ET breaks down the work of the other four 'plumbers' and how it could leave an indelible imprint on the lives of Indians in the years to come.
Plumber: That's the workmanlike, ungainly descriptor Nandan Nilekani likes to use to sum up his work after crossing over from the corporate sector to the government . Nilekani explains he is assembling , re-organising and cleaning the pipes - in his case, assigning a unique identity number called Aadhaar to every Indian - through which all manners of government benefits will flow to citizens, efficiently and transparently.
Nilekani is not the only one. Removed from the delayed response that has been policymaking , there are at least four more ongoing projects that will change the way a large majority of Indians work, bank, transact , engage and live.
Each started between 2008 and 2011, each was conceived to be government-agnostic and each has been insular from the policy paralysis that plagued this government for a long time. Nilekani's work in the government is well documented .
The others, not so much. ET breaks down the work of the other four 'plumbers' and how it could leave an indelible imprint on the lives of Indians in the years to come.
Internet Access: Broadband in all villages
Three ongoing pilots, in three rural clusters in three states, offer a glimpse of how villages might plug into the Internet tomorrow. The pilots aim to pull fibre from the block level to 58 panchayats-in Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan and Tripura-and offer Internet services to nearby villages on them.
This is the starting point of a Rs 20,000 crore project of Bharat Broadband, a company owned by the department of telecom (DoT). Its target: by December 2013, lay down fibre to all 250,000 gram panchayats so that all villages can be Internet-connected .
Mobile, Internet and cable operators can then load their services on this fibre, paying Bharat Broadband a nominal sum. N Ravi Shanker, the man spearheading this National Optic Fibre Network project, throws one big number to explain what the project can mean to the nation : for every 10% increase in broadband penetration, India's economic output increases by 1.38%.
Today, broadband Internet-fast enough to enable services like education, entertainment, healthcare and e-transactions-is accessed by just 1% of India. Bharat Broadband wants to change that. Besides DoT, Bharat Broadband has three PSUs-RailTel , BSNL and Power Grid Corporation holding one share each in it.
These PSUs already have fibre on the ground, and this project helps them extend their own fibre closer to where customers are. "What exists today is up to the block level," says Shanker, a bureaucrat and an IAS officer from the 1974 batch. "We are taking it further to the panchayat level.
It will be like taking the national highways to the gram panchayats." Subho Ray, president of the Internet & Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), says the government has a target of 600 million Internet users by 2020, half of which will come from rural areas. "Nobody has built an einfrastructure in the country," he adds. "Bharat Broadband will give a boost to this."
At an average of 2 km of fibre per village, the project entails laying down around 500,000 km of fibre. This is being financed by the Rs 20,000 crore Universal Service Obligation (USO) Fund, where 5% of revenues of all telecom companies are pooled to fund ventures that take telecom to the people. The government approved the project in October 2011 and technical specs were put in place earlier this year.
Challenges abound. "Right of way (approval from states to put down fibre) is the biggest challenge ," says Shanker, who joined in December 2011. So far, only 10 states have given their nod, including Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh. Telecom minister Kapil Sibal has been writing to chief ministers for their nod and to tell them about the project.
As the project pushes for more approvals, and as it moves to rollout, Shanker is also building a team of 50 people. "Once the proof is there, more states will warm up to it.
Urbanisation: Seven new cities
Amitabh Kant believes you can't do something new, like building new smart cities, in the existing government system and processes. "I'm building seven Singapores," he says. "This project is about our ability to think big and plan for the next 100 years, something our town planners and Central Public Works Department haven't done."
The government entity he heads, the Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor Development Corporation, is a special purpose vehicle that circumvents existing departments to create seven new cities along an upcoming rail corridor between Delhi and Mumbai by 2019.
Still, it has to engage with governments. "The Centre has left land acquisition to states," says Manish Agarwal, executive director, infrastructure, PricewaterhouseCoopers India. Kant-an IAS officer and the man behind government ad campaigns like 'Incredible India' and Kerala's 'God's Own Country' -iterates a new way of approaching development.
"When cities in the west came up, gas and water was very cheap. That's why they spread out," he says. "Given the reality that gas and water are not cheap today, we are looking at mass transportation systems and digital technology that cuts across power, water, safety and transportation needs. We will provide citizen services from a central command room and with real-time control and governance systems."
About 65% of the $90 billion project will be done via the public-private partnership (PPP) route. The rest, like sewage, drainage systems and roads will be done by six state governments- Gujarat, Haryana, Maharashtra, MP, Rajasthan and UP. "DMICDC is many projects within projects," says Agarwal. IBM, Accenture and Cisco are technology partners , and city planning is being done by global companies like Halcrow, Jurong and Aecom, which have built cities like Singapore and Hong Kong.
The project hasn't taken off yet, and DMICDC is still only a full-time staff of five, but Kant is not worried. "Indians are in a hurry to execute projects," he says. "Look at the Japanese. If they have a timeline of six years, they will keep planning and testing models for five years on how roads, sewage, housing complexes, offices, water will be, and the city actually comes up in one year.
Detailed engineering plans make the difference." So, work on the ground will not start till all approvals are in place. "We started when land became a hotly contested issue , and there are no concepts of detailed engineering or programme management . We are trying to break away from mediocrity," says Kant on what could be a model for urban planning in India.
Anytime, anywhere banking
If most people with bank accounts can withdraw money from any ATM, today, it is because of the National Payments Corporation of India, which, in simple terms, set up a platform on which banks can connect with each other. "We enable hand-shaking among banks," says AP Hota, managing director & CEO of NPCI. That simple statement masks the complexity of this career banker's mandate: make banking easier, faster and cheaper.
NPCI, formed in 2009 by the banking regulator and 10 banks with the objective of streamlining inter-bank transactions , is taking it one step at a time. Time might show one of these steps to be its most significant contribution: in financial inclusion .
NPCI has set up an Aadhaar payment gateway on which about Rs 3,00,000 crore of welfare benefits-pension payments, employment benefits , fuel subsidies-will be verified for entitlement before being transferred from government entities to bank accounts of individuals.
NPCI is part of the ongoing cash-transfer pilots in Jharkhand (payments to NREGA workers) and Mysore (cash transfer of LPG subsidy). "Eventually, we will help complete the transactions ," says Hota. "We are also looking at how biometrics can be used to withdraw cash. Ours is a low-cost , high-impact infrastructure project."
Today, NPCI is looking to bring mobile-banking systems of different banks on to a common platform, which will enable money to be transferred from one bank to another via the mobile. So far, 51 banks have signed up and 188,000 transactions were done in August.
"We create a scalable infrastructure outside the bank, which can be used by banks to talk (read enable transactions ) to each other and, in turn, make banking easier for users," says Hota.
Next on NPCI's agenda is increasing the utility of mobile wallets-transfer pre-loaded money from a mobile phone to a bank-for which it expects to launch a pilot by October. NPCI is also working to convert cheque clearing from a physical process to a digital one, and reduce turnaround time from three days to one. This is expected by April 2013.
Plumbing tip Run it like a professionally-managed company. Thankfully, we are not building roads, ports or airports, and don't have challenges like land acquisition
Make 150 million employable
Dilip Chenoy is a man in a hurry. And on a mission: to reach 150 million. That's the number of youth the public-private partnership he heads has promised to make job-ready by 2022. In its three years, the National Skill Development Corporation and its private partners have trained 0.25 million. Chenoy says the next five years will see the lift-off as they have created the capacity to train 74 million by 2022.
"The country needs to address its skills shortage on a war footing and that's what NSDC's goal is," he says. If there is one thing, besides tepid economic growth, that can scuttle India's 'demographic dividend' , it is the low levels of employability among the 674 million in the working age group of 18-59 years.
For example, a 2009 study by software industry association Nasscom says that only 20% of the 400,000 engineering graduates who pass out every year meet corporate requirements , falling short in technical skills, speaking in English and working in teams.
NSDC was set up in 2009 to address this deficit in blue collared jobs. Its mandate is to create an ecosystem of vocational training institutions that deliver both quantity and quality. The 55-year-old Chenoy, who has previously had stints at industry bodies CII and SIAM, was brought in to head it. NSDC funds private companies-through loans, equity and grants-to impart hard and soft skills to young Indians.
As of August 2012, NSDC had given out Rs 234 crore to 39 entities from 13 sectors, including retail, IT, construction, electronics and healthcare. Chenoy says 95% of the proposals have been 10-year loans at 6% interest. For larger projects, NSDC partners the private player, a case in point being its 23% stake in a joint venture with the Future Group, called Future Sharp Skills, to train 7 million.
The short-term courses, which are either free or subsidised, are primarily meant to draw candidates from underprivileged backgrounds. "NSDC will have a signalling effect to make vocational training acceptable," says Dhiraj Mathur, leader, education, PricewaterhouseCoopers. "Besides numbers, the larger task will be to remove the stigma attached to bluecollar jobs." Funding for NSDC comes from the government: it has received Rs 2,500 crore so far.
In 2011-12 , NSDC approved 32 funding proposals. In the next five years, it expects to approve 44-62 proposals each year. Likewise, as these ventures hit their straps, it expects the number of youth trained to increase from 0.25 million in 2011-12 to 14.6 million in 2016-17 . Much of Chenoy's time-and that of his 22-member teamgoes in engaging with industry , understanding skill gaps in various sectors, identifying private partners with competence and convincing them to do this.
"It requires plenty of perseverance and patience," he says. "The bigger challenge is changing mindsets. They want NSDC to give skilled people free. Unless you pay a skilled plumber or electrician more than an unskilled one, no one will be motivated to acquire formal skills."
Chenoy says he has had about 45 meetings with people from the construction industry and about 20 from the electronics industry. "The whole ecosystem needs to be skilled if the country has to move forward," he says. "Fortunately, the industry realises that now."
