Japan built “roads & bridges (to nowhere)” & “(needless) dams” to revive economy.
Late 1980s and 1990s, Japan spent ¥2.89tn to build 15 vast bridges between the islands of Honshu and Shikoku. Many roads, bridges were scantily used leading to criticism of Japanese central planners.
China funded similar projects within China & in other countries for strategic objective & support Chinese raw material industry.
Luckily, India is better placed as we really need to upgrade our roads, bridges & railway.
Easiest way to generate employment is upgradation of Roads, Bridges, & Railways. Public investment can help economy-GDP. But there is limit to Public investment,PPP has to be reconsidered.
Last few years focus shifted from PPP to EPC as no one was even ready to bid for PPP projects and many were defaulting Pre or Post completion of project. Because of unrealistic aggressive bidding by private players & limited flexibility of arbitration settlement in contracts.
After six years of PPP for Railway station redevelopment, not a single project has been allocated.
We need to expand PPP to other areas, like Sports, Tourism, Exhibition facilities.
Let’s be realistic, fair, in both side of contracts & set up mechanism of dispute resolution in PPP projects.