There is a wide spectrum of issues that impact India's infrastructure such as the concept, implementation and funding. Over and above the structural nitty-gritty lie political, social and economic considerations that often make the process of infrastructure development more complex in a federal set-up like India.

In this context, Infrastructure at Crossroads deserves attention because the author gives us an insider view. As a serving Adviser on Infrastructure to the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, Gajendra Haldea is acutely aware of the nuances of such a complex space.

So, the book should be read from the point of view of stories being told from a stakeholder's perspective.

For instance, Haldea criticises the act of clipping the wings of the Prime Minister's Committee of Infrastructure in 2009, but is careful enough to use subtle words. He says the Committee “lapsed with the closure of first term of the Manmohan Singh Government in 2009”.

This is after the author praises the Committee at various points in the book. He says that the Committee, constituted in 2004 under the chairmanship of the Prime Minister “provided a neutral platform that enabled an objective discourse on reform of the infrastructure sector”.

In a thinly disguised criticism of the Cabinet Committee on Infrastructure — a body that is now doing the same work as the earlier infrastructure committee and continues to be headed by the Prime Minister — Haldea says, it functions like a “normal committee of Cabinet”.

But, in his views on how the Committee of Infrastructure was better than the Cabinet Committee of Infrastructure, the author seems to have omitted a small detail that would probably be of interest to readers – the Secretariat of the erstwhile Committee of Infrastructure, physically located in the Planning Commission, was managed by Haldea.

One cannot help but wonder how many such small details the author may not have mentioned in his otherwise minute dissection of various infrastructure-related issues.

That apart, the book is a collection of essays written by Haldea's in the past 10 years, with postscripts. It traces the fate of many infrastructure projects and how “conflict of interest” looms large in the development of the infrastructure sector in India.

Readers will definitely get “a rare insider view”, as the publishers would like people to believe, but the it would have been richer in content had there been insights on, for instance, why the Committee of Infrastructure was allowed to lapse, what were the vested interests that wanted back-end, supporting office of PM-headed Infrastructure Committee shifted from the Planning Commission to the Cabinet Secretariat in 2009 and so forth.

Many a times, Haldea indicates that his honest attempts were thwarted by “entrenched interests”, but, with his known liking for sound logic, he has chosen not to provide any specifics, leaving the reader wanting for more.

Haldea's book had raised high expectations. Perhaps, readers will have to wait for his next one to get juicier, inside stories.

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