across the state is that of road laying and road widening work. As against the single minded focus on Agra-Lucknow expressway in Akhilesh Yadav’s time, road projects in places as distant as Pilibhit, Lakhimpur Kheri, Basti, Sant Kabir Nagar or Chandauli are not only getting attention but seeing speedy progress. No doubt, a number of National Highway projects are also helping the road infrastructure in the state. Work on two new expressways – Poorvanchal Expressway from Lucknow to Ballia and Bundelkhand Expressway connecting Agra to Jhansi is being speeded up. Fifteen new airports are being planned to improve air connectivity.

Varanasi, the constituency represented by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has several developmental projects in progress. An elevated road connecting Babatpur to city; several flyovers; a ring road; water connections under Ramana STP and Amrita plans; a first of its kind integrated transport hub; metro train and an ambitious project to provide cooking gas through pipeline promise to change the face of the city. Cab driver Mohammad Irshad looked visibly excited. He assured us that Varanasi infrastructure would compete with best of the cities very soon. Adityanath is personally supervising the development projects in Varanasi. Instructions have been given to ensure disbursement of compensation money for lands acquired for National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) road projects connecting Varanasi to nearby eight districts within 15 days of acquisition.

At Belthara Road, Shiela Mishra said that she had never experienced five hours of continuous power supply before Adityanath government came to power. The power situation has vastly improved in this remote corner of UP in the last six months. The fact is vouched for by almost everyone throughout the state. Naveen Gupta at Palia Kalan narrated the government efforts to resuscitate Gomati river at its origin Gomad Sarovar Madhotanda. Adityanath himself is going to inaugurate the project in Pilibhit as part of the larger efforts to save several dying rivers in the state.

The rewards of the government’s efforts in improving the law and order and developing infrastructure were observed during the two day Uttar Pradesh Investor’s Summit on 21 and 22 February. A resounding success, the summit in Lucknow saw MOUs worth Rs 4.26 lakh crore signed on the first day itself. Some 5,000 businessmen from all over the globe including top honchos of Indian industry were present at the summit. Besides the single window clearance announced for the investors, Adityanath expounded the cluster driven industrial policy of UP government. Prime Minister Modi, who was present at the occasion, pitched in with an offer for a defence industry corridor in the state.

The seriousness with which the summit was approached was seen by the fact that besides TV advertisements, road shows were organised in Delhi, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Mumbai to promote the meet. Industry Minister Satish Mahana addressed a gathering of businessmen in Mumbai assuring them of safety and honour. Speaking to the investors, Adityanath in his inimitable style quipped, “I will take care of law and order in the state, you are requested to start industries and provide jobs.”

For a state which was lagging behind even Bihar on most developmental parameters, to turnaround UP is no easy task. But after one year in office, Yogi Adityanath has not only brought governance back on track, he is showing unmistakable signs of an administrator who knows his course and is firmly in command.

Why Delhi Metro’s New Feeder Bus Plan Is Worth Emulating Across Cities

By
Indian Infra Hub Staff
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Snapshot
  • Our cities need more buses – and the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation’s plan to use minibuses as feeder service seems to be a good one.Hope other cities can take a cue from this plan and take things forward.

The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) recently unveiled a new plan to procure minibuses that would act as feeder services for the 252km-long mass transit line running across the National Capital Region (NCR). The feeder buses will have 16 seats and air-conditioning, and will accept smart cards used on the city metro, sans a conductor. The buses will be operated on the city’s existing cluster model, wherein corporate players run buses under the Delhi Transit banner.

The DMRC’s rationale behind the new model is rather simple – existing feeder buses are in a poor condition and operate on long routes, so they lose relevance as feeder buses. The corporation has also planned to limit the operational distance of buses to a maximum of 6km. It has said that allowing metro smart cards for ticket purposes would ensure that metro users would get on board, but this simply turns out to be a step closer towards a common mobility card.

Why this proposal is a good idea

1) Every city in India needs minibuses. The most common feature of every Indian city is the lack of road space. Many localities in suburban Bengaluru, for instance, were originally villages that were absorbed into the city. The erstwhile village roads are too narrow to handle large buses, and the lack of minibuses resulted in the rise of carpooling platforms such as OlaShare and UberPool.

The Metropolitan Transport Corporation (MTC) in Chennai operates minibuses (branded as “small bus”) in areas with lesser footfalls and narrow roads. The Brihanmumbai Electricity Supply and Transport (BEST) undertaking in Mumbai too operates mini and midibuses on short routes connecting railway stations to nearby localities. The city is now looking at procuring 400 minibuses – 200 air-conditioned and non-air-conditioned each – along with 50 midibuses.

While many cities are looking at acquiring land to build wider roads and better transport infrastructure, these are long-term solutions, and minibuses can help in the short and medium terms.

2) Minibuses offer flexibility. They are cheaper to procure, take up relatively less space on the roads, and still carry more passengers than a cab, and can be used during the off-peak hours when the demand is lower. High-capacity systems such as metro rail, bus rapid transit, monorail, and suburban rail are long-term measures that are quite rigid. Adding buses to the mix increases the flexibility in transport, allowing for routes to be added or altered based on the demand. Minibuses further add to this flexibility in terms of areas connected, reduced passenger demand in non-peak hours, and in areas that have a limited demand.

3) Private operators in bus transport are welcome. They handle municipal transit in several cities in India, such as Nagpur, Surat, Delhi, and Indore. Apart from this, the success of private aggregators such as CityFlo and ZipGo too is a sign that private participation is good. While the private player would be paid on a per-kilometre basis with the DMRC calling the shots otherwise, it still is a wise move.

The next step would be to encourage private investment as well. Letting interested private players enter the scene would help offset the load that buses otherwise struggle to cope with. Of course, some form of accountability would be needed to ensure that a cartelisation of routes doesn’t happen, like in Kerala. Private players can ensure better quality of services, more punctuality, and also hygiene. Conversely, state-run transcos accruing losses over profits in the last few years do not augur well.

4) Accepting metro smart cards on the feeder buses is a game-changer. While the DMRC is looking at it as a way to prevent non-metro users from using feeder buses, the reality is that it takes us a step closer to a full-fledged cashless transit system. With the DMRC already enabling smart card use on select buses of the Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) and commuters in other cities like Mumbai preferring smart cards to single-use tokens, most people are bound to have a smart card.

5) Air-conditioned buses are a necessity. When trains can be air-conditioned, why not buses? Indian cities are notorious for the poor quality of air-conditioned buses. With increasing temperatures in big cities pushing users towards premium air-conditioned services such as cabs, carpooling, and privately owned vehicles, it makes sense to offer premium versions of public transport.

However, it must be noted that minibuses shouldn’t always be looked at as the right choice for feeder services. High-density feeder routes in cities like Mumbai and Chennai cannot be serviced by minibuses.

Another point that needs to be considered is electric buses. This can be the start necessary to help India go electric.

Our cities need more buses, and the DMRC’s plan seems to be a good one. Hope other cities can take a cue from this plan and take things forward.

Srikanth’s interests include public transit, urban management and transportation infrastructure.

What UN Urban Chief Thinks About The New Urban Agenda

By
Indian Infra Hub Staff
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Snapshot
  • The UN’s new urban agenda aims to support countries in addressing sustainable urban development challenges based on UN-Habitat’s best practices and tools developed over the years.UN-Habitat’s executive director Maimunah Mohd Sharif shares her vision for urbanisation.

Sustainable urbanisation is vital for India, which is a home to 1/6th of humanity. However, urbanisation in India is on the cusp of a disaster. The impending crisis is clearly reflected in various sustainability rankings (WHO, Water Index, cities index, EPI 2018 and GCI).

The silver lining is, India has started the course correction with the commitment to the Principles of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs, 2015) and New Urban Agenda (NUA, 2016) propagated by the United Nations. NUA envisions the Future of Cities in 2030 as “inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable cities and human settlements to foster prosperity and quality of life. Cities for all where no-one & no-place is left behind.” NUA was formally adopted by the global community including India during Habitat III, UN-Habitat’s conference on Housing and Sustainable development in Quito, Ecuador, 2016.

UN-Habitat’s executive director Maimunah Mohd Sharif is a leading global advocate of sustainable urbanisation. A town planner educated in UK and Malaysia, and a former mayor of Penang (Malaysia), she is the first Asian woman to be appointed as UN’s urban chief in January 2018. I interacted with her during WUF-9 at Kuala Lumpur in February 2018 regarding UN-Habitat’s action plan for implementing New Urban Agenda (NUA). I followed up on the subject with her recently.

Here are the excerpts from our conversation:

Please share your vision for the urbanisation and mission for the tenure as executive director, UN-Habitat.

It is still very early days as I have only been in the role for two months (at time of writing) so I am still crystallising my vision, but I am extremely passionate about putting people at the centre of our sustainability work. My time as a mayor taught me that, you could have the most modern technology or the top of the line infrastructure, but it will be in vain if it is not what the community needs and wants. I think this is very clear in the frameworks laid out for us by the Agenda 2030 and the New Urban Agenda.

What kind of commitment (in the context of New Urban Agenda) you expect from India?

As all over the world, India is also going through a process of urban transformation. India recognises that the process of urbanisation – if not well managed, will have grave implications on quality of life, public health, economic vitality and on sustainable development. It has embarked upon the journey to facilitate planned urbanisation through its various flagship programmes and missions to reduce the gaps in livability of urban poor and marginalised groups. India is a chair of UN-Habitat Governing Council and is fully committed to Principles of New Urban Agenda and SDGs. India has also emerged as a strong advocate for climate change and vigorously promoting the renewable energy sector on a regional and international platform. It is in the process of contextualising, localising and aligning the spirit of global frameworks in its policy initiatives to ensure a faster transition towards meeting nationally and internationally agreed on targets on sustainable development.

What are the main challenges in the implementation of NUA? WUF being a non-legislative forum, how will you persuade nations to keep their commitments of bringing comprehensive national policy and implementation of NUA?

The New Urban Agenda is an extremely dynamic document and reflects for the most part what cities and nations were already doing for their citizens in terms of sustainable urban development. In addition, there are several accompanying frameworks and tools being developed by UN-Habitat and its partners that outline what these changes look like at the local level. We are helping governments to expand their capacity in implementing the New Urban Agenda and Sustainable Development Goal 11 in line with their international commitments.

What is the next step after Kuala Lumpur Declaration? What sort of feedback is expected from the participant countries in July 2018?

“The Kuala Lumpur Declaration calls to further develop the role of UN-Habitat as a focal point in the United Nations system to support all countries and mobilisation of stakeholders in the implementation, follow up and review of the New Urban Agenda, including through scaled up normative support. The declaration also recognises the value of the forum convened by UN-Habitat as an inclusive platform to collect inputs from a broad range of stakeholders and to feed these into annual and quadrennial reporting on progress in the implementation of the New Urban Agenda.

Immediately following WUF 9, we convened an expert group meeting and write-shop in Granada, Spain, supported by the Regional Government of Andalusia, with representatives from all major stakeholder groups. The meeting started drafting the first progress report on the implementation of the New Urban Agenda. As the NUA has been adopted only 18 months ago, the progress report will highlight illustrations of early implementation of innovative policies, plans and projects in all regions. More importantly, it will also propose an inclusive and coherent reporting system with quantitative and qualitative indicators, which will incrementally grow over the years, as capacity increases. The reporting system will be designed to demonstrate how countries, cities and communities are collaborating to build the foundations for sustainable urbanisation.

The Secretary General of the United Nations is expected to share this report on the occasion of the High Level Political Forum in July 2018 in New York, alongside the progress report on the implementation of Sustainable Development Goal 11 on making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable. This synchronised reporting will demonstrate how the NUA can serve as an accelerator for achieving the SDGs.”

What kind of support will be given to mayors and national governments for the implementation of NUA by the UN-Habitat?

UN-Habitat will provide technical support to, and build the capacity of cities, national and local governments in addressing sustainable urban development challenges taking into account commitments under the SDGs and the NUA, and based on our experience, partnerships, approaches, best practices and tools developed over the years including the following areas:

  • development of national urban policies which promote integrated, compact, inclusive, resilient, and connected cities and regions
  • urban planning and design covering development of integrated local and national spatial frameworks
  • urban data analysis including the use of the City Prosperity Initiative to measure progress and assess investment opportunities, currently adopted by over 500 cities globally
  • urban basic services including improved access to water sanitation, energy, transport and mobility in cities and towns
  • municipal finance and local economic development including enhancing revenue collection through property tax and other mechanisms
  • housing and participatory slum-upgrading with emphasis on promoting city and national policy and legal frameworks for pro-poor housing, energy efficient affordable housing, and housing finance
  • support to national land policies, information systems, regularisation of customary tenure, land administration, and development and implementation of land tools including fit for purpose land administration, continuum of land rights social tenure domain model for registration of informal land rights, land use planning, and land conflict mediation.
  • Promote an implementation facility for sustainable urban development which will support local, national, regional and global initiatives.

We will support improvement of urban form, land markets, and infrastructure as key ingredients for promotion of city competitiveness at national, regional and global level. Our work on safety and security in cities, risk reduction and rehabilitation which demonstrates the nexus between development, peace and humanitarian work will also come in handy as cities respond to both natural and made disasters – climate change, conflict, and migration among others. In doing this, we shall endeavour to promote partnerships between governments, the UN system, and other stakeholders including civil society, private sector, development partners and banks, women, youth, grassroots and informal sector organisations, etc.

NUA brings issues like migration and land locked countries in the ambit of urban policy. How will this make difference?

In 2015, there were 244 million migrants in the world. One in five international migrants move in order to live in the world’s top 20 Global Cities. It is known that international migrants tend to stay in cities. NUA acknowledges this fact and its implications.

Nonetheless, when talking about migration and landlocked countries, we have to acknowledge that the larger bulk of migration is occurring within national borders. Internal migration is a larger phenomenon than international migration but there is limited data on the phenomenon (e.g. in India inter-state migration averages about 5-6 million individuals per year).

However, the reality is that migrants, whether being international, national, in landlocked or any sort of countries are often spatially segregated from local communities, and often excluded from local resources. Moreover, they can increase pressure and competition for host communities. Likewise, migrants are often excluded from decision-making and not included in urban planning participatory processes. In several of our projects, we have found that migrants are more likely to be excluded from opportunities in cities offer as they:

(1) work in the informal sector, (2) face discrimination in the housing market and (3) have average lower wages than the native population. They also tend to live in overcrowded situations, to be victims of forced evictions and homelessness, and face discrimination in access to housing, education, and employment.

The NUA gives attention to the unique and emerging urban development challenges facing all countries. Most importantly, it calls for governments to “ensure the full respect for human rights and humane treatment of refugees, internally displaced persons, and migrants, regardless of migration status, and support their host cities in the spirit of international cooperation”; and “to ensure the equal use and enjoyment of cities and human settlements that seek to promote inclusivity and ensure that all inhabitants, without discrimination of any kind, are able to inhabit and safe, affordable, accessible, just, sustainable, and resilient cities.”

The integration of migrants in urban development is therefore fundamental for sustainable urbanization. To achieve this integration successfully, migrants need three key factors:

  • Access to education and sufficient language skills
  • Access to decent employment
  • Access to adequate housing and basic services

The acknowledgement by NUA of migration challenges and opportunities in cities gives a strengthened impetus for UN-Habitat to work with national and sub-national governments to make sure migrants’ human rights are respected and no one is left behind. We expect to contribute to changes in the way migration and diversity can be viewed as an asset rather than a threat and contribute to create cities for all and shared by all.

Studies show existence of Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) i.e. increased environmental degradation during initial stage of economic growth and improvement of environmental performance only after achieving advanced economic stage. What can be done to avoid EKC for future development?

The advantage of this knowledge is that we can use it to avoid some of the mistakes of the past. It is true, that cities are traditionally seen as less green. For example, they account for around 70 per cent of energy-related greenhouse gas emissions. But it is also true that, if they are well-planned, compact cities can reduce pollution and increase energy efficiency over supplying goods and services to a widely sprawled population.

You were mayor, now you are executive director, UN-Habitat. What are the initiatives by you as mayor that you want to replicate on the global scale?

In my capacity as mayor, I had a strong focus on capacity and knowledge building, conducting specific training on the New Urban Agenda with my staff and stakeholders, including education and awareness with councillors, local leaders and youth. In addition, I made conscious efforts to link all our city work specifically to the NUA and the SDGs. During that time, I was also the president of the Malaysian Association of Local Authorities and in that capacity, I held workshops to advocate for the localisation of the NUA. Now that I am the executive direcor of UN-Habitat, I have a much broader perspective. Instead of only looking at the city, I now incorporate the views of national, regional, territorial and local governments and work with everyone from ministers to communities to achieve the NUA and the SDGs.

Personally, I believe in teamwork and partnership; we cannot do this alone. Our role as UN-Habitat is to provide countries with the tools that they need to implement the New Urban Agenda.

I thank you and wish you the best. But before ending the conversation, please tell us few things about your inspiring journey from mayor of the Penang to executive director of UN-Habitat.

I feel very privileged to have served in the positions I have, and I feel as if they have all been preparing me for my latest role leading UN-Habitat. From studying to implementing and now overseeing policy development and sharing best practice around the world, everything has been leading to this point. I feel very honoured to be leading the UN’s lead agency on sustainable urban development and human settlements at a time when more than half of the world’s population lives in cities and it is such a critical part of our development.

I love to travel and to spend time outdoors to refresh my mind. I also enjoy farming and cooking to relieve stress. I enjoy reading books on management, leadership, motivation and self-improvement. When I finish my tenure at UN-Habitat I will retire, but I hope to continue to use my experience as a planner, a mayor and as executive director to give service to communities through a non-governmental organisation or community group.

Meera V M is an urban management and policy expert.

UPA-Era National Highways Created Quite A Mess, Nitin Gadkari Needs To Fix This First

By
Indian Infra Hub Staff
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0
Snapshot
  • Fixing ill-designed highways left behind by the UPA must be top priority for Nitin Gadkari, as there is no point in having roads that are dotted with deathtraps and hardly serve their purpose.

In 2014, during the run up to the general elections, the Congress government launched a series of videos in an attempt to counter the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) ‘development agenda’. One of these videos spoke of how the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government over a decade built over thrice the length of roads that the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government under Atal Behari Vajpayee built in half a decade. Quite an unfair comparison if there was one.

However, on the face of it, it raises an important question:

Why did no Congress government then launch a programme on the lines of the National Highways Development Programme (NHDP) or the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY) prior to Vajpayee’s premiership? Even at a state level, why is it that Maharashtra was the first state in India to build an expressway (the Yashwantrao Chavan Expressway between Mumbai and Pune) when the Shiv Sena-BJP government was in alliance and why did the Congress-Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) alliance that was in power for 15 years after that not focus on any new expressways barring the 25 km Sion Panvel highway in Mumbai and Navi Mumbai?

If one looks elsewhere, even in Karnataka, why has neither the UPA government nor the incumbent Siddaramaiah government not really upgraded the 15 km-long Shiradi ghat on the Bengaluru-Mangaluru national highway? Concretisation of the ghat section has been on for a while now, yet the road remains closed once in a few years, forcing vehicles to take an alternative route via Madikeri causing inordinate delay.

But the fact of the matter is that the Congress wasn’t way off mark with their statistics, but what matters is, are these roads motorable? Yes, but they don’t allow for high speed traffic.

Move over quantity, it’s quality that matters.

When the Golden Quadrilateral (GQ) and the North-South and East-West Corridors (NSEWC) were launched by the Vajpayee government, the aim was simple. Provide the basic four-lane connectivity between major cities so that the load on the railway network is eased and goods can be shipped faster by road. In its initial avatar, these four-lane roads passed through many cities and towns, often devoid of flyovers and in all fairness, just doubled the capacity of the road. Of course, providing a dual carriageway road with a median more than doubles the capacity of a road, cuts total travel time and the chances of accidents.

When it became clear that the existing four-lane configuration wasn’t enough for the volume of traffic it carried, the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) under the UPA government began with the third and fourth phases of the NHDP that focussed on dividing several crucial segments of the GQ into six lanes. This is where the problems began.

Narrow Bridge Ahead

During the NDA-era, when the second carriageway was being constructed, many bridges were built with three lanes as opposed to two lanes, keeping in mind possible future expansion. This way, if a road is being upgraded to six lanes, the bridge wouldn’t require reconstruction. However, the UPA-built highways failed to take this into consideration and as a result, many highways feature bridges of inconsistent widths.

For example, some highways may have a bridge with three lanes in one direction and two in the other, or three in one direction and two bridges of two lanes each in the other direction. In some cases, the entire bridge remains two lanes per direction (four in total) but the road on either side is divided into six lanes. However, in some areas, the older and narrower bridge was demolished to make way for a new wider bridge.

A more drastic example of this would be the cable-stayed bridge over the Narmada river at Bharuch on the Mumbai-Ahmedabad highway. The four-lane bridge was built along a six-lane national highway, after the tender for the six lane plan was put out.

These inconsistent bridges cause two major problems. The first is that they cause a bottleneck, especially during heavy traffic. When three lanes of traffic has to get into two lanes, the net result is a bottleneck that takes time to resolve.

Another problem that arises is that it increases the risk of accidents. When vehicles, driving at an average of 100 km/hour on a three-lane road on the national highway, approach the two-lane road, the unexpected narrowing can certainly increase the chance of accidents. Though some highways have boards warning motorists of a narrow bridge ahead, such a bridge should not have been there in the first place.

Undulating Terrain

Most roads across the world feature a design speed or the maximum speed that a road is designed to permit. Indian highways, however, don’t seem to be designed for speed at all.

On the surface, a road might look great to drive on: A proper asphalted road, uniform markers, reflectors, and well landscaped medians. But then, at high speeds, these roads might cause cars to bounce a lot, resulting in haphazard speeding, abrupt braking and quite possibly the driver losing control of the car.

Apart from this, uneven joints, and joints that aren’t on level with the rest of a road do cause a massive jolt to drivers, no matter what the speed is.

Unsafe Bypasses

Several crucial national highways which were widened during the UPA period feature an extremely odd system where the highway is divided into four-lanes but bypasses around towns were built as two lane roads. The most well-known of these are on the Bengaluru-Hassan highway and the Salem-Chennai highway.

The purpose of a bypass is to allow traffic to proceed smoothly without actually entering the city. As such, the traffic on the bypass can be deemed to be travelling at a relatively high speed, while the route in question is one that witnesses high volumes of traffic simply by virtue of having a bypass.

So, it would make sense that the bypass would be of the same standard as the rest of the highway, which however, isn’t the case. The bypass, with two lanes, has a low carrying capacity and further due to the lack of a median, becomes dangerous, especially for heavy vehicles at night. If the rest of the highway is four-lane, the bypass needs to be built with the same specifications.

Two major cities in India – Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu and Hubli-Dharwad in Karnataka – have narrow bypasses that were built in the late 1990s, before the NHDP was launched. While not exactly a UPA mess, it is still a mess because the roads leading to the bypass are six-lane or four-lane and they fall on important corridors. Both projects were handed out on a build-operate-transfer (BOT) basis.

In the case of Coimbatore, the NHAI during the UPA time tried to take the project away from its concessionaire (L&T) and hand it over to IVRCL to upgrade it as part of a larger toll road stretching on both ends. The High Court of Delhi intervened and struck it down, saying the government could not take away the road as it had been given out on BOT. In the case of the Hubli-Dharwad bypass, the concessionaire – Ashok Kheny-backed Nandi Highways – said that it was willing to upgrade the road if the government was willing to pay the cost of the road (including total revenues) till 2024.

Given the importance of Hubli-Dharwad – a bottleneck on the crucial Mumbai-Chennai arm of the GQ – the government should ideally consider buying out the project, widening it and then call for tenders on a toll-operate-transfer (TOT) or operate-maintain-transfer (OMT) basis rather than wait. The same thing needs to be tried out in Coimbatore as well.

Alternatively, the government can try out what the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC) did with the Mumbai-Pune Expressway. The expressway was handed over to an IRB-led concessionaire in early 2004 along with the old Mumbai-Pune highway (NH 48, formerly NH 4) which was to be widened to four lanes. In 2014, the agreement was extended by four years from 2019 to 2023 and IRB was to further upgrade two-lane sections of the old highway and maintain both roads.

If the NHAI or its parent body, the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH), can successfully carry out such an extension on both bypasses, it would certainly make the highways safer. All the two -ane bypasses on wider highways have been reported to be deathtraps with multiple casualties per month because the road configuration changes.

Entering Cities Or Bypassing Them?

Many of our highways, especially those built in the initial stages of the NHDP were built through towns and villages, which today have caused a lot of problems. Some of the roads went through major towns such as Vellore in Tamil Nadu on the Bengaluru-Chennai highway. Although the road is six-lane with flyovers, it cuts through the heart of the city, thus mixing high-speed intercity traffic with local traffic. As a result of this mix, accidents followed, and then the Madurai bench of the Madras High Court ordered that all highways come with barricades and reflectors to regulate speeds. The net result of this is that the travel time goes up manifold.

In smaller towns, there are barricades (often melted due to the heat, and speed-breakers, which sometimes are just not visible. Along with this is the case of people driving on the wrong side of roads.

Ideally, major highways, especially those under the NHDP should have a bypass to larger towns and cities and need service lanes and flyovers within villages to reduce outstation and local traffic from mixing, which can cause accidents.

While Nitin Gadkari’s Road Transport and Highways Ministry has been working on fixing the financial mess that the UPA government put the highways sector into, its next target needs to be addressing road safety, particularly the bad quality of roads that the UPA government built when they showcased their work.

There is no point in India having roads designed to withstand high speeds when the construction results in a road that can’t even handle moderate speeds.

Quality over quantity matters, for the purpose of widened national highways is to reduce the time taken for a journey, not to shorten someone’s lifespan with badly designed highways.

Srikanth’s interests include public transit, urban management and transportation infrastructure.

Why Government’s Airport Upgradation Plan Must Match Increasing Rush At Indian Airports

By
Indian Infra Hub Staff
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0
Snapshot
  • India remained the world’s fastest growing domestic aviation market for the third straight year in 2017.While such rapid growth does bring joy and also entails more aircraft orders by our airlines, perhaps infrastructure building should precede future traffic growth.

The government has announced a much-needed expansion and upgradation of terminal buildings at three airports and has estimated a total investment of Rs 100,000 crore in the next five years in creating new terminals, development of Greenfield airports and private investment in existing joint venture airports. According to a decision by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs, integrated terminals will be expanded at Chennai, Guwahati and Lucknow airports by 2031 at the latest.

The Airports Authority of India (AAI), which owns and operates the maximum number of airports across the country, has an annual terminal capacity of 155 million passengers now which will be almost doubled to 300 million passengers in a decade. While all this talk of mega investments in airport capacity is welcome, will the capacity creation happen before demand explodes?

According to data collected by Kotak Institutional Equities, three in four flyers in India use one of our 10 busiest airports. Our six busiest airports handled over 175 million passengers in 2016-17, which means even among the top 10 airports, these six saw two in three air passengers. At least four airports – at Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad – are already handling passengers in excess of their maximum indicative handling capacity. The Delhi airport has been operating at 101 per cent of capacity, Mumbai at 121 per cent, Bangalore at 132 per cent and Hyderabad at 149 per cent of its capacity. That means there are airports in this country handling one-and-a-half times their capacity.

India’s air traffic growth still comes from its large metros, with the top 10 airports lying across Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Kolkata and so on. This means though there are airports/airstrips aplenty in smaller towns and cities, these do not witness enough footfalls. The fantastic growth in domestic aviation in the country over the last several years has brought into focus the woeful lack of aviation infrastructure across the busiest cities, with little relief in sight. India’s top 10 airports handled nearly double the amount of traffic in calendar 2018 at 232 million compared to just 124 million in 2013.

But even the non-metro airports are on way to getting choked. The same analysis by Kotak found that the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) at non-metro airports has also been rising fast too. Jaipur is the biggest such airport with traffic reaching 4.7 million in 2018 from just 1.8 million five years ago, a CAGR of 21 per cent. Chandigarh and Amritsar airports have also seen a CAGR close to 20 per cent during these five years. In the 10 such non-metro airports, traffic has doubled from 19.2 million to 38.1 million in five years. Obviously, capacity enhancement was needed yesterday at these airports.

It is no wonder then that whether one catches a flight from a big metro airport or from a smaller one, queues are getting longer, flight movement and on-time performance of airlines is getting worse and generally, India’s domestic flyers are spending more time than ever before in reaching their destinations. An earlier policy decision, such as having a condition of 150-km distance between existing and new airports etc have already stymied the growth of airport infrastructure – unlike the other growing markets, we still do not operate multiple airports around our big cities.

For example, London has five major airports, New York has three. In some years, Delhi may get a second airport, with construction slated to begin at Jewar, near Greater Noida, by next year. According to AAI’s latest plans, approval has been provided for second airports in Navi Mumbai, Noida, Mopa (Goa), Purandar (Pune), Bhogapuram (Visakhapatnam), Dholera (Ahmedabad) and Hirasar (Rajkot).

Then, Delhi is expected to complete expansion of its terminals 1 and 3 by 2020 – traffic at Delhi is expected to increase by over 20 million passengers a year to 85 million by 2022. After years of delay, the new deadline for getting Navi Mumbai airport’s two terminals operational is 2022 again, Hyderabad too is expected to complete some expansion activity by 2020.

The issue of congestion is not restricted to terminals alone. The airside at many Indian airports is bursting at the seams too. Mumbai’s story epitomises the severe infrastructure squeeze across our busy airports. The best an airline can show for Mumbai is about 50 per cent on-time performance – which means at least every second flight at this airport is delayed.

Choked airports may worry flyers, but India’s airlines continue to order aircraft at alarming rates in anticipation of continued traffic growth. IndiGo, Jet Airways, SpiceJet and GoAir have together placed orders for 835 aircraft, with deliveries staggered until financial year 2025. This, on an existing base of 558 aircraft. The Kotak analysts said in the note that this rapid fleet addition will require greater aircraft handling capacity at airports. “Capacity at some of top 10 airports by number of passengers handled has already been exhausted; most of these airports are undergoing capacity expansion which would come through only in the next two-four years leading to limited passenger growth at some of these airports.”

Remember, India remained the world’s fastest growing domestic aviation market for the third straight year in 2017, according to the International Air Transport Association, at 17.5 per cent, followed by China at 13.3 per cent. While such rapid growth does bring joy and also entails more aircraft orders by our airlines, perhaps infrastructure building should precede future traffic growth.

Sindhu Bhattacharya is a senior journalist.

Lessons For India From Singapore: What Is It To Be A Global Smart City

By
Indian Infra Hub Staff
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0

MSRDC Ups The Safety Quotient Of Mumbai-Nagpur Samruddhi Corridor; No Sharp Curves, Capable Of Speeds Of 150 Km/Hr

By
Indian Infra Hub Staff
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0

The Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC) which is the nodal agency to construct the 700 km Mumbai-Nagpur Expressway, also known as the Maharashtra Samruddhi Corridor has said that it has nearly finalised the designes for the project which will not feature any steep curves, reports DNA.

Curves along the expressway that will cut through the Western Ghats at its western end will be as long as 2.5 km but not shorter than 700 m to prevent fatalities.

The Greenfield expressway, that has a completely new alignment will have a design speed of 150 km/hr but will otherwise have a speed limit of 120 km/hr. Due to the high-speed nature of the expressway, rest areas will be set up every 50 km.

The entire corridor has been separated into 16 packages with each package being built by a different contractor.

In order to reduce incidences of vehicles landing up on the wrong side of the road, the median along the expressway is being planned with a width of 15 to 20 metre. Vehicles crossing the median at high speed is a common occurrence on the Mumbai-Pune Expressway that prompted the MSRDC to install chain-link fences and high-tensile brifen wires to stop vehicles from crossing the 5 m-wide median.

The corridor will feature six lanes – three per direction – with an additional two lanes per direction reserved for service lanes.

Also Read: The Economics Of Mumbai-Nagpur Expressway

Indian Railways To Go Ahead With Redevelopment Of 600 Railway Stations On Public-Private Partnership

By
Indian Infra Hub Staff
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0

Indian Railways is going ahead with its plan to redevelop 600 railway stations across the country in partnership with the private sector despite the Finance Ministry’s objections to the plan, reports IANS. The state-run railway operator will now look at redeveloping these 600 stations on a 99 year-long lease agreement as opposed to the earlier plan of redeveloping 400 stations on a 45 year lease period that was proposed by former Minister for Railways Suresh Prabhu but scrapped due to a poor response.

The Railways will seek the Cabinet’s approval even though some of its plans such as complete electrification of all lines, free WiFi at all stations and installing European signalling systems have met with a cold response from the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO). The increased lease period will now see the capital expenditure of the Railways’ go over Rs 1 lakh crore.

The plan to extend the lease period received a favourable response from the NITI Aayog, Ministry of Law and Justice and the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs while the Ministry of Finance objected to it by saying the lease period should not extend beyond 60 years.

The Railways’ addressed the finance ministry’s objects by stating that the extended period was necessary to attract private investments in the Transit-oriented-development (TOD) sector in urban areas. The redevelopment envisages setting up of commercial spaces, shopping areas, and improved parking while at the same time improve the amenities available to railway passengers.

The project is expected to cross over Rs 1 lakh crore of which Rs 80,000 crore will go towards commercial capitalisation of assets and the remaining Rs 20,000 crore will go towards station redevelopment. Indian Railways hopes to earn Rs 50,000 crore by commercial exploitation of land near railway stations.

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