What about buses for the hills?

In a total of four sentences in the Budget speech, the Finance Minister has dismissed the much-heralded flagship programme of Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) with a faint praise and a modest promise.

Echoing the claims of the Urban Development Ministry, he said “the 14,000 buses sanctioned during 2009 to 2012 have made a big contribution to urban transport”. Facts on the ground seem different.

BEHIND THE FIGURES

The Web site of the Ministry of Urban Development states that a total of 15,260 buses have been sanctioned at a total cost of Rs. 4,724 crore. According to the response to an RTI enquiry in July 2012, about 12,500 buses are claimed to have been delivered. The latest figure is still not available, though newspaper reports continue to talk about the problems of procurement and delivery.

The Finance Minister has also proposed a provision of Rs 14,873 crore in the Budget for JNNURM, compared with the Revised Estimate of Rs 7,383 crore in the current year. Before anyone jumps in joy about the apparent doubling of the RE, it is useful to take a look at the break-up of the goodies in the NURM basket.

The Rajiv Awas Yojana has a Budget provision of Rs 2,022 crore, Rs 1,000 crore is for integrated housing and slum development and another Rs 1,500 crore for services for the urban poor. That takes care of Rs 4,500 crore in the basket.

Another component in the Mission — Urban Infrastructure Development for Small and Medium Towns — will get Rs 4,478 crore, against the RE of Rs 1,600 crore for 2012-13. How this threefold increase is to be absorbed is an open question, considering that even for the larger cities, the original Budget allocation of nearly Rs 6,000 crore during 2012-13 had to be halved to Rs 3,300 crore in the RE. If this is the case with large cities and State capitals, one wonders how their small and medium cousins will accomplish a triple-fold performance.

UPHILL TASK

The Finance Minister has very kindly mentioned that a significant portion of the increased provision for the JNNURM will be used to “support the purchase of up to 10,000 buses especially for the hill States”. Prima facie this is welcome news for automobile manufacturers who are already complaining about the increase in excise duties on SUVs.

Since the Finance Minister has made a special mention for the hill States, let us look at the scenario. Of the 15,000 buses sanctioned before, only 890 were for the special category States, including the hill States. Of these, 200 were for Assam and 60 each for Dehradun and Haridwar. Of the balance of 570 buses, there is no information about how many have actually been delivered and deployed on the roads of the hill States.

It is worth remembering that the bus component was not originally included in the JNNURM. It came in as a part of the stimulus package for the economy, including the automobile sector. The Union Ministry did seize upon the opportunity and loaded the bus component with various guidelines for reforming urban transport and also an elaborate set of specifications for urban buses.

The low-floor urban buses which one now sees in many cities are probably the only visible symbol of the NURM for any citizen. But these buses cost a packet of at least Rs 50 lakh on an average for a bus. However, these cannot ply on such limited length and width of roads as we have in our hill States.

We can, therefore, presume that out of the 10,000 buses which the Finance Minister has promised to support, no more than half, if at all, will be available for the hill States. Even that is nearly ten times higher than what has been provided earlier. Smaller buses needed for the hill roads will probably cost less, say, about Rs 20-25 lakh.

On that basis, at least Rs 2,000-2,500 crore may be needed. This will have to come out of the Rs 5,000-crore allocation for urban infrastructure and governance. That leaves little for the other schemes under this component.

There are a couple of other aspects which need to be considered. In most of our hill States such as Himachal or Uttarakhand, highways are few and far between, though some inter-city connections may be available. But once we enter any hill town, whether it is Shimla or Mussoorie, Nainital or Shillong, road widths are limited and increasing congestion is evident.

PRIVATE OPERATORS’ CLOUT

While it is good that JNNURM has a bus component, over the years it is the private taxis of various shapes and sizes that have kept people moving in these hill towns.

In every one of them, the taxi operators are well organised and do not look kindly on intrusions by any form of public transport. Gangtok or Mussoorie are apt examples of the taxi operators’ monopoly. This is one of the reasons why even the limited number of vehicles sanctioned earlier has not been deployed in the hill towns.

The Ministry’s guidelines for bus financing are elaborate. They range from setting up a dedicated urban transport fund at the State or city level to integrating land use and transport, traffic management and control centres.

Nevertheless, the bus component in the JNNURM has prompted increased attention to urban transport issues. This may be welcome, but a uniform approach for varied cities is unlikely to work. For hill States in particular, special attention is needed.

It is up to Kamal Nath and his Ministry of Urban Development to ensure that the people in our hill States can move about a little more easily. Or else, Finance Minister Chidambaram will have the satisfaction of providing a Budget to please a Ministry, in the safe assurance that the money would not be spent.

(The writer is Professor and Chairman, Centre for Policy Research, Delhi)

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