It says a lot about the Maharashtra government’s ability to enforce the law of the land that the leader of a political party is allowed to openly instigate his cadre to vandalise highway toll plazas and ‘thrash’ anyone insisting on collecting the levy. While the State government’s lack of firm action against those engaging in wanton violence is deplorable, no less unfortunate is the sheer opportunism displayed by the rival BJP-Shiv Sena alliance. With Lok Sabha polls just months away, the latter has promised to make Maharashtra ‘toll-free’ if elected to power. The hypocrisy of this stance is obvious considering the fact that it was the same BJP-Shiv Sena’s administration in 1995-99 which initiated the policy of building roads in the State through private participation and charging of toll on users.
The most disturbing implication of such competitive populism is that it casts doubts on the very future of public-private partnerships (PPP) in infrastructure development. India today has a national highways network of nearly 80,000 km and over twice that length in the case of State highways. Given the average cost of building four-lane highways at ₹10 crore/km and the need to add at least 10,000 km a year, neither the Centre nor states are in a position to fund these projects. Quite sensibly, they have opted for the PPP route. In 2012-13, toll revenues from some 14,000 km of national highways — both private build-operate-transfer as well as publicly-funded projects — amounted to ₹9,222 crore. In addition, toll is also levied on projects awarded by states such as the Mumbai-Pune Expressway in Maharashtra, the East Coast Road in Tamil Nadu and the Yamuna Expressway in Uttar Pradesh. Tolls are inevitable and while users may not like them, most are aware of the alternative — the lack of better roads or even just roads at all.
True, there are instances of toll contracts awarded without a transparent bidding process, the concessionaires neglecting maintenance of the roads, and users having to endure delays due to inadequate or inefficient staff at plazas. Likewise, there is justifiable anger against the tolling of two-lane roads and the presence of booths every 20 or 30 km. But these are issues that can be dealt with and not a fundamental flaw with the system of tolls itself. The fierce ‘toll-free’ protests by rabblerousing politicians only send negative signals to investors. The highways sector is already in a mess with developers struggling to raise money in a high interest rate environment — not to speak of delays in land acquisition and in obtaining various statutory clearances. If they aren’t sure of their right to collect tolls against contracts awarded by the Government, one may as well say goodbye to PPPs in highways.