On June 15^th, I was invited for a Plant Visit by Mercedes Benz India Ltd (MBIL) to its manufacturing facility in Chakan. (The trip was for another magazine under my purview called ‘Manufacturing Today’.) I was to interview Mr Piyush Arora, Director, Technical, at MBIL so obviously I did some homework. I came across the May 2011 sales figures of Mercedes Benz. The Company sold 561 units in May 2011, a 36% rise over sales figures for May 2010 when it sold 411 units in India. By the way, Mercedes Benz has also recorded 60% growth by selling 3233 units for the January – May 2011 period as compared to the same months in the previous year.

Before you jump to any conclusions, let me clarify that I am not on any PR mission for Mercedes. The point that I am trying to raise – albeit a subtle one – is about a trend. And Mercedes sales figures are just an indication of this trend being a premium car brand.

You will be overwhelmed to see the sales figures of the entire automotive industry put together. The numbers have been rising like never before. Now here’s the connect that you have been looking for. Has our number of roads increased in proportion to the growth of the automotive industry in India? The answer is obviously no. Forget meeting the rising demand, we are still lagging way behind in terms of catching up with the roads infrastructure deficit both in quality and quantity.

At a recent review meeting, the PM has asked NHAI and the road ministry to exceed its target of awarding 7,300km of national highways involving an investment of Rs57,000 crore. He has asked the ministry to prepare a shelf of projects of around 10,000km and another 15,000km to be taken up for preparation of detailed project reports (DPR). Reportedly, the road ministry has pointed out the challenges for the speedy implementation of the road projects. For the industry, besides the long drawn bidding process, getting necessary approvals is a key issue. Then there is land acquisition and the rest of them.

In my previous blog, I have already talked about how IT can be a tool in creating single window clearance for construction projects. The same logic can be applied for road projects as well. In fact, information technology can actually help in the bidding process immensely. And it can help both the government as well as the industry. It can help the government in ironing out discrepancies and making it transparent as well as faster. It can help the industry across the process – right from preparing for the bid to creating the actual bid documents. The tool is out there. The need of the hour is to shake off the old system and think of the bigger picture. The road to future is here. But are we ready to travel on it?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 29th, 2011 at 11:25 am and is filed under Improving Efficiencies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.