I was just browsing the Planning Commission of India's website. The site itself surprised me pleasantly, and I spent a lot of time taking in some of the information available. One thing that I had been thingking about for a while struck me again. While looking at the status of ongoing irrigation projects, the increase in the estimated cost of each project shocked me. Now, in India many projects are delayed over a lot of years and this itself increases their cost by a large amount. But these figures definitely have something more to them. I hope it is something that I failed to understand and there exists a simpler logical explanation to it. I will list a few examples .. the order is
State - project name, initial estimated cost --> latest estimated cost (Rs. crore).
Andhra - Sriram Sagar 40 --> 2600
Maharashtra - Kukadi 18 --> 1600
Maharashtra - Mor 1 --> 49
Rajasthan - Panchana 1 --> 125
Tripura - Gumti 6 --> 50
UP - Sarayu Nagar 78 --> 2765
Gujrat - Sardar Sarovar 4600 --> 30000
WTF?? Almost all the projects read this way. The only estimates that havent been raised yet are of those projects which are yet unapproved. The whole list is numbing. Hundreds and hundreds of projects each costing way more than originally expected. Why so? Normally in any project you can consider the estimate to fall short by a small margin, thus the total cost may come to 110 - 150% of the original estimate. But many projects here have exceeded their estimates 20 to 50 times!! We can consider that some projects were expanded to make them bigger etc .. but surely not all!
More importantly -- who is answerable to this? Where is all this money going? Can any particular official be questioned on why the costs spiral out of control? If contractors are given jobs, why arent they fined when it is not completed on time and not within the given budget? How long will this bleeding of the public continue?
Till there are honest politicians with enough will power, and executives with strong commmitment to getting the job done right. In other words, a long long time.
It might also be that the projects were proposed with an unrealistically low cost - in order to increase the probability that it will go through. But it would be hard to believe that that would go unnoticed at a competent and honest audit.
Posted by: Chinmay at January 3, 2005 02:36 PMHorrifying!!! Can't we ask for a balance sheet to assess the state of affairs? What is the deficit status or do we even need to balance our budget? Basic questions, I know...can someone aware of their answers please let me know.
Posted by: Patrix at January 4, 2005 04:40 PMOne of the reasons they get away with this is that no one bothers to read through these details, much less object. You're taking the lead. Well done!
Posted by: Ajju at January 27, 2005 04:33 PM