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Sunday, 17 May 2015

Partnership of India Railway and financing of Indian Railway Projects at Border Areas - SUPPLEMENTARY ETHMOTICAN VIEW

After our previous article on the Indian Railways from one of the best Ethmotican, here is another supplementary view by another Ethmotican neuropath:




We should learn from China and Russia with respect to the development of rail and road connectivity.  Both of these countries have one of the roughest and the most inaccessible terrains in the world and to connect these geographical monsters to the mainland of the country is nothing short of an engineering marvel and work of sheer human genius and determination.  How they did this was through "cluster development."  As you would be knowing that development of one sector cannot take place in isolation, i.e. just building railway tracks is not possible and not advised when you do not have properly maintained railway stations, water and electricity connections to all the stations, proper accommodation facilities for workers/staffs/etc.  So, these countries used to take small patches of areas, say of the size of a small taluka or village and used to do the complete development of that area, i.e building of schools, hospitals, government offices, banks, service centers, and most importantly ROADS - all using the help of locals only which gave employment opportunity to the local people thus preventing any sort of revolts or accusations of snatching away the land by the government or private parties.  And this they used to do in a time period of 6 to 9 months and once the same was done, especially building up of roads, then the linking of railway tracks was more or less a cake walk.  And please note that this development was done simultaneously by government teams for 7 to 10 areas in a stretch so that at least 1000 km of line could be covered in 1 year's time.

If we also implement such strategies and use our District Collectors and local government machinery for this, then this can definitely be achieved.  But this will only happen when we bring to a halt the corrupt mechanisms of the government by which tenders are given to hopeless contractors who overbill the government by doing no work and eat away the tax payers money.  Concurrent audit should be made mandatory in all government departments and the audit should be done by both CAG as well as independent external agencies like Ethmos to generate transparency in the dealings of the government and to instill confidence in the public that the money from their sweat and blood is being utilized for their own development.

These are the views of a stupid idealist who can DIE for his ideas.

HAPPY ETHMOS TO ALL.

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