What really ails our large infrastructure project implementation? Do we know what are the significant factors that need to be identified and dealt with? Who should deal with them and how? Why are we not addressing them as they occur and why do we let them bunch up to be a 7-trillion-rupee problem? Will the appointment of a new committee help? What happened to the recommendations made by many such committees in the past?
Well, it is easy to ask all these questions and surprise, surprise it is easy to answer them, too. The problem, unfortunately, is not in identifying all the issues or even the solutions. The problem, you guessed it, is in implementing the identified (and sometimes agreed) solutions.
Any sound manufacturing person will tell you that implementation of anything requires (i) careful and detailed planning, (ii) responsibility matrix of who will implement what and when, (iii) how coordination across departments should be done, (iv) who calls the shots if there are disputes, and finally (v) how do you punish the non-doer and reward the hard/smart worker.
If one looks at our large infrastructure projects and asks all these questions, one finds that many of these questions are not asked and even if asked most are rarely answered. And the last, but important, question of reward and punishment is considered irrelevant by most project managers in large government projects, partly because they feel it is impractical to reward or punish anyone in the system. So there you are. No light at the end of the tunnel. But I am not a pessimist and so won?t give up easily. There must be some way of actually solving the problem. Well, there indeed is a different way of looking at it.
Just look at the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation and you should know exactly how to solve the problem. High calibre professionals, highly empowered and working in a
highly professional environment and dedicated, sincere, knowledgeable and committed to making things work.
The solution, so, is not to look for quick-fix solutions but to CHANGE the people behind these projects–from the top to the bottom. Firstly, we need hundreds of professional project managers working alongside other professionals like HR/IT/ finance professionals and not administrators and file pushers. We have had too many instances of smart administrators/ generalists with a lot of common sense sincerely attempting to do a complex job but failing. And we also have many technocrats with perverse incentives scuttling good solutions.
Having professional people is necessary but not sufficient to get results. We need to give these people a professional atmosphere with incentives and penalties linked to performance. Give them technology and other professional tools. Give them suitable training. And of course, the required financing of the project when required (not in the last quarter of the year, please). Give them the freedom (away from political interference) to flexibly execute their work according to local, contextual needs. Sure, they will deliver–on time, within budget, of the right quality and specs.
We see this, all the time in the private sector. They too have controls, checks and balances, limits on powers and time-lines. If you imitate the private sector atmosphere, you will get good results.
My suggestion to the Anil Swarup committee, which has been appointed last week to find ways to get 215 large projects worth R7 lakh crore off the ground, is to initiate major people and environment changes rather than stop at quick-fixes. It is a long way to get these changes done, but better late than never.
The author is senior director, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India