Public policy has often taken calls without looking carefully at the evidence. If community connect, evidence-based approach, application of technology and a deeper understanding of the last-mile challenges went into the making of public policies, the outcomes would be different. A large nation like India with its diversities, needs a deeper understanding of the local context.

It is not that the above four defining success criteria are good only for pro-poor public welfare; it is an imperative even in many infrastructure projects. Many large infrastructure projects often face the challenge of no or low public information and trust. Land acquisition, coordination among various Departments, financial and project management systems, involvement and activeness of State and local governments, alignment of roads, agitation of local communities, often become a cause for delays. If communities were taken into confidence and saw their stake in infrastructure development and the likely gains that will accrue to them, the derailments of timelines will reduce.

Similarly, opportunities of employment in manufacturing and services need a well-articulated policy to develop the hinterland. Indirect employment and opportunities should be a planned activity with the active collaboration of the community and its re-skillling, wherever required. Tata Steel’s efforts in Jamshedpur and its adjoining areas secured a labour militancy free workforce for the company leading to strides in steel-making.

There is each year, many such reports on the benevolence of the business community from Gujarat, giving big gifts to their workers, a legacy of the cooperation movement in that State. Making employees and local communities fully integral to the development process is the only way forward for a more shared growth.

We have examples of failures or delays and some successes in infrastructure as well which offer lessons. Earlier efforts in sectors like telecom through BSNL and the efforts to reach the optic fibre to every panchayat, was not matched by local level public information as to what outcomes citizens could expect, when will it happen in which panchayat, and who would be responsible for maintenance and provision of last mile connectivity.

Such non-accountable approaches lead to wasteful expenditure with missed timelines and failed outcomes. These lessons ought to be learnt in further engagements.

We have examples from the Indian Railways that is still implementing decade old projects, even though the top construction companies are vendors. Besides uncertain financial management, these projects also suffer due to the time it takes for land acquisition.

The power distribution companies (Discoms) and their inability to improve performance in spite of multiple efforts at new innovative financing support, points to the fundamental need for partnerships with local governments and communities and to make them partners in improved realisation of dues for uninterrupted power supply. The failures of UDAY to reach benchmarks must be fully analysed and a community connect approach needs to be attempted in future packages. Nagaland’s Village Development Boards did this well many years ago.

Local communities often do not know the purpose and how lives will change and incomes will rise due to better connectivity. The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) projects have done very well in improving connectivity and logistics across the country.

While the NHAI has been a new opportunity of growth and new investments, challenges in the form of litigation in land acquisition, creation of facilities for villagers’ movements across highways like underpasses, toll free movement rights, drainage alongside highways are examples where better coordination and connect would improve the highways quality, cost and usage parameters, and the convenience of adjoining villages.

Such interface may even help in reducing the cost of land acquisition which is today a major challenge in NHAI, accounting for 30-40 per cent of the cost of greenfield projects.

An exemplar project

In the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY) programme for rural roads the clear policy decision was that not one rupee will be paid for land acquisition and if some private land came in the alignment of the village connectivity, the person will have to willingly transfer the land for the road. A lot of explaining, alignment discussions, transverse walk on the alignment, are mandatory requirements in PMGSY project design, creating a stake for the local community.

Critical assessment of draft detailed project reports with GIS mapping by technical institutions like IITs and NITs across all States and projects ensures quality at reasonable costs. Encouragement to local materials and new technologies including waste plastic use in road construction is part of the approval system leading to the World Bank studies projecting PMGSY as an exemplar project globally.

The Gram Swaraj Abhiyan approach to reach seven public services (electricity, LPG, bank account, LED bulbs, immunisation, life and accident insurance) to 63,974 villages with a large population of deprived communities is a development paradigm that is as relevant to any other sector, whether public or private. It is a classic example of a whole of government, whole of society, community led, technology based and human resource based effective monitoring for time-bound results.

Providing electricity to households required long distance cable connection and it was not unusual at all for whole villages doing physical labour together to reach services to distant areas. Top oil company executives, bank mangers, REC engineers, realised the enormity of the task and the cooperation of communities if trust is the basis of partnership. Every State/UT extended full support as did the panchayats and women’s collectives under the Livelihood Mission. Monthly Ujjwala gas connections moved up from 10 lakh to over 50 lakh during the campaign. Electricity connections similarly moved up from 10 lakh to 19 lakh per month.

Implementation timelines

If applied in the infrastructure projects, implementation timeline can improve manifold. Local communities are rational entities and we need relationships of trust. Civil society organisations can also pitch in for effective service delivery. The Eleventh Schedule of the Constitution provides for 29 sectors for oversight of the gram panchayats and the Twelfth Schedule provides for 18 sectors for the supervision by urban local bodies.

If these institutions are strengthened with a conscious effort to provide space for community, cooperative and women’s organisations in the partnership, all sectors will gain. Besides improved financial management, better technical bidding documents, technology based planning and monitoring systems, infrastructure projects can improve timelines of completion and quality of planning and implementation through an organic community connect at the last mile.

The writer is a retired civil servant. The views are personal

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