Title : One sector, three regulators

News Paper:The Financial Exress

Date:19 May, 2010

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Quality regulatory outcomes in any sector depend on three factors: (a) clear, coherent and transparent regulatory policies that promote competition; (b) independent regulators vested with substantive powers to control operations; and (c) a clear demarcation of jurisdiction among different regulators. Seen from this perspective, it is not hard to fathom why India’s aviation sector gives an impression of growth amidst chaos. Across the spectrum of its stakeholders, the sector has seven regulatory interfaces–service providers and airports, passengers and airports, cargo and airports, airlines and airports, airlines and passengers, airlines and cargo, and finally, airlines and service providers. These seven interfaces are regulated by three regulatory authorities–the Airport Authority of India (AAI), the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) and the Airport Regulatory Authority of India (Aera)–in a manner that leaves much to be desired. AAI is essentially an operator. However, since it predates other regulatory authorities, it has always functioned as a regulator, even after Aera has been set up. Functional from May 2009, Aera has been empowered to regulate ‘aeronautical services’ in ‘major airports’ only. Thus, AAI continues as the de facto economic regulator for all airports that it operates that are not ‘major airports’. Apart from this limited mandate, Aera has no powers to enforce service standards on quality, continuity and reliability of airport services; it can only ‘monitor’ them, whatever that means.

Title :Will the petroleum regulator stand up?

News Paper: Business Standard

Date:24 December, 2009

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Much has already been written about how regulation of anti-competitive behaviour leads to increased allocative efficiencies and consumer welfare. Less, however, seems to have been written on whether the structures of regulation put in place secure these desirable ends.

This is particularly true of India where independent regulation is of relatively recent origin. It will be worthwhile to take a close look at the state of regulation in the petroleum and natural gas sector, which has been consistently in the news of late.

The petroleum sector consists of four sub-sectors, namely, exploration and production, oil refining and marketing, natural gas transportation and marketing, and crude oil and petroleum products pipelines. Of these four, the first, referred to as upstream, is supposed to be regulated by the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH), while the remaining three downstream sub-sectors fall under the domain of the Petroleum and Natural Gas Regulatory Board of India (PNGRB).

Title : Road construction suffers capacity constraints

News Paper:The Financial Exress

Date: 17 Nov, 2009

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Highways development, which remained largely comatose during UPA-I, has got an adrenalin injection with the induction of Kamal Nath as the minister in-charge. But his pitch to create 20 km of highways, despite his good intentions, looks hard to achieve, primarily because of capacity constraints in the road construction industry—an issue that has got much less attention than it deserves. Reasons and solutions for the slow progress in this sector have been discussed by various committees. Policy attention have been mainly on three areas: (a) reducing pre-construction delays—land acquisition, tree-felling and shifting of utilities; (b) changes in the policy environment

Title : A wish list on transport infrastructure

News Paper:The Economic Times

Date:22 June, 2009

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Now that the celebrations after a well earned victory and the immediate task of Cabinet formation are over, the prime minister must be turning his attention to the agenda that has been prepared for the first 100 days of the new government. And though infrastructure figures in that agenda, I would be grateful for a little attention to the perspective of an outside observer. The Planning Commission had stated, at the beginning of the XIth Plan, that a growth rate of 9% could be sustained only through much higher levels of spending on infrastructure. The global meltdown has put paid to those hopes but one fact remains unchanged. The path to economic recovery still passes through the revival of infrastructural growth. What has become even more pertinent is that such revival will become increasingly difficult without far-reaching reforms in different sectors of infrastructure.

Title :Streamlining land acquisition

News Paper:The Financial Express

Date:06 June 2009

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IT needs no elaboration that most infrastructure projects are delayed over land acquisition and relief & rehabilitation. It is also well settled that the delays have their origins in three factors—popular protests on equity concerns, lengthy procedures, and non-cooperation by states in central projects. The first two are substantively covered by policy/legislation, but the third could also have formed part of this. The two Bills on the subjects, introduced in Parliament last year, could not be carried through and have to be re-introduced. This article argues that there is an urgent need to revisit both, though for reasons different from the ones that stalled them in Parliament.

Both The Land Acquisition (Amendment) Bill, 2007, and The Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill, 2007, have been drafted with the sole purpose of securing the monetary and livelihood interests of the affected persons. This is in sync with the government emphasis on inclusive development and a realisation that popular resistance to land acquisition and rehabilitation feeds on perceptions of less than fair compensation. It is difficult to fault the two Bills on this score. The LA Bill amplifies the ambit of “persons interested” to those who have any kind of rights over the acquired land (beyond just those owning that land), expands the “cost of acquisition” to all possible expenditures and lays down a comprehensive scheme of valuing the land at market value. The R&R Bill enhances the scope of “affected family” by including all those who lose their livelihood due to the acquisition (like agricultural and non-agricultural labourers, landless persons, rural artisans, small traders and self-employed persons and not just those either owning that land or having some kind of rights over that land). It also lays down the minimum values of all possible components of an exhaustive scheme for R&R.

However, the Bills commit the traditional mistake of ‘missing the woods for the trees’. In trying to secure equity for the affected persons the Bills have lost sight of the very purpose for which land is supposed to be acquired–implementation of projects. Unfortunately, the Bills have been poorly designed to secure the speedy implementation of infrastructure projects.

This is particularly true of India where independent regulation is of relatively recent origin. It will be worthwhile to take a close look at the state of regulation in the petroleum and natural gas sector, which has been consistently in the news of late.

Title : India's infrastructure: A reality check

News Paper:The Economic Times

Date:22 Nov, 2007

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That India's physical infrastructure is pretty abysmal is an accepted fact. What is heartening is that it has started getting the kind of attention which is essential for catapulting it to the top of the national agenda. Earlier this year when rising inflation caused serious concern, a debate ensued on its causes. Though the monetarist view is that inflation is largely a monetary phenomenon, many scholars were of the view that in this particular case infrastructure bottlenecks were also responsible for overheating the economy, since the massive demand generated by an economy growing at 9% for close to four years could not be satiated by the supply of inputs reduced to a trickle by infrastructure bottlenecks.

Title : Petroleum price fixation?

News Paper:Times Of India

Date:

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MUCH has already been written about how competition and regulation of competition, or more correctly, regulation of anti-competitive behaviour, leads to increased allocative efficiencies and consumer welfare. Less, however, seems to have been written on whether the structures of regulation put in place secure these desirable ends. This is particularly true in case of India where independent regulation is of relatively recent origin and is still evolving. It is, therefore, of immense importance that the structures of regulation put in place in different sectors be put under both intellectual as well as public scrutiny to see whether they are truly independent and empowered to regulate anti-competitive behaviour. It will be worthwhile to take a close look at the state of regulation in the petroleum and natural gas (PNG) sector, which has been consistently in the news of late.