Satyanarayan Gangaram Pitroda (popularly known as Sam Pitroda) may now be dubbed as the new dark horse for the presidential race, but for the southern state of Kerala, this techie son of Gujarat is emerging as a white knight who could give it a much-needed infrastructure kick.
As the Twelfth Plan rolls out this month, it is the Pitroda plan for Vision 2030 that the Kerala government has picked up to move the basic infrastructure track on. Novel seaplane and hovercraft services for backwater tourism, an ambitious high-speed train corridor, new airports, seaports, metrorail and monorail for its main cities, and even a 4G-backed telecom incubator village are part of this development plan. A new stretch of 1,000 km of state-of-the-art roads is also planned in the next five years.
For its plan for 2012-2013, Kerala has ambitiously hiked its annual outlay by over 20% at one go to R14,010 crore. Although a single project like the high-speed rail corridor (that links its north and south poles, cutting down travel time to just 3 hours) would cost R1,18,000 crore, the state?s pockets are hardly deep enough.
?Public-private partnership (PPP) models are almost the only effective engines of development in the coming days,? Pitroda (advisor to the prime minister on public information infrastructure and innovation) advised young techies at Technopark, when he was in Thiruvananthapuram on chief minister Oommen Chandy?s special invitation. It was Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia and Pitroda who vetted the Chandy government?s Vision 2030 document.
Almost all the infrastructure projects proposed are in the PPP mode. For the north-south bullet train corridor, Kerala expects Delhi Metro to help negotiate a soft loan from JICA (Japan International Co-operation Agency). International loan agencies are likely to be the toast of future development debates in Kerala, since the state now has other big construction plans under its belt. Besides the ongoing Kochi Metro rail project, the state is ready with a R5,100 crore monorail plan for Thiruvananthapuram and a similar project for Kozhikode.
According to Pitroda?s wishlist, the state should also go ahead with its coastal waterway plans to carry commercial cargo, while Ahluwalia added that it should shift from low-productive agriculture to high-value crop technologies and better marketing. ?I have made use of these ideas in the current year?s budget, in the form of farm-to-market integrated coconut bioparks and rice bioparks,? says state finance minister KM Mani.
Taking off from another Pitroda idea, Kerala is also coming up with India?s first telecom business incubator, partnering the National Science and Technology Entrepreneurship Development Board in a special R100 crore start-up village project in Kochi this month. This village, with a 4G network and advanced labs, is expected to be a complete ecosystem, with an idea nursery, accelerator and angel funding, all under one umbrella for the first time in the country.
Tourism, the state?s cash cow, churning R17,000 crore in revenues per year, too, is getting bitten by the infrastructure bug. Development commentators, who shouted down the proposal of a north-south express highway 12 years ago, were notably mum as the Chandy government proposed a R500 crore seaplane company, to run a seaplane service among Vembanad, Astamudi and other tourist-favoured backwaters. The main advantage of this proposal is minimal land acquisition. As in Mauritius or Maldives, the seaplane service would enable a passing business traveller to take a quick lake cruise, perhaps enjoying a rejuvenating Ayurveda rubdown as well.
?Infrastructure creation, indeed, is the game-changer,? says Kris Gopalakrishnan, co-chairman, Infosys Technologies, who hails from Thiruvananthapuram. ?Only such projects can lure youth back to the state,? he says. Infosys is now setting up its second unit in the proposed Technocity in Thiruvananthapuram.
sarita.varma@expressindia.com