Trivandrum Rising - Our city tomorrow and how we can help it develop.

A Golden Goose and Two White Elephants

2012-01-24T23:39:00.000-05:00

Over the last few months, the newly elected State Government has pursued a policy of abject neglect of vital projects like the $ 2 Billion Vizhinjam deep water port, while focusing on sure-fire financial disasters such as the proposed mass transit system in Ernakulam and a catastrophically expensive bullet train line.

A Happy New Year everyone and hopefully 2012 will not be as much drought-prone in terms of articles as 2011 was, since I have finally completed my work at MIT. I know that the traditional year-end wrap up and the look-ahead articles are still woefully pending but those should be posted in the next few days, hopefully!

Although I am in the midst of wrapping things up here at MIT and moving to a new apartment in Cambridge, there is this one issue that I felt couldn't wait much longer.

Scanning through the Kerala media of late, one would be forgiven for thinking that the State's single large infrastructure project has vanished off the face of the planet. It finds no mention in the news of recent weeks, which have tended to be dominated in equal measure by old men demanding monopoly rights to play with their toy trains and even older dams that threatened to unleash disaster but very evidently didn't. It has been fully six months since the financial bids for the $ 2 Billion Vizhinjam deep water port were received. Since then, the bids submitted by Indian port giant, Adani Ports, and the consortium of Indian conglomerate Welspun and Australian construction giant, Leighton, have been gathering dust, probably in some back drawer at the office of the nodal agency, VISL. Why? Because, everyone has been sitting around, sipping chai and munching biskoots, till due clearances were received from the Union Ministries of External Affairs, Defence and Home. The Defence Ministry's clearance was received on November 15th while the Ministry of External Affairs gave its nod to Leighton on December 8.Ever since the start, it was evident to everyone, except the powers-that-be in the Secretariat, that Mundra would flunk the Home Ministry for whatever reason, because they have flunked every single time they were examined in the last year or so, on no less than four separate occasions. Despite this, the State Government chose not to pressure the Home Ministry to speed things up, perhaps nervous about the inevitable outcome, and waited till January 3, when the latter let the axe finally drop on Adani, leaving the Welspun-Leighton consortium as the lone bidder for the project. Despite clear precedents existing for single bids being successfully awarded in ports and other major infrastructure projects and the requisite mechanism being included in the bid documents, the Government has refused to take a decision on awarding the bid even though three weeks have elapsed since things were made very easy for them. Although it was announced that a decision would be made in the Cabinet meeting on the 11th of January, nothing transpired - except more chai and biskoots!

And so, the current Government's sordid attitude towards the one project that could change the future economic trajectory of the State continues. When the Government recently, convened a much-trumpeted seminar to discuss infrastructure, it named four "priority projects". Shockingly, Vizhinjam didn't make that list. Surprise, surprise! It seems that land acquisition for the project has also ground to a halt since the change of Government while no progress has been made in tying up the funding needed for developing the infrastructure in the current "landlord" model of development. Whereas, the State has been very willing to take its begging bowl to international funding agencies like the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA), the ADB or the World Bank for other projects, it has instead opted to take its most important infrastructure project to the commercial banks which is a much more expensive and risky proposition. Admittedly, this was first proposed by the previous Government, but then they are historically wary of international development finance institutions. And despite making a lot of noise about awarding the construction tender in March (yes, really, less than two months from now!), it is not even clear whether the project consultant for the construction aspect of the port, AECOM, has visited the site yet. All in all, one suspects that precious little has happened while the powers-that-be have focused their attention on the more "important" projects (I wonder whether India's deepest port even makes the Top 10?!). And to add insult to injury, the Ports Minister has been desperately trying to divert a proposed ship repair and building yard that Cochin Shipyard Limited wants to locate at Vizhinjam because of its deep draft, proximity to shipping lanes and the port itself, to Azhikkal which has none of these attributes. Fortunately, opposition from quarters ranging from the local Panchayat to MP Dr Shashi Tharoor, together with the the project proponent's inevitable realization that only Vizhinjam or its immediate neighbor Poovar would be suitable seem to have thrown a permanent spanner in this machination (or so we hope! A report on the final location of the yard which was supposed to have been released by November 30 has not seen the light of day yet.). In short, from the prevailing attitude and interest, Vizhinjam may be mistaken for a project in a neighboring State, if not across the border in Pakistan! Seems like this is one golden goose that nobody can see for what it can offer....sigh!

Now, we can't say that our elected Government has been all silent on the question of infrastructure. No, they have been very vocal and busy indeed, the only detail seems to be that they have a curious propensity to focus on pachyderms of the white variety.

Indeed the current Government has been going to extremely legally tenuous links to keep one of them on its feet, barely. In a State where even the smallest PWD tender's legality and transparency is questioned, the State Government has just broken all conventions and regulations to award a Rs 300 Crore assignment without even the pretense of a bid. Cabinet Ministers and even Chief Ministers have been hauled to court and even to jail for far smaller contracts, but apparently this is okay because otherwise the apparent 'god of mass transit' would walk off the project because he believe that his pet DMRC shouldn't be put through the minor "indignity" of a global bid. Mr Sreedharan (the afore-mentioned divine entity) and his minions believe that even the Rs 300 Crores or 6% of the currently tossed up project cost of Rs 5000 Crores is a "discounted price" as opposed to the usual 12.5% that they apparently rob from everyone else! That sort of consultancy fees would blow the socks off even the priciest global consultants, the likes of Bechtel or PB whose fees for the greatest urban engineering project of all time - Boston's $ 22 Billion (Rs 110,000 Crores) Big Dig - was between 7-11%. The Big Dig was in a very expensive market, whereas DMRC's costs, bench marked to Indian labor costs, which form the bulk of the project management consultant's costs, would be much lower. Personally, I have only heard of figures well south of 5% for these services, especially for large infrastructure projects. Whatever be the case, it is ludicrous to imagine that a contract of this size can be awarded without a bid. To put this in perspective this amount is more than the original tender for the entire Trivandrum Road Improvement Project! It's not as if there are no other agencies executing mass transit projects in India. The Hyderabad and Mumbai mass transit projects are doing very well without DMRC, and there is no reason why any one of dozens of the major consultants around the world could not offer a better price than the DMRC.

Even the over eagerness of the DMRC and, its newly retired ex-boss and the most recent addition to the Indian pantheon, should raise an eyebrow or two. When the prime proponent himself has gone on record to say that heavy rail mass transit systems are not suitable for cities with populations less than 4 Million people, it is mystifying why the same concept is flogged for a city with less than half that number. The small print is that the project in Ernakulam would utilize light rail technology, which is essentially an elevated tram and bears little resemblance to its bigger cousin in Delhi. It will have just 2-3 small cars per train and have a fraction of the carrying capacity of the systems in Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai or Mumbai. Furthermore, other than a few extensions proposed in the future, there is still no comprehensive plan for a network. A single line mass transit network is a recipe for failure, as has been made painfully evident in many cases across the world, including our very own Kolkata Metro, of which Sreedharan was part of decades ago.

What everyone's expecting.....Heavy rail "Metro"

(Courtesy: Asiabizz.com)

The reality - Elevated Light Rail!!

(Light rail in Charlotte, NC; courtesy: Oldtrails.com)

Essentially a gigantic hoodwink is in progress here, which the proponents have realized cannot be funded through a partnership with a private investor because its is clearly financially infeasible and hence is being funded by a combination of State and Central funds and a massive loan from JICA. And one wonders where all this money is going to come from. The mass transit project essentially benefits only the city where it is located, as opposed to a project like Vizhinjam which benefits the entire State's economy and that of the nation itself.Will the State contribution and the money needed to pay back the JICA loan be collected through local taxes, as it should be, or funded from the State treasury, from everyone's taxes, as it is most likely to be? A decision of this nature cannot and should not be left to the demands of one individual, however revered he be. What happens if this individual changes his mind tomorrow or becomes unable to participate in the project for any reason, will we leave the project unfinished??! No, a project of this scale has to be dependent on capable agencies and robust management structures, not on individuals! And the DMRC has itself been in trouble with the top Government auditor, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India's office, which has accused it of lax safety procedures and of being a fiefdom of its own (Sreedharan who abruptly left office at the odd age of 79, denies these allegations and says that "only results matter" while the Government conveniently refused to table the report in Parliament). Sadly, both the Government and the Opposition, not to mention the media and the general public, seem to be in thrall to an individual. If one were so inclined, one could suspect this gentleman is most interested in a cushy retirement posting close to his ancestral home but then he is a most honorable man!

And as if one white elephant riding the rails and wasting the tax-payers' money wasn't enough for Kerala, the Government has just started planning for another one, which seems more a white whale than a mere pachyderm! While the price tag for the light-rail-dressed-up-as-a-Metro was about Rs 6,000 Crores, the estimates for the proposed "High Speed Rail Corridor" is expected to be north of Rs 1,00,000 Crores! Having written in detail on how ludicrous and potentially fiscally disastrous this project would be, a couple of months ago, I am not going into the subject in detail but there are a few questions that neither the starry-eyed Government nor its 'usual suspect' consultants, DMRC and INKEL, seem to be interested in even pondering, let alone answering.

Firstly, where is the market study to substantiate a project that will cost more than 8 times the annual Plan for the whole State? Bullet trains compete in speed and for passengers with airlines. In 2011, despite the massive expansion in airline and airline capacity capacity, the total number of airline passengers in India was equivalent to just about 5% of the nation's population. Since many people fly multiple times, the actual number of people who use airlines and hence would pay a premium for speed would be much lower. So are we suggesting that an investment that would essentially bankrupt the State be spent on a project that would benefit less than 5% of the population? Not to parody Obama and his 1% Vs 99% war cry, but in a country that still struggles with poverty, unemployment and even access to electricity and drinking water, there are surely better uses of any available funds. Next, other than providing high speed travel for a small section of people to and from a small number of stations, perhaps ten in all between Trivandrum and Kasargode, the bullet train provides no economic benefit because it cannot carry freight and hence cannot reduce the burden on Kerala's highways that are literally bursting with traffic and which will just get more congested when the 4.5 Million TEU Vizhinjam Container Transshipment Terminal comes on line. Even if high speed rail travel is a desirable end, there are ways and means of achieving speeds of up to 200-250 Km/hr even on conventional rails that are not only cheaper but can also carry freight. Finally, whoever decided that Kerala needs High Speed Rail? Was a complete transportation study of the State ever conducted to identify current and future demand patterns and the best technological solutions to meet them? No, of course not. When we have our resident spin doctors, the DMRC, advising bullet trains (we should be thankfully that they haven't pulled mag-lev out of their hats just yet!) as the magic bullet (pun intended!) to solve all of Kerala's transportation woes, no one will question it. Of course, sir yes sir!

At this rate, we will have the same agency suggesting how to build the replacement for that aging dam north of Idukki and even how to save Malayalam cinema from a rampaging Santosh Pandit! And our well-meaning leaders will legislate a path clear for them. It's high time that we see through the smoke-and-mirrors act and understand which projects are realistic and will bring benefits to the State and which ones are very expensive pipe dreams.

In the past few months, there has been a clear preference for the fanciful instead of the feasible and we have heard all sorts of ideas such as flying pod-cars, which should have gone to the trash bin not the State Cabinet. There has also been a distressing tendency for projects associated with Trivandrum like Vizhinjam, Technocity, the monorail (which, as opposed to its cousin in Ernakulam seems to have vanished into feasibility study oblivion), the International Convention Center and the Life Sciences Park to find scant mention in the Government's list of priorities, if any mention at all. Despite the fact that the Transport Minister was elected from the city, Trivandrum is still short of 10 Volvo buses which were paid for with JNNURM funds. Except for a few voices like Dr Tharoor, there's hardly a mention of Trivandrum even when a battle rages over mundane things as garbage disposal. When this Government got elected in May, I had a faint hope that things would be different this time around and that the State Capital and its projects would get fair attention. Alas, how wrong I was!! If Piravam doesn't vote as it should, we may be in for four more years of the same!

The Lack of a Vision a.k.a How Things are Done in Kerala

2011-12-04T11:37:00.001-05:00

While the need to have a Vision is often emphasized for successful organizations, the same holds even more for public policy making. Coherent visions are often absent in mission-critical projects in Kerala and this leads to short-sighted plans which often leave much to be desired.

On the occasion of having completed 11,315 days of existence, I took a few minutes off to try and figure out what was my vision for the rest of my life. Since it was still a bit grandiose, my thoughts shifted to why that most essential of all components of a strategic plan for a State or a City was patently absent from how the lives of the citizens of Trivandrum were being planned out by their elected Government and the legions of public servants. Rather than meander through a whole forest of sorry examples of vision-devoid planning and execution, let me just focus on three immediate ones to drive home my point to you, the recipients of this sort of unimaginative thinking.

The first example is everyone's favorite infrastructure project, the deep water port and container transshipment terminal proposed at Vizhinjam in the southern part of the city. After reading through in detail, the plethora of reports produced for the project, I couldn't help but come to the saddening conclusion that the highly-paid consultants of the project had failed to realize the true potential of what could be India's most important hub port. Here again, there is a plain lack of vision, which should have been set by the Government or its nodal agency, VISL. Of course, the consultants, led by IFC, were being paid to help come with this as well but their attempts to evolve a vision and a mission, neither are ambitious enough nor are they connected to market realities. In short, Vizhinjam has been sold very short as yet another container port which has to compete with Colombo, Dubai and even the likes of Ernakulam, on mere cost terms. A good vision would have enabled the studies to reflect the fact that with its advantages of proximity to the world's busiest shipping lane, its natural draft and the lack of a need for any major maintenance dredging, not does Vizhinjam have an inherent cost and market advantage, but it could develop into a hub port for the entire Indian Ocean region which has great strategic and economic importance (for example, the fact that the bulk of the world's crude oil and coal sources lie along its rim!). The report played down the potential for ancillary activities such as ship-building (fortunately, CSL doesn't seem to have paid much attention to the report!) and the establishment of a power plant based on imported coal (Kerala can only produce about 40% of even its current power requirement!) No, a real vision would have seen Vizhinjam's true potential to be an economic engine to transform the entire State's economy by introducing for the first time in its history, global logistics connectivity at the best rates possible in India and the promise of abundant power that is a key requirement for economic development. With few, if any, natural resources, Kerala and Trivandrum can only follow the Singapore model which depends on great logistics, abundant and high quality human resources and power availability to foster economic development to propel it far beyond what the rest of India can achieve at the current pace.

For this to happen, the Government needs to accept that Vizhinjam is the one Top Priority for it and not joint-third most important project or whatever. From the evident lack of pressure that the State has been putting on the Center to complete the small matter of the security clearance of the final two bidders, one would even suspect if the UDF wishes that if they wait long enough, these bidders would also go away?! If one also factors in the Cabinet's googly in asking CSL to consider Azhikkal rather than Vizhinjam/Poovar as a location for their Rs 1500 Crore expansion, it would seem that their "vision" is see Vizhinjam eke out a living as a fishing hamlet for all of perpetuity! In a better world, one would hope that the Government would complete land acquisition and infrastructure development through budgetary support (rather than wait for debt to be raised, which can happen only after the bid is finalized and the environmental clearance has been realized, by August 2012 at the earliest!), create a land bank in Trivandrum district for industrial development related to the port and start to put in place the transportation infrastructure necessary for extending the hinterland of the project out across Kerala and into Southern Tamilnadu (rather than only two districts of Kerala as the current project report would have us believe!).

If only the Government had gone in to conceptualize an economic development plan (a Vision!) for the State, which could have then translated down to specific initiatives such as those described above. That would have been cheaper and far more impactful than all those fanciful conference and "investor meets" that the State's industrial promotion agencies host each year.

Our next example, is far closer to home. A few days ago, the media reported that a "Master Plan 2031" for Trivandrum was in the making. In fact, The Hindu reported that:

The first draft of a master plan for Thiruvananthapuram is expected to be submitted to the government by December 31.

The new Thiruvananthapuram master plan 2031 will be a document outlining the city's development agenda for the next 20 years, focusing on the land use pattern, traffic and transportation, infrastructure, solid waste management and sanitation, which will be revised every five years.

A one-day workshop was convened here by the Corporation and the Town and Country Planning Department on Saturday to discuss the preparation of the plan.Officials of various departments; Corporation councillors; chairpersons of standing committees; Corporation officials as well as members of the 19 working groups constituted for giving regional inputs on development issues, trends, area-specific development plans and projects for proposed master plan, took part in the workshop.

It sounds like this was another "babu-only" party and doesn't sound like it had avenues for participation by NGOs or individuals who could add a lot of value. I recall that when this whole exercise had been kicked off in 2009, it has been a multi-lateral effort involving the Government, the Trivandrum Corporation, surrounding municipalities and panchayats, NGOs and individuals and I had been lucky enough to participate and present at the brain-storming session. Today, it seems to have been whittled down to a closed-door study which is unlikely to spend much time and effort on such concepts as a Vision. The exercise had begun by looking at the metropolitan agglomeration of Trivandrum, referred to as the Trivandrum Capital Region, but from the way the Corporation is running the show now, it seems that the scope has shrunk back down to just the Corporation which is highly counter-productive considering that the Corporation has expanded multiple times in the last couple of decades and that projects of manifest importance such as Technocity and the IISER & IISST lie just outside its limits. It is safe to assume that by 2021, forget 2031, the Corporation would have expanded to encompass these areas and more. Therefore, the Master Plan for 2031 should look at the entire urban agglomeration and then some, extending from Varkala to Neyyatinkara, and to Nedumangad/Vithura in the East.

A real urban area master plan needs to start with a forward-looking Vision statement which then distills down to specific initiatives in land use planning, density, urban structure, transportation, economic and social development and utility planning. For example, it could start with, "in 2031, Trivandrum will be a metropolis of 4 Million people which provides a world-class, economically vibrant, cosmopolitan, equitable and sustainable lifestyle to its citizens." It should be forward looking and should plan for the Trivandrum of 25 years in the future not the city of today or 5 years from now. In this way, unlike past attempts at a master plan which were already out of date by the time they were promulgated, the 2031 master plan at least will have a chance to be relevant at least till 2021!

Finally, we come to the recent spate of "transportation" proposals in and around Trivandrum, which include a monorail system for the city, a bullet train linking Trivandrum to Chennai and now, lo and behold, a "pod-car" or Personal Transportation system! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, some hare-brain wants to bring Tom Cruise's car from the Minority Report and use it as a substitute for the monorail. No matter that PRT solutions are used for localized transportation needs such as within airports or within highly dense Central Business Districts, or that they do not have anything near the capacity demanded by a viable mass transit system. Let's ignore these flights of fancy for now, the main concern is that while the Government talks about all those thousands of Crores of investment, there is no coherent plan in place, let alone a vision!

Consider the monorail, it cropped all of a sudden, perhaps based on comments made by experts like Dr N Sreenivasan. But the Government took a pretty unilateral call on not just the alignment of the system but also the technology to be deployed. It mandated NATPAC (the one saving grace thus far, NATPAC is a competent choice as opposed to certain agencies whose standard reply to any question, even "what's the day today?", is "Metro Rail"!!) to submit a preliminary report on the Balaramapuram - Attingal route. This is sort of like a patient coming, complaining of a stomach ache, and the doctor immediately prepping him for surgery without bothering to find out if his ailment is just a bad lunch!

If the issue in question was traffic congestion, the solution should have started with an analysis of the traffic situation in Trivandrum and its likely evolution over the next 15-20 years. This in turn depends on a variety of factors such as the urban plan (which is still on the drawing board!), demographics, socioeconomic development and physical environment. The outcome of this study would be an identification of where, what and when transportation solutions are needed. Is monorail the only choice? Could a cheaper system like BRTS work or do we need to plan for a higher-capacity system like heavy-rail MRTS? Instead of restricting NATPAC to a narrow scope (monorail on a particular corridor), the study should have been much more comprehensive. A study of this nature in 2002, although confined to the then limits of the Corporation, led to the conceptualiztion of TCRIP. In the ten years which have passed since then, it has already become insufficient as evidenced by the congestion experienced on the newly widened roads!

Urban planning and transportation planning are a classic chicken and egg combination. One feeds off the other, yet can influence it as well. For example, a new monorail line is usually planned depending on the current and projected urban structure (to connect major hubs and dense residential catchments) but this line can also influence how the city develops because new developments tend to cluster around the mass transit line. The current "one route" mass transit system is utter folly, as evidenced by so many examples in India and across the world, where single lines have failed because of their inability to provide door step to door step connectivity. Only a multi-route network with subsidiary bus services integrated into it can provide a economical, viable alternative to the personal automobile and thus achieve success. As the first step to this, the Government needs to have a vision for the metropolitan area which needs to be translated into an effective urban transportation system.

Sometimes, the big picture is lost when one focuses on short term gratification. The question is whether this Government would like to be known as one which dreamed up a gazillion Crores worth of fanciful, never-to-be-implemented projects or one which actually executed fewer but impactful projects such as Vizhinjam and a true mass transit system which improved the lives of citizens for generations to come.

Is there a Vision in the room yet?

A Solution for High Speed on Rails?

2011-11-06T13:09:00.000-05:00

Since the previous article on the High Speed Rail proposal, I have received a lot of feedback from many of you, through comments here, on SSC and on the Trivandrum Updates blog, which is the best one-stop shop for news about Trivandrum!

Let me thank everyone who chipped in and all those who didn't but still took the time to read my thoughts. While many of you supported the idea, there were a lot of folks who saw the current proposal for the bloated white whale (Moby Dick, please excuse again! that it is.

After a bit of further thought on the subject and a few discussions with like-minded friends of mine, here's a short proposal for the powers-that-be.

Without jumping straight to the HSR option, it would do the Government well to appoint a consultant to study all options for implementing "high speed and cost-efficient travel" along the North-South axis in Kerala. This could be HSR, mixed-use rail, an Expressway or even jet-skis on our canals! The message is simple - DO NOT discount any option without studying it properly
If Rail is selected as the best option, adopt a phased approach rather than move directly to the ludicrously expensive HSR
Acquire a 30 m wide RoW either along the existing rail alignment from Trivandrum to Kasargode or along a new greenfield alignment (say, Trivandrum - Kottarakara - Punalur - Muvattupuzha - Kanjikode - Mallapuram - Kannur - Kasargode, with spurs to Ernakulam and Kozhikode) where the land acquisition will be the least expensive.
Construct two electrified broad-guage lines with an operating speed of at least 200 Km/Hr
Operate Acela-like high speed train-sets at up to 250 Km/Hr
Also operate high-speed freight trains to between Trivandrum and Ernakulam, Coimbatore, Chennai and Bangalore with containers and perishable goods being the predominant cargo
All existing semi-high speed trains, such as the Rajdhani, Duronto and Jan Shatabdi can be run on the new tracks as well
In the future, say 10 years hence, if a market emerges for true HSR, two tracks, either at grade or elevated, can be constructed along the same RoW since no new land acquisition will be needed

It looks like the HSR wave in India is more a knee-jerk reaction to China's splurge on the technology rather than on economic fundamentals. I would guess that the feasibility study will point to only a few viable routes, if any, such as Mumbai - Ahmedabad, Delhi - Agra (?) and Chennai - Bangalore. These would work if the Union Government is ready to invest dozens of Billions of dollars into it. At this time, I would doubt that. For a comparison, the total cost of the National Highway Development Program may be of the order of Rs 150,000 Crores ($ 32 Billion) over the last decade or more, whereas implementing all six HSR corridors proposed now would cost at least $ 200 Billion! If the projects go out on the BOT route, it seems unlikely that there will be any takers without massive subsidies (essentially all the capital expenditure!) and if at all, only for the few routes identified above, not for less attractive ones like the stretch in Kerala.

On the other hand, the phased, hybrid rail development that I have outline above could be set in motion at much lower cost and almost immediately. The principal initial expenditure would be land acquisition. The RoW would need about (600 Km X 25 m = 15 Sq. Km = 3750 acres). If the alignment is chosen to run through sparsely populated interior areas with low land valuations, the average cost could be kept down to about Rs 1 Crore/Acre. This means that all the land could be acquired for about Rs 4000 Crores, or if it is done in two phases, Phase I (Trivandrum - Ernakulam) would cost about 1500 Crores. As mentioned in the previous article, the rail system itself would cost about Rs 5000 Crores.

Since this is not a pure HSR project, the Indian Railways could be roped in. IR does not have the funds, so the State would have to chip with most of the cash, probably through a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV), which raises debt or issues bonds. Additionally, because of the freight traffic involved, agencies like ConCor and the operator of the Vizhinjam deep-water port could be roped in as equity partners. We could even try to bring in a private operator for the new rail system, who would maintain and operate the system in exchange for fees charged to the operators such as IR, Concor etc.

This would be a complex, hybrid deal with multiple stake-holders but it would probably be able to raise the funds needed in a practical period of time because it can tap more than one source. Rather than leaving the implementation to IR (whose record in Kerala is pathetic) or to a new Central Government entity (for which Kerala would be the lowest priority), this option takes the development of the system into the hands of the stake-holders who are most interested in it - the people of Kerala and key business entities like the Vizhinjam port.

Sound very logical, doesn't it. But to move to a pragmatic solution like this, the State Government needs to take a step back from its current fixation on HSR as the ONLY solution and snap out of the spell spun by DMRC, which seems to have been anointed the one-stop shop for all transportation solutions, even those with no relation to mass transit! The latter has a lot of vested interest in pushing its one-size-fits-all solution, as is evident from its proposal to use Standard gauge (used in the Delhi Metro) instead of the Broad Guage (used in the rest of the Indian railway network), which means that the two systems will never be compatible - forget having trains run on either network.

It's so early in the day for HSR (nothing more than a presentation, yet another shell company and a Face Book quip or two!) that the State Government still has the option of stepping back from economic suicide. Now, if only they would listen.......!

Do We Need Bullet Trains?

2011-11-02T17:24:00.000-04:00

Over the last few days, a High Speed Rail system linking Trivandrum to Bangalore and Chennai, as well as to Mangalore, has been proposed. While this seems like a sure-shot way to enter the 21st century in terms of infrastructure on the heels of Japan, France and, most recently, China, do we really need bullet trains at cost of over Rs 160,000 Crores ($ 34 Billion)?!

Act One: The Government of India decides in 2009 to set up High Speed Rail lines along six corridors. However, the only corridor proposed in South India is Bangalore-Chennai-Coimbatore-Ernakulam. Apparently some gent at the Railways forget the State's Capital and biggest city!

Act Two: Last week, a high-level meeting in Trivandrum, chaired by the CM decided to go ahead with the implementation of a High Speed Rail corridor between Trivandrum and Mangalore, via Ernakulam at the trifling cost of Rs 160,000 Crores. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, One-Hundred-and-Sixty-Thousand-Crores, about 13 times Kerala State's annual plan for 2011-12!

Act Three: The Central Government decides to extend the proposed HSR line to Trivandrum (no surprise, they want the line to have some chance of success right?) and amend the pre-feasibility study accordingly. Our enterprising CM immediately claims that he saved Rs 50,000 Crores on his Facebook page! That would be like my claiming that I just saved a few million bucks because I decided not to buy that Gulfstream jet which I could never afford anyways! What a joke!

Jokes apart, the gazillion rupee question is do we need bullet trains? This project will cost almost as the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Kerala, that's a rather humbling figure.

What is High Speed Rail?

HSR is typically defined as a passenger rail system capable of operating at speeds exceeding 200 Km/hr, although many systems in Japan, France, Germany and China operate in excess of 300 Km/hr.

HSR's history began with the stream-lined steam trains of the early 20th Century, built up through diesel-electric and gas turbine propelled trains in the middle of the century before truly breaking out through the electric-powered Japanese Shinkansens and French TGVs.Thereafter, HSR has spread throughout Europe, in a limited manner in the US and now to China. It's now perceived as a viable alternative to short and medium-haul air travel and is often a favored public investment for Governments looking to pump in money to boost their economies.

And how is HSR different from ordinary rail systems? The most obvious difference is the rolling stock, those sleek bullet-shaped trains using stream-lined, high-power locomotives and high-tech passenger cars. But the railway lines themselves are high-tech, usually continuously welded and replete with sensors. The track alignment also needs to be devoid of sharp bends and gradients which means that the route usually has to go over, under or through obstacles like roads, rivers, hills and urban areas. All of this means, that HSR is very expensive when compared to conventional rail, perhaps as much as ten times more.

Why HSR?

HSR competes with road and air travel. In the case of the former, HSR has higher capacity, higher speed of travel and is much more environmentally friendly but is suitable only for inter-city travel as opposed to intra-city travel, where mass transit systems such as monorails and MRTS comes into play. Against aircraft, which are much faster, HSR is competitive at distances of up to 600 Km, where the sum of time taken to travel to and at airports and actual flight times, is often greater than time spent on HSR because they tend to run from city center to city center and seldom experience congestion-related delays.

This sounds pretty good in Kerala, where the distance from Trivandrum to Ernakulam is about 220 Km, to Kozhikode is about 400 Km and to Kasargode is 560 Km. Our roads and rail lines transport very high volumes of passenger traffic. A North-South HSR line sounds a no-brainer. Right?

Well, no.

First of all, let's consider the price-point of HSR. A ticket is likely to cost at least 2-3 times more than the fare of an air-conditioned chair car today. In fact, it would be comparable to the air-fare between Trivandrum and Ernakulam, which is upwards of Rs 1000. This means that the demand for this service is likely to be similar to that for air travel between the two cities, which is not exactly breaking down the gates at this point. One might argue that the Japanese and European HSR systems carry billions of passengers a year, but those are nations with 20 times the per-capita GDP of India and where air travel is wide-spread as opposed to the less than 5% of our population that uses that mode of travel. The best comparison is China, where despite massive funding by the Government, the HSR network's high ticket rates are proving to be quite a headache. (A ticket between Shanghai and Beijing costs upwards of $ 90, compared to the per-capita income of $ 4,300)

Next is the gargantuan cost of the system. With a price tag of Rs 160,000 Crores (let's discount our CM's creative accounting, looks like that day at IIM-K has gone to his head!), it looks more like the white whale (Moby Dick, please excuse!) than a white elephant. To put this into perspective, this project will cost 40 times what is needed to build the Vizhinjam project out to all its phases or will place each of us (man, woman and child) under Rs 60,000 of debt!

Of course, Kerala has its own quirks such as the paucity of land and the paranoia about access controlled transportation systems. After all, one of the slogans that de-railed the much-touted predecessor of HSR, the Expressway project, was the fact that it would divide the State into two. Guess what, HSR tracks are strictly fenced off (you don't want an auto straying into the path of train barreling down at 350 Km/hr), so the same (absolutely hare-brained) concerns are likely to be raised again. Plus, a 20 meter (that's what the proponents claim!) wide strip of land, 600 Km long would need to be acquired. Hmmm, about 12 Square Kms = 3000 acres.

Finally, does it all make any financial sense? What would it cost to build and operate. Let's consider a simple scenario of Trivandrum - Ernakulam, which would see the highest traffic and would be built first. The Capital Cost is estimated at around Rs 45,000 Crores, let's take Rs 50,000 Crores. Since the Central Government has not committed to any funding ( and is unlikely to, considering the state of its finances), the money will have to be raised from development finance institutions (read World Bank, ADB, JICA etc) and from the commercial markets. Even if we assume a tame interest rate of 7%, the interest cost alone works out to a whopping Rs 3500 Crores a year. And then HSR systems have high costs of operation and maintenance, with many components including the trains themselves being imported. 5% of the capital cost would be a good figure to start with, and this works out to another Rs 2500 Crores. So, a conservative total of Rs 6000 Crores/year. And this without allotting funds to repay the loans or for maturity of project-based bonds!

How much money will it make? The current proposal talks about trains every 30 minutes in either direction during 7 peak hours (6 - 10 AM and 5 - 8 PM) and every hour during the rest of the day. A total of 31 X 2 = 62 trains a day. The proposal also says that each train will have slightly over 800 seats. That means the total carrying capacity would be around 50,000 passengers a day, and assuming 90% occupancy (!!), the HSR would carry about 45,000 passengers each day. Let's assume everyone pays the end-to-end fare of Rs 1000/trip, leading to a daily revenue of Rs 4.5 Crores and an annual revenue of Rs 1642 Crores.

(Of course, this assumes that there are 45,000 people out there who would be willing to pay a thousand bucks to travel from Trivandrum to Ernakulam and vice versa. To put that into perspective, that is probably an order of magnitude more than the number of travelers between the two cities using air travel or air-conditioned train cars.)

So that leaves HSR slightly under Rs 4400 Crores in the red! Even if we only look at O&M costs (if Sree Padmanabhaswamy contributes the capital!), an annual subsidy of over Rs 1000 Crores is needed to keep the system running.

In case, I made it over complex, the HSR is NOT financially viable. (Not that such minor details have dissuaded proponents of projects like the one Mr Sreedharan (Yes, he is behind HSR as well! Surprise, surprise!) is pushing in the second city of the State.)

Is there a Better Alternative?

I can already imagine many of you, especially those who fervently believe that the current incumbent of Cliff House coined the word "development", would be grumbling that I am being a bitter nay-sayer. In my defense, I am not trying to shoot this down and propose that all of us crawl along congested rail tracks and roads till the end of time, I have a couple of possible alternatives which will not push the State into Chapter 11.

First, let's assume the ideal case that the Government of India agrees to take care of all the funding, at least for the Trivandrum - TN border (to Coimbatore) stretch. The project goes out on a BOT basis and a private developer takes the bid, no doubt with substantial (hopefully, less than 100%) Viability Gap Funding from GoI, possibly as an annuity. In this case, the O&M subsidy could be shared between GoI and GoK. This could be potentially met from the extra tax revenue of economic developed spurred by the new HSR system. Given the state of the Central Government's finances, with the National Highway program running out of steam and the Indian Railways on the verge of bankruptcy, this sounds an unlikely scenario as of now. And then again, even if GoI coughed up the money, that would be eventually out of our pockets.

Second, we could go ahead with building two new tracks from Trivandrum to Ernakulam (and to the Kerala - TN border) on a fresh alignment which suits HSR. However, the tracks will be built to a lower specification, perhaps for speeds of up to 150-200 Km/hr and the trains would be similar to today's Shatabdi. Eventually, as the market becomes more developed, the tracks could be upgraded and high speed trains introduced. This would certainly be cheaper but given the need for major land acquisition, it would still be very expensive and socially disruptive.

Finally, there is the pragmatic option. The current Trivandrum - Ernakulam rail lines are heavily congested, operating at upwards of 110% of rated capacity. With a deep-water container transshipment terminal coming up at Trivandrum and rapid urbanization of the Capital and Ernakulam, both cargo and passenger traffic are likely to surge. Instead of breaking the Treasury on HSR, why not build two more tracks more or less along the same alignment (which avoids heavily built-up areas for the most part)? The new tracks would better in many ways, continuously welded and avoiding the worst bends and gradients. These can make use of existing stations. They would also have only gated railway crossings, either manned or automated.

So two more tracks running maddeningly slow trains? Not exactly. Even tracks not dedicated for HSR service can accommodate some pretty fast trains.The Acela Express is a high-speed train operated by Amtrak between Boston and Washington D.C. on legacy tracks which received only comparatively minor modifications to accommodate the sleek trains which can are capable of hitting 250 Km/Hr.

Image Courtesy: Wikipedia

The Acela was my first HSR experience and these trains are some of the very few across the world which actually make money, having captured almost 40% of the high-speed travel demand in the densely populated North-East corridor which includes Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington D.C. The Acela incorporates a nifty feature to run on legacy tracks, it tilts as it negotiates bends! The Acela's average speed is restricted well below its maximum by the inadequacy of old overhead electric supply lines and old tracks, both of which are being upgraded. An Acela-clone, running on modern tracks with a modern overhead supply system could easily average over 200 Km/Hr, covering the distance between Trivandrum and Ernakulam in just about an hour!

There is another major advantage of this solution. Local trains would continue to use the existing track. The new tracks would be used only for the HSR trains, which means that there would be a lot of spare line capacity on the new lines. This could be utilized for high-speed freight services. No, I am not crazy. There are freight trains that run nearly at HSR speeds, the one which most readily comes to mind is the Eurotunnel Shuttle. This routinely runs at 150 Km/Hr.

Image Courtesy: bram_souffreau @ Flickr

In fact, they are already talking about freight trains running at 200 Km/Hr on the proposed Dedicated Freight Corridors. One specific type of freight train comes to mind, container trains running between Vizhinjam and Ernakulam, Mangalore, Coimbatore, Chennai and Bangalore. Operating at speeds in excess of 100 Km/Hr and during off-peak hours, these trains could link India's premier container terminal to important cargo sources/destinations like Bangalore or Coimbatore in 9 hours flat. This kind of service allows the Vizhinjam project to expand its effective hinterland to as far as Bangalore, wherein it becomes much faster and often cheaper to send a container by fast container train to Trivandrum and get it loaded directly onto a 11,000 TEU mainline container ship than send it to Mangalore or Ernakulam and have it loaded on to a smaller ship from which it would be transshipped at Vizhinjam, Colombo or Dubai. High-speed cargo movement can be achieved with existing locomotives and with relatively minor modifications to the rolling-stock. In my view, this ability to move cargo at high speed is the USP of this option.

Yes, the last option is not exactly HSR as you would see in Tokyo, Paris or Shanghai although an Acela clone looks as much of a bullet train as....well...a bullet train! Do we want to spend an immense amount of extra money to travel 300 Km/Hr instead of 200-250 Km/Hr? Is it worth spending Rs 50,000 Crores to travel between Trivandrum and Ernakulam in 45 minutes when we can traverse the same distance in just over an hour, by spending just over 10-15% of that (a new pair of double gauge electrified lines will cost about Rs 20 Crores/Km plus up to Rs 1500 Crores for the high-speed train-sets - a single train-set costs about $ 30-40 Million - Rs 150-200 Crores)?

Personally, the answer is NO! I hope that the Government gets a competent agency that has no motivation to recommend a ludicrously expensive white elephant (a good selection criteria would be to exclude anyone whose name looks like "DM_ _") and gets an independent study done whose aim should be to identify all rail-based options for efficient passenger AND goods traffic, not just to look at options WITHIN the HSR model. This way, all of us may save some real money and time!

The Next Big One - Cap Gemini lands in Trivandrum

2011-10-25T12:54:00.001-04:00

Hot on the heels of Oracle Corporation that officially commenced operations from Technopark last month and announcements that IT giants Aegis and ITC Infotech would soon commence operations at the center of Kerala's IT world, here comes the largest technology company in Europe, Cap Gemini, which is all set to launch its latest global center at Technopark soon. In fact, the French tech giant has already started putting out feelers for employees to come to Trivandrum.

Technopark and Trivandrum are heating up on the Indian IT scene, a fact acknowledged by many CEOs at the recently concluded NASSCOM summit at Trivandrum, where many of the top bosses expressed a strong interest in setting up shop in Trivandrum, even chastising the media for failing to let the world know how hot Trivandrum really is! NASSCOM also opened its first office outside the top 7 Metros, at Technopark, another endorsement of the IT's hub coming of age!

Looks like things are changing, we are now in the big league, big time. Stay tuned and strapped in!

Getting Back on Track - Railway Development in Trivandrum

2011-09-25T13:37:00.001-04:00

After years of heady promises and Budget proposals, the development of railway infrastructure in and around Trivandrum has fallen far short of where it should be given the growth of the city, high-technology and the upcoming deep water port at Vizhinjam. With the Indian Railways facing serious resource constraints, let's take a pragmatic look at how we can achieve maximum impact with the least cost possible.

Once upon a time, I talked about how Trivandrum Central would be upgraded to a world-class rail terminus, Lalu Prasad's new mantra for the upgradation of important stations (18 in all, if I recall correctly) including New Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Trivandrum. That was four years ago, and since then we have heard nothing else but for a few vague mentions in successive Rail Budgets. One would have been forgiven for thinking that the grandiose idea was mere lip-service, and now it is official. The Railways have given up on the prototypical "World-class" station, New Delhi, and decided to proceed with a much humbler, in-house upgrade. The fact that there is no confidence that the rail hub in India's Capital and largest city can be re-developed, bodes ill for the historic station in Kerala's Capital and largest city. Combined with the near-zero progress in the development of the much-touted Kochuveli Satellite Rail Terminal and the proposed railway station and yard at Nemom, not to mention the still-invisible MEMU (commuter trains on the mainline) and a long list of announced-but-still-on-paper trains, the scorecard of the Railways is looking very dismal for our city.

Trivandrum Central (Image Courtesy: Wikipedia)

Despite being one of the busiest stations in South India (second only to Chennai) and having robust revenues (Rs 585 Crores from passengers alone in 2010-11),Trivandrum has been on the receiving end of neglect from the Railways for some time now, especially since a lot of decision making authority was shifted to Chennai from the Trivandrum Division. Even projects such as the expansion at Kochuveli, that were formally announced and alloted budgetary support, have made scant progress. Sadly, the latest effort to jump-start the development of these project by holding a meeting of the Railway Minister and his team in Trivandrum seems to have a cropper without any firm plans being put in place, save for the announcement of a yet another official to "coordinate" developmental activities in Trivandrum. Dr Shashi Tharoor did manage to take the Minister on a tour of the facilities in Trivandrum and explain the crying needs of the day to him, and one hopes that this will bear some fruit. All in all, one is left wondering why the Trivandrum Division, which earns hundreds of Crores for the Railways, is saddled with old, second-rate coaches (even for the so-called flagship Rajdhani Express!) and what can be at best described as step-motherly treatment?

Now that it is pretty clear that we cannot expect much munificence from the cash-strapped and unsympathetic Railways, it would be prudent to let go of grandiose plans like two-level platforms (yeah, we will still have to go to Europe or China to see those!) and focus on what all can be achieved at minimum expense that can have the maximum impact.

Trivandrum Central

Kerala's busiest station is congested beyond belief, its 5 platforms proving very unequal to the task of handling over 50 trains a day. To add to the congestion of a city-center station is the need to have nearly a dozen stabling lines and a Coach Care Center. At various times, it has been proposed to shift the non-operating lines and the Center to Kochuveli and Nemom, and to replace them with at least another 5 platforms. Although Kochuveli now has a couple of platforms and stabling/sick lines, these are hardly adequate even for the growing number of trains based at the station let alone for decongesting Central. And Nemon seems even further down below the horizon, at this point.

Jam-packed! (Image Courtesy: Me @ Flickr.com)

So what are the quick-wins at Trivandrum Central?

Shift as many parked rakes as possible on to the unused lines at the Kochuveli goods yard and even to Kazhakkoottam and Nemom (this will necessitate additional shunting but that should be manageable on a temporary basis)
Construct at least two additional platforms at Trivandrum Central immediately (freeing up 4 stabling/sick lines should provide enough space for this); these could be used both for the MEMU service and for long-distance trains
Construct Multi-Level Car Parks (MLCPs) on the land available near the Thampanoor flyover and on Powerhouse road. These can be done on a PPP basis so that there is no capital burden for the Railways.
Extend the South pedestrian overbridge to cover all platforms; evaluate extending the North overbridge to the bus terminal
Open the North entrance (well constructed but closed ever since its inauguration a few years ago!) opposite the bus terminal, with proper access control and potentially with additional ticketing counters
Upgrade all platforms to the standards of Platform One with improved floors, digital signage and other amenities
Provide additional high-mast lighting on both sides of the Station and add more lights to the platforms
Provide fee Wi-fi on all platforms; this could be easily arranged through a sponsorship

These steps can be undertaken at minimal expense, and can be acted upon immediately.

On a slightly longer term, perhaps in the next four years or so, once Nemon becomes atleast partially operational, the Coach Care Center can be shifted there and the land thus freed up can be leased out to a budget hotel operator such as Tata's Ginger or Accor's ETap to set up a 150 key no-frills hotel. This would not only create a rail-hotel at no expense to the Railways, it could also bring in steady revenue through lease-rentals and/or a revenue share.

Additional land could be leased out on a long term for commercial development, such as a shopping mall, because the Railways have almost 800 feet of frontage onto the newly widened Powerhouse Road. This could help pay for further improvements at the Station. This could include setting up another three or four platforms, to take the total to ten or eleven. Two platforms can be dedicated to the MEMU/commuter services.

With its unbeatable location in the Center of the city and its proximity to other transit hubs such as the Thampanoor bus terminal, it is for certain that Trivandrum Central will continue to be the busiest station in Kerala for a long time and the best tactic for its development would be to ensure that only passenger embarkation/disembarkation happens here with all other ancillary activities such as maintenance shifted out to Nemom or Kochuveli.

Using the strategy outlined above, the outlay for the next couple of years may only be about Rs 20-30 Crores with a significant portion of the overall budget in the near future coming through PPP. It is important that all commercial development - MLCPs, hotel and commercial - be given out to private players and not done directly by the Railways or agencies like TRIDA, whose record is pretty dismal.

Kochuveli Railway Terminal

What started with a lot of fanfare as a project to develop the once-sleepy station at Kochuveli into a rail terminal which would almost completely replace Trivandrum Central as the city's main station has petered out into a crawling saga of fund-starved construction, which has only thrown up three platforms, a few sick/stabling lines and precious little else. A number of trains have started operating out of the terminal but its infrastructure continues to be woefully inadequate.

After a lot of talk in the last six years, the Railways coughed up only Rs 30 Lakhs last year, against a minimum of Rs 10 Crores needed to establish the basic infrastructure needed to handle the 28 trains that are operated from it every week. This being the case, the following would be a viable action plan for the station:

Complete the island platform and at least five pit/stabling lines in the coming year; this would allow for some pit lines to be freed up at Trivandrum Central
Complete the foot overbridge linking both sides of the terminal; there are frequent bus services along the Veli road on the other side
Ensure stops for as many long distance trains as possible at Kochuveli to ensure round the clock activity which would allow for amenities such as taxis, buses and food outlets to be operated viably; this would also reduce passenger congestion at Central
Erect high-mast lights for the terminal premises and street lighting for the approach road which needs to be widened to 3 lanes
Establish a MLCP on a PPP basis
Complete an additional 2 platforms and a total of 10-12 pit/stabling lines by 2013

This course of action would necessitate no more than Rs 10 Crores, all of which have already been allocated but is yet to physically disbursed. Over the longer term, an additional Rs 20-30 Crores would be needed for the additional platforms and pit/stabling lines.

In the meantime, 2-3 stabling lines can be developed at Kazhakkoottam station to help take the load off Central, land for this is available at the station and the expense involved in laying the lines would be minimal. Kazhakkoottam also needs improved signage and ticketing facilities, together with stoppages for more peak hour trains and more frequent bus shuttle services from and to Technopark Phases I, II and III.

Nemon Terminal

There were big plans for Nemon, halfway between Central and the proposed cargo yard at Balaramapuram (Junction?!) where the spur line from the Vizhinjam deep water port will meet the mainline. As with the other wishful plans that we have heard from the Trivandrum Division, nothing has transpired so far. The reason is again the same, no money has actually been allocated in the Budget, and on top of that, there is apparently a need to acquire a large parcel of land for the station to be developed to its full potential.

The Railways already have 30 acres of land here, which seems to be more than sufficient for the Coach Care Center (CCC) to be set up although it seems that most of the land is not along the rail line, hence the need for acquiring more land. I would hazard a guess that the maintenance facility which need not be along the rail line, as a platform needs to be, can be set up on the existing land as long as it can be connected to the main line. In comparison, the current CCC facility at Trivandrum Central occupies only about 5 acres of land in the tightly-packed complex. If land is not an impediment, this may be accomplished at a cost of around Rs 50 Crores (a rule-of-thumb figure, considering the fact that a massive coach maintenance facility in Bihar, that sprawls over 118 acres, set to be commissioned in November will cost Rs 230 Crores), invested in two or three phases. Considering the fact that all the equipment can be shifted from the existing facility, the incremental cost would be the civil work on the sheds and new tracks to park the coaches under repair. If budgetary support can be found, this project can be completed in 18-24 months, without waiting for land acquisition to inch its way to a conclusion and this would free up land at Central for commercial development.

In the longer run, additional pit and stabling lines can be added at Nemom so that all North-bound trains operating from Trivandrum Central can be parked here till they are shunted to the platforms there, converting Central to a pure "pass-through" station and freeing up land for the final build-out to 11-12 platforms. Nemon also needs pass through platforms to be used as a commuter rail facility to service the rapidly developing southern part of the metro region.

Commuter Rail, Cargo and other Initiatives

Even a year after the completion of base facilities in Kollam, the long-awaited Mainline Electric Multiple Unit (MEMU) service shows little sign of commencing operations between Neyyatinkara and Kollam, connecting Trivandrum with its southern and northern satellites, including Attingal and Varkala en route. The MEMU is basically a commuter train, such as those that form the backbone of the transport system in Mumbai, but which is capable of running on the main line instead of just on segregated commuter rail lines. The MEMU is designed to move high-volumes of commuters over relatively short distances (an hour's travel or so). It is imperative that at least 3 MEMU rakes be immediately made available so that services on the Kollam - Neyyatinkara stretch can be run every 30 minutes during peak hours (7 AM to 8.30 AM and 5 PM to 6.30 PM) and every 45 minutes to an hour off peak. The introduction of the MEMU service will allow the shuttle trains to be taken out of service and their coaches redeployed to long distance trains. The services along the Kollam-Varkala-Attingal-Trivandrum-Balaramapuram-Neyyatinkara would help in the integration of the Trivandrum metropolitan region and the merger of Kollam into it as a satellite city.

This is a nearly zero cost initiative since the MEMU infrastructure is already in place and the induction of the MEMU rakes would be in effect offset by the freeing up of the existing shuttle rakes which can be redeployed to other services.

On a longer term, the proposed Chenganoor-Adoor-Trivandrum line and/or the proposed Erumeli-Punalur-Trivandrum line can be routed to proceed via Venjaramoodu and Nedumangad to meet the mainline at Nemom. This would provide a commuter ring line to the east of the CBD where MEMUs can be operated to draw in commuters from catchments along the the M.C.Road such as Kottarakara Anchal and Adoor.

The commissioning of the Vizhinjam deep water port will definitely bring additional traffic on to the rail network around Trivandrum even if the primary purpose of the port is transshipment. There will be some hinterland cargo for direct delivery/pickup from Southern Kerala and Southern Tamilnadu, as well as from key industrial clusters like Coimbatore and Bangalore, drawn by the direct access to the biggest mainline ships that will call at Vizhinjam, instead of getting cargo transshipped via, say, Colombo. If a coal terminal is set up at Vizhinjam, and the coal is shipped out by train instead of by a conveyor belt or barges/coastal coal carrying ships, this could mean 30,000 tons or ten rakes will need to be moved daily (for a annual throughput of 10 Million tons of coal). With the rail network running well above 100% capacity at present, this would necessitate the construction of a third or fourth line. The bare minimum requirement would be the immediate doubling of the Trivandrum - Kanyakumari line, on to which the Vizhinjam port would be connected at Balaramapuram. Unfortunately, the Railways seem to be feigning ignorance of this tiny little development, even while they cleared the construction of the rail spur to the port last year. Consequently the Trivandrum Division needs to prepare a master plan for the entire network, not just for Balaramapuram station, to handle the cargo traffic due to the port that is all set to be commissioned in 2014-15, and also ask Concor to immediately conduct studies to link Vizhinjam with the Inland Container Depots (ICDs) in key locations such as Bangalore, Coimbatore and Ernakulam as well as to set up an ICD in proximity to the port.

A Concor Double-stacked Container Train (Image Courtesy: Trainweb.com)

Finally, there is one relatively inexpensive but impactful change which the Railways need to make at the earliest. In fact, it would probably cost no more than a few dabs of paint and changes to websites. The change in question is to modify the name of Kochuveli station to Trivandrum Kochuveli (TVK?), Nemom to Trivandrum Nemom (TVN?) and Kazhakkoottam to Trivandrum Technopark (TKP?). When I last enquired about this with the Railways, they mentioned that it could be done with a simple request from the State Government. Painless changes, but ones which would spare thousands of people the trouble of figuring out the fact that a station with the code "KCVL" is actually located in Trivandrum!

Dr Shashi Tharoor has encapsulated many of the points, mentioned above, in a letter that he had sent to the Railway Minister, but these initiatives now need to be pursued with renewed vigour well in advance of the Rail Budget due in February 2012. The State Government too needs to move on from symbolic gestures like hosting the Railway Minister at Trivandrum and create a time-bound game-plan to take a priortized list of projects to pursue with the Railways using its new clout at the Center (being of the same flavor as the Central Govt.) as well as getting all 20 MPs from Kerala on board. Simply put, the initiatives listed above will not cost the Railways more than about Rs 100 Crores over the next 3 years, and this must be put in perspective with the Rs 900 Crores that the Trivandrum Division earned in 2010-11, Rs 600 Crores of which was from passenger traffic alone. By developing additional passenger and cargo capacity, the Railways stand to double or triple this figure and hence, what is proposed is a big win-win.

It's all very good to have ambitious visions for the development of the rail infrastructure in and around Trivandrum, but in today's resource constrained context for the Railways, and given the urgent need for many of these projects, it is most pragmatic to go in for the easy-wins first and to proceed on a track which minimizes immediate expenses and which tries to find revenues to feed costs along the way. Fingers crossed on many of these proposals making coming to fruition, in which case the Railways stand to keep playing an important role in and benefiting from the development of Trivandrum.

P.P.S: Thanks, Dr Tharoor!

2011-09-17T18:51:00.000-04:00

Just a quick note to thank Dr Tharoor for his feedback on the main article about Vizhinjam. More than being the MP of Trivandrum, Dr. Tharoor is now on the Director Board of VISL, perhaps smartest move the new Government has made with respect to the project. Even before joining the Board, he has been very active in supporting the project during the tenure of the previous Government, having brought in the Port of Barcelona to advise and potentially partner in the project and also having used his influence in Delhi to help expedite the key environmental clearance project.

I am sure that his leadership will be key in taking Vizhinjam from planning to reality. As I mentioned towards the end of my article, the Vizhinjam port is a vision, not a mere plan. And in Dr Tharoor, I believe we have a visionary who understands the potential of the project and appreciates how much it can change the face of our city!

P.S: A UMPP at Trivandrum

2011-09-17T13:05:00.000-04:00

A few days after I posted the previous article, in which I written that one of the key opportunity areas that the market study for the Vizhinjam port had missed was the possibility of setting up a coastal coal-fired power plant that would import its fuel through the deep-water port at Vizhinjam.

As if to underscore the necessity of such a project in maintaining energy security for Kerala into the foreseeable future, The Hindu reported on September 16 that the Kerala State Electricity Board was exploring the possibility of setting up a 1000 MW thermal power plant in Orissa adjacent to the coal fields that it had been allotted a few years ago. In the report, the Electricity Minister himself admits that the State's energy needs are likely to exceed 6000 MW by 2020 compared to the current generation capacity of just 1800 MW. This is possibly a conservative figure given the fact that the current peak demand is about 3100 MW, at a relatively low per capita consumption of about 700 KWh/year, and once this consumption rises to the global average of over 2000 KWh/year, the peak demand could be as high as 9000 MW!

This means that even if the power plant in Orissa becomes a reality (and I wouldn't bet much on that given the KSEB's dubious project execution capabilities even at home), Kerala is likely to end up with a deficit of well over 5000 MW by 2020 or so. A UMPP's typical capacity is around 4000 MW, and while some of this power may need to be shipped out in the early years of operation, Kerala alone would consume its entire output by 2020, which is not that far down the line!

One of the reasons mentioned for locating the KSEB plant in Orissa and not in Cheemeni in North Kerala, as originally envisaged, was that there were protests about its environmental impacts. If that was the case with a back-of-the-beyond location, there will surely be louder protests against a plant next to the State's capital and only metropolitan city. However, today's coal-fired plants are a far-cry from the smoke and ash spewing monstrosities that most people visualize when they hear the term "thermal power station". With state-of-the-art technology like super-critical boilers, integrated coal gasification, scrubbers, ash filters and clean imported coal (with 4 times less gas, and twice the energy content of Indian coal), a modern coastal UMPP will be much cleaner than many of the legacy industries currently operating in Kerala. The fact that no UMPP has yet been tripped up by the stringent norms of India's Environmental Clearance process is evidence enough of this. MIT's report on the Future of Coal gives more details about clean-coal technology, for those of you who may be interested in knowing more.

The bottom line is Kerala needs energy to sustain its growth as a modern, service-oriented economy and if we are to become self-dependent in this regard, a coastal UMPP is the best solution, given the fact that we have India's deepest port and an ideal strategic gateway for the import of clean, high-energy coal from Australia, Indonesia and South Africa.

The bid process for Vizhinjam is nearing its conclusion and we will know its outcome soon, I just hope that the winning bidder comes to the above conclusion as well.

Vizhinjam - Doubting Thomases Listen Up!

2011-08-20T15:31:00.271-04:00

The bid process for the $ 2 Billion Vizhinam deep-water port project in Trivandrum is nearing its close. The project's nodal agency, VISL, recently released key project reports which have many areas of concern from the perspective of any proponent of Vizhinjam. Some of the most glaring issues are discussed in the article, together with suggestions how the reports could have been made better and some longer-term proposals for the development of this mega-project!

Perhaps you may not have noticed it in the continuing avalanche of temple treasure, Team Anna and the threat of another global meltdown, but the last few days have seen Kerala's largest ever infrastructure project take two key steps forward. The first, of course, is the submission of bids by two entities, one being the Adani Group's Mundra Port and the other a consortium of the $ 3 Billion Indian conglomerate Welspun and Australian construction giant Leighton. One of these firms will now be selected as the master operator of the port (subject to them meeting all the tender guidelines) and potential as the EPC (Engineering Procurement Construction) contractor for Phase I. The second piece of news is that the agency entrusted with the development of the $ 2 Billion deep water port project, Vizhinjam International Seaport Limited, finally launched a decent website, albeit long AFTER the tender process was completed.

Excellent news, one should say, considering the travails that this landmark project has been through in the recent past (not to forget a small 60 year implementation delay!). The fact that the Adani Group has submitted a bid is possibly the most significant as their Mundra Port is already the biggest private port in India and is poised to become the nation's busiest port in the next 3 - 4 years. The Adani's also have a 4000 MW coal-fired power station in development in addition to the Ultra Mega Power Project (UMPP) being built by the Tata group at Mundra, and are the largest coal importers in India. The Group recently acquired the Abbot Point Coal Terminal in Australia for the trifling sum of $ 2 Billion. Mundra already has two container terminals, one operated by the Adani Group itself and the other by DP World, together handling well in excess of 1.5 Million TEUs a year and with a combined capacity approaching 3 Million TEU. One hopes that the Adani Group might have ambitions in both containers and coal at India's deepest port, Vizhinjam being even deeper and better located than Mundra. The second consortium seems to be more focused on the construction aspect of the project which could be worth over Rs 2000 Crores in Phase One alone, and would bring in a specialist port/terminal operator if awarded the tender (unless they already have one already onboard).

All well and good, but there are a few troubling issues as well, which have come to the fore with VISL belatedly posting on its website crucial documents related to the feasibility study of the port (Yes, those were completed a year ago but were finally posted, you guessed right, AFTER the bid process was over! Genius, huh?!). To put it as succinctly as possible, the consultants appointed at great cost to promote the project seem to have taken a less rigorous and far more pessimistic view in many areas, than even a layman like yours truly. This definitely needs some looking into, because these very reports could determine the success or failure, at least of this round of tendering. And hopefully, this won't end up being a post-mortem analysis. There were over 600 pages of reports to be read in all, including a market study, a technical options report and a preliminary project plan, all of them highly technical in nature. So what follows is the result of a quick review, by someone who's not a marine engineer by training, so do bear with me as I make my comments.

Where did all those containers go?

When the latest edition of the tender started, VISL started floating some traffic estimate numbers for the project. 2.8 Million TEUs in 2044, for example. Wait a second, 2044?? Why were the latest numbers less than half of what the winning bidder in the last round, Lanco, had estimated within a shorter time span and well below what the original project consultants L&T-Ramboll had put down? I was left wondering whether the current market research consultant, Drewery, had missed out a zero here or there. On closer examination of the market study, it seems there are several points of departure from what would be logical sound assumptions. Firstly, the estimate of Indian GDP growth seems pretty conservative, considering the fact that there is already a pronounced shift in economic power towards India and China. Even accounting for the current hiccups in the global economy, the outlook over the medium and long term should be far more robust than what the study predicts. This in turn, affects the growth rate of overall Indian container traffic, of which a portion will flow via Vizhinjam. Next, the report seems to underestimate the ability of a port with unbeatable draft and minimal operating costs to take traffic away from its competitors. Basically, little credit seems to be given to the way a highly dynamic market like container shipping operates.With significant sensitivity to shipping costs, containerized cargo tends to follow the least cost path and if Vizhinjam can offer equal facilities as competing ports such as Colombo and Dubai at a lower cost, container lines will naturally choose the port of total least cost.

At this juncture, the Market Study takes a very pessimistic view of how much traffic Vizhinjam can capture from Colombo, its main competitor, which currently handles about 40% of all container traffic to and from India. A rather circumspect traffic-cost analysis shows that Vizhinjam is at a $3/TEU disadvantage with respect to Colombo assuming existing tariffs (Pages 130 - 134). Not only is this margin a negligible 2% of the existing tariff at Colombo, it is clear that with significant advantages such as the landlord port model which allows initial capital costs to be spread out through Government debt support, minimal dredging requirements and exemption from the tariff constraints at major ports, Vizhinjam should be able to significantly under-cut Colombo in terms of handling costs. The report goes to make assumptions that Vizhinjam would be unable to attract cargo bound for West and North India (Page 176) since these would be delivered direct to the deep draft ports in Gujarat such as Pipavav and Mundra. To an extent this is correct since these are close to the industrial hinterland of North and Western India. However, when we consider the biggest container ships, with carrying capacities greater than 11,000 TEUs, they are unlikely to make more than one stop in a country. In this scenario, Vizhinjam allows them to offload containers in India with minimal deviation from the Suez - Malacca shipping route followed by these behemoths on their round trips from the US/Europe to East Asia. Thus, it is likely that at least some of this cargo will be transshipped at Vizhinjam. Furthermore, the study also harps about Colombo's distance advantage to ports on the Indian East Coast, which seems rather suspect when one factors in the savings in distance that will be brought about by the Sethusamudram shipping channel (Of course, assuming that the ghosts of Ram's mythical simian army don't stop it permanently!). Finally, Vizhinjam has the added advantage of geo-political safety as far as Indian container traffic is considered which no foreign port can guarantee (least of all Colombo, which happens to be in the same country where the Chinese are almost done building what will be a pseudo-Naval base!).

Despite all this, Drewery estimates that Vizhinjam will only be able to capture only about 12 - 15% of the total transshipment potential available to Vizhinjam and Colombo (Page 196), due to their superiority over other regional ports such as Tuticorin and Cochin. And this is after Vizhinjam offers sizable discounts to Colombo's tariff! One wonders why this should be so? If Vizhinjam is cheaper, is on the Indian mainland and has the same, if not better connectivity, to Indian ports, why should it not be able to draw a much greater share of transshipment cargo away from Colombo. The report makes some vague reference to the fact that Colombo has greater "hinterland" cargo than Vizhinjam and hence can create bigger parcel sizes for shipping lines. However, an examination of the tables given in the report (Pages 179 - 180) shows that Sri Lanka's own hinterland volume is less 5% - 10% of India's, which means that lines that choose to transship at Vizhinjam instead of Colombo would not lose a critical volume of cargo. Moreover, if Vizhinjam provides a lower cost option, there is no commercial reason why cargo from Sri Lanka should not be transshiped at Vizhinjam although Drewery very conveniently rules it out citing some unspecified "feeder costs".

Even if we take Drewery's report at its face-value, the transshipment volumes for South and East India - which Vizhinjam could most effectively target - is 5 Million TEU in 2015, 8.5 Million TEU in 2020 and 20 Million TEU in 2030. With an effective tariff structure, one can assume safely that Vizhinjam should be able to target 20% - 25% of this traffic, even if it cannot split the honors evenly with Colombo. This means that the projected transshipment traffic for Vizhinjam should be 1.0 - 1.3 Million TEUs in 2015, 1.7 - 2.2 Million TEUs in 2020 and 4 - 5 Million TEUs in 2030, which is much closer to the original L&T Ramboll/Lanco estimates.

At this juncture, one needs to call into question the veracity, intent and sincerity of the report by Drewery, which fails to be aggressive or bullish with its container volume estimates, which is the need of the day when a Billion dollar bid process is under way. Instead, it uses rather circumspect logic to generate a pessimistic estimate of the port's potential. This fact is made painfully evident, when one sees that the only first-hand data survey conducted for the study was in Cochin (Page 168), not among global shipping lines or at competing hubs such as Colombo or Singapore. Somehow, that doesn't sound quite reassuring. And no, the bad news doesn't end here.

And how about the rest of the port?

Having read through the dismal figures about container traffic in the report, if any bidder does get to the rest of the cargo forecast, he or she would be at a loss to find precisely that, non-containerized cargo, in the report. If this report is to be believed, Vizhinjam is unlikely to ever see bulk cargo of any kind such as coal and petroleum, although it does offer up dribbles of cashew and timber as scant consolation. The report then goes on to deep-six (pardon the nautical pun!) ship repair and leaves some vague recommendations for the equally trumpeted cruise market. Despair not, let's take a second look at these areas.

Drewery starts off by predicting that Vizhinjam would be a non-starter as far as coal, one of the world's most voluminous bulk cargo items, is concerned (Page 212). Firstly, the report says that there are no thermal power plants, steel plants or cement plants in and around Trivandrum. Well, that doesn't exactly require an expensive consultant to discover, does it? And to make sure that no one asks an inconvenient question such as "What if we build a port based thermal power plant?", the report quashes any likelihood of a coal-fired power station by saying that plentiful natural gas from the LNG terminal in Ernakulam and the KG Basin would erase any need for coal. Unfortunately for the second assumption, there are a few inconvenient truths sticking out. First, coal continues to be cheaper than gas, as pointed out in this report by the International Energy Agency and which is the reason behind the Government of India going ahead with nine Ultra Mega Power Projects (UMPPs), all with capacities of 4000 MW or more and all fired by coal.Second, imported LNG is extra costly, and the LNG terminal at Ernakulam is already struggling to find customers. Thirdly, the KG basin gas is already in short supply, even if we choose to ignore current supply problems.The demand for energy in India is rapidly increasing. A recent report by KPMG states that power consumption in China is about 1800 KWh/person while in India it is only about 750 KWh/person (to say nothing of the 15,000 KWh/person in the US!). This means that even to reach a figure comparable to China, India would need to add about 100,000 MW of power generation capacity in the next few years. While some of this will be renewable, nuclear and gas-based power generation, it is evident that the bulk will have to come from coal-fired stations which account for over 70% of current installed capacity. Since Indian coal production is capacity constrained and Indian coal is of relatively poor quality, a significant portion of the new power demand would have to fueled with imported coal, which is one reason many of the UMPPs are located near deep-water ports like Mundra and Krishnapatanam. These allow for the import of vast amounts of coal in giant coal carriers with capacities exceeding 200,000 tons. Almost all of India's coal imports will come in from Australia, Indonesia and South Africa (now you understand why the Adanis bought that coal port we talked about in the beginning!) The last inconvenient fact for the market report is that it is easier to transmit electricity than transport coal, which means it is best to generate the power as close to the coal supply as possible and then dispatch the electricity via the National Grid to wherever it is needed. Hmmm, so which is the closest deep-water port in India to the mines of Australia and Indonesia? No prizes for guessing, it is Vizhinjam with over 18 m of natural depth and located on the Southern tip of the subcontinent.

Courtesy: Topforeignstocks.com

Considering all this, the potential to set up a UMPP somewhere in the vicinity of Vizhinjam doesn't sound like an impossibility (the key issue would be finding the 850 - 1500 acres of land needed for one of these giants) and indeed as Kerala, despite being a coastal State, has as of yet not applied for a UMPP, this is a very viable proposition. A UMPP in Kerala would incur the least cost for import of coal as it is closest to the coal sources and this could lead to a cost advantage for the project with power possibly being evacuated through the 440 KV line of the Power Grid Corporation of India Ltd (PGCIL) already ready at Trivandrum, which is meant to draw power from the Koodankulam Nuclear Power Plant. A UMPP would need the import of over 12 - 15 Million Tons of coal annually via Vizhinjam. While it can be argued that this is a very aggressive scenario considering the sensitivity around the environment in Kerala as well as the relative scarcity of land, it should have been included in the report as a possibility for a potential bidder to consider, as Mundra Port may already have done on their own (or so we may hope!). After all, a near-permanent solution to Kerala's power woes and a Rs 20,000 Crore investment in the power project would be a powerful incentive to cobble together the land necessary for the project in a rural corner of Trivandrum district.

Next, the report moves on to petroleum traffic, namely crude oil and petroleum products (Page 233). Once again, it makes the stellar observation that there is no oil refinery in Trivandrum. Duh?! It continues to exclude any potential for future oil refining operations or even for product import by saying that existing ports such as the ones at Tuticorin and Ernakulam will continue to handle such cargo. Well, to me, it seems like Vizhinjam has all of Southern Kerala and at least 3 major districts of TN as a direct hinterland where it has distance advantages over its neighboring ports. Moreover, it will have tariff advantages being outside the restrictions of the major ports' tariff regime. Here lies a clear case for import of petro products such as petrol, diesel and kerosene currently shipped via truck or train. Moreover, it is folly to rule out a refinery in the region, because there are two clear potential areas of demand for such a project. The first, and the simplest, is the vast hinterland of Southern Kerala and most of the Southern half of TN, which is currently served by refineries in Chennai and Ernakulam. A new refinery that uses Vizhinjam as a crude import terminal will be able to meet the growing demand of this region, which includes rapidly growing cities such as Trivandrum, Madurai, Trichy, Tirunelveli, Tuticorin and Kollam, at lower costs than the existing refineries. Secondly, the field of contract refining/export-oriented refining is gaining traction world-wide as consuming regions such the US, East Asia and Europe impose strict restrictions which make setting up new refineries there very difficult and open the way for strategically located refineries to process crude from sources such as the Middle-East and then send the products by tanker to the end markets. This is a successful business model by Reliance's world-beating Jamnagar complex as well as by Singapore, the tiny island being the world's third largest refining hub after Houston and Rotterdam. A sizeable refinery (a 600,000 barrel per day unit would need about 500 acres of land, about the same as the Technocity project has) could be set up somewhere in Trivandrum district or even in the neighboring districts of Tirunelveli or Kanyakumari where land is in relative abundance. Attached to the only port in India capable of handling VLCC/ULCC traffic WITHIN its basin (as opposed to Single Point Moorings far out at sea), a port that lies right on the world's crude oil artery, the refinery would have significant cost advantages and a major export market in South and East Asia, as well as further out, even to the US West Coast, in addition to the extensive hinterland as mentioned above. Again, this is an optimistic scenario but one which needs to be mentioned in a unbiased report so that prospective bidders can do their own numbers on its viability. Drewery's report makes no mention of this, the only saving grace being that it mentions that a major international firm had evinced interest in setting up a petroleum storage terminal in Vizhinjam and that a major oil company was interested in establishing bunkering operations.

One of Singapore's many refineries. Image: Fotopedia.com

Now, given the fact that about a third of all the world's shipping traffic passes by just ten nautical miles or less from Vizhinjam, on the Suez/Gulf - Malacca route, one would be forgiven for thinking that a world-class ship repair/building yard would be an attractive proposition at Vizhinjam. In fact, there have been a lot of noise made in the recent past about a Central Government initiative for a shipyard at Poovar and for the public-sector Cochin Shipyard Limited to set up a world-class yard, for the first time, at Vizhinjam.

Drewery's report mentions all of Vizhinjam's advantages - location on the shipping channel, deep draft and then plays up its apparent disadvantages - competition from Dubai and Singapore, lack of trained manpower, humid climate, "labour problems" in Kerala (huh?, weren't these guys supposed to be on our side?!) and lack of international air connectivity to bring in spares. It doesn't take an Ivy League degree to understand that there is no dearth of trained and experienced manpower in Kerala and India because I would wager quite a bit on the fact that the majority of workers at the yards in Dubai and Singapore are Indians! Humid climate....well, it's the same climate as one sees in Singapore, day for day. Labor troubles, let me not even get into that. Trivandrum Airport already has 3 dedicated freighters a week with connections to the Mid-East hubs and Hong Kong and this can easily be stepped up if equipment needs to be imported for the ship yard. It suffices to say that India has significant advantages in labor availability and supporting manufacturing facilities (ranging from world-class steel plants to engineering companies) which could make it a world-leader in ship repair/building just as the Koreans and the Chinese have become in very short order, and this is evident from the plethora of private yards which have come up, including SKIL's yard at Pipavav and L&T's complex near Chennai. The report spends six or seven pages (Pages 291-297) on this subject but abruptly stops without a conclusion or recommendation. And there is more to come on this!

There has been a lot of talk about the potential for cruise operations at Vizhinjam not least of all because it happens to be located in the district which attracts the most foreign tourists in Kerala and is located close to a shipping route used by over 300 cruise ships every year. Unfortunately, the report pays lip-service to the subject and leaves nothing other than a table (Page 290) listing some figures for traffic estimates (which looks quite arbitrary, changing by as much as 50% in some years!) as well as some disheartening anecdotes of failure among cruise lines in India, most recently the collapse of Louis Cruises' venture at Ernakulam. It's a pity that such a high-potential area (more for the tourist industry than the port itself) has been given scant attention, perhaps the report makers should have been sent a copy of the comprehensive report on the subject prepared by my better half, a few years ago!

Cruise tourism in trivandrum

View more documents from Ajay Prasad.

The report concludes with an analysis of the prospective tariffs and revenue streams from the port, which is again quite conservative. For example, it assumes that Vizhinjam will forever have to offer a hefty discount to Colombo to survive, which is counter-intuitive because once significant traffic is established at Vizhinjam, there is no further need to be sub-par with Colombo or any other port. At this point, the port can afford to charge tariffs that are revenue-neutral. Of course, the report makes no mention of any significant non-container revenue stream as we had discussed previously, whereas it would have been prudent to include this in a "High Revenue" scenario at the end.

A "clean and green" port......Huh?

The Preliminary Project Report for the Vizhinjam deep-water port has been prepared by Royal Haskoning and it must be said that they have done a fine job, at least as far as the technical aspects of port design are concerned. That said, there are a few surprises in there as well. After an exhaustive review of the site conditions (Pages 1-23), the report comes up with a set of vision key words for the project, based on the Drewery report

Green and Clean
Efficient
Competitive
Attractive for Tourism
"God's Own Port"

One is left wondering whether this is the project report of a $ 2 Billion deep-water port or a tourist resort! I am an environmentalist at heart and I love words like "green and clean", but that has different connotations in different contexts, a clean port is not the same as a clean operating theater, is it? We don't want a dirty, polluting port at Vizhinjam but we certainly do want a viable one!

And there is certainly a major question raised about the viability of the project when the report proceeds to axe three key areas of potential operations - coal import, petroleum and ship repair based on the need to have a "Clean and Green Port"! (Pages 26-27). A port is a port is a port, gentlemen. While we can deploy technology such as dust suppression equipment, oil containment booms, effluent treatment, use of electric power instead of diesel wherever possible and noise reduction, a port will never be as pretty or as quiet as a beach resort. However, most of this noise and visual impact (cranes, containers and hulking ships) will be contained within the port's boundaries. The port itself is located in natural bay and is not even visible from up and down the coast. The only reason that Haskoning quotes to keep the "non-green" operations out is to make the port "tourist friendly". Cruise operations are glamorous but typically add little direct economic value and sacrificing major revenue earners such as coal import and ship repair/building for this is economic suicide. Moreover, major cruise terminals such as the ones in Singapore and Port Klang (both of which I have personally been to) are located right in the middle of major ports which handle all types of cargo. As long as a world-class cruise terminal is available to let fussy cruise passengers disembark and embark in air-conditioned comfort, they are not much bothered by whether containers or coal is being unloaded close by.

Star Cruise Terminal at Port Klang Photo: Tan Tiong Kee at Panaramio

Consequently, these areas of operation are excluded from the port master plan which seems rather truncated from earlier versions prepared by L&T Ramboll (Pages 51-52), while the development of the 2nd and 3rd phases has also been slowed down over a longer total development time-line. I wonder how much of this will finally be left up to the winning port operator, because it will be the ultimate judge of the traffic potential of the port. Because the project is currently being pursued in the "Landlord" model where the Government is responsible for almost all the civil work - breakwaters, quay, backup area and connectivity - and the operator is only responsible for the terminal infrastructure and operations, one wonders whether the expansion of the port will be determined by the operator or the Government or both?

This is a key area of uncertainty left by the third report, by the project's main consultant, the International Finance Corporation (IFC). In its report (Page 62), IFC states that in the Landlord model the Government would be responsible for the long-term master plan of the port as well as for executing all civil work through EPC contractors, which includes even the later phases of expansion of the project. Later on, the report states that GoK should consult the winning operator about the final design (Page 76). This will be critical in preventing issues at a later stage. GoK has appointed one of the world's leading engineering and PMC firms, AECOM, as the project's EPC consultant and this a step in the right direction, although it is not clear how the final design would be developed from the work done by Royal Haskoning - whether AECOM would do this through its own in-house design team or a sub-consultant or a separate contract would be handed out by GoK. Operators will have the right to take up the 2nd and 3rd phases of the terminal, but will not be able to seek financial support from GoK as they can for Phase 1. This can be read into to mean that the operator can trigger the 2nd and 3rd phases of expansion whenever it feels that a traffic threshold has been attained and GoK would then be bound to issue the requisite EPC contracts. There is also an interesting clause by which the operator can take over the lucrative EPC contract if it bids and is within 15% of the lowest bidder, and then agrees to match the bid. This gives it a leg-up in the case of the EPC bid which is estimated to be worth over Rs 2000 Crores for Phase I alone, and may be an additional reason why a contractor like Welspun Leighton has been so keen on bidding.

A key final concern is that the RFQ/RFP process does not call for the operator consortium to have an actual terminal operator as a member at the time of the bid, only a commitment to bring in a qualified operator within a fixed time period of being awarded the bid. Although Mundra Port or Leighton Welspun, whoever wins, should be able to secure a capable operator, it would have been a much more robust proposition if the container terminal operator had been made a mandatory part of the consortium. As can be seen from the market report, the strength of the terminal operator will be a crucial determinant in the success of the project, at least early on, as it will need to have strong linkages with one or more major lines to wrest them away from Colombo. A operator-line combination like AP Moller Terminals, a sister concern of the world's largest shipping company, AP Moller Maersk, would have been ideal. However, APMT already operates terminals in Colombo and Mundra, and may not be committed to the project. There are alternatives such as Singapore's PSA or like Hyundai and MSC which also have their own lines. In the current scenario, GoK has little control over the capability of the terminal operator as long as it meets the minimum qualification criteria which are not very daunting.

All in all, the combination of reports submitted by IFC and its consultants seem to underplay the potential of Vizhinjam. None of these reports were challenged by IFC or VISL before being adopted. Perhaps VISL doesn't have the expertise to do so, but isn't that their job? These reports could have and would have been challenged by any citizen who had a few hours of time to spend in analyzing them, even without the benefit of years of maritime experience. Unfortunately, despite one of VISL's bosses over the last few years personally proclaiming to me that all reports would be published on VISL's website as soon as they were available, this eventually happened well after the final bids were received! If I was given to believing in conspiracies, which I generally am not, it wouldn't be very far fetched to wonder whether the reports were spiked to scare all interested parties off or to clear the field in favor of one or more parties. At best, they seem like rushed-up jobs (even ignoring glaring mistakes like Balaramapuram being called "Balrampur" in one place and Trivandrum's top industry being identified as "handlooms" and Ernakulam's as "IT" when the former contributes 75% of Kerala's IT exports) which are very conservative in nature and fail to make any effort to capture the real potential of the Vizhinjam project and hence fall far short in their intended purpose of attracting investors.

Proponents of the report may argue that it is best to err on the side of caution but I say that to be over-conservative, at a stage where the project is trying to attract investment in a globally competitive industry, is a very risky strategy indeed. A project report should talk about the upside as much as it cautions about the possible downsides. Vizhinjam has been and will be an aspirational project. If people like the former rulers of Travancore, Sri M.V. Raghavan and Sri. M. Vijayakumar had not dared to dream of a deep-water container transshipment terminal where today only a fishing harbor exists, we would never have come this far. By not daring to push the boundaries of Vizhinjam's potential, I fear that we may now have put up yet another speed-breaker for a project which has had to survive numerous rounds of sabotage by vested interests near and afar.

Little wonder then that out of 12 qualified bidders, only 2 put in bids. One hopes that one of these two will take Vizhinjam from being a sleepy fishing hamlet to one of the region's busiest ports. If not, this looks like a mighty poor investment of the Crores invested in the services of these international consultants and yet another resounding slap in the face of the practice of having career civil servants, instead of qualified industry professionals, run multi-Billion dollar infrastructure projects.

Fingers crossed!

TCS Development Center moves forward

2011-07-19T04:55:00.000-04:00

Part one of the two-part mega-story that India's largest technology firm, TCS, is scripting in Trivandrum has been unveiled! Feast your eyes on the perspectives of the 1 Million-plus SF Development Center which is part of its own 25 acre SEZ in Technopark Phase I.

Work on the 560,000 SF Phase I will commence on August 15th. The contract has been awarded to Australian construction giant, Leighton.

Stay tuned for details of its bigger brother, the Rs 1500 Crore Global Training Campus at Technocity, work on which is also set to start shortly.

Images Courtesy: Shafi @ SSC

Vizhinjam....Moving Forward

2011-06-19T23:52:00.000-04:00

For a change, the Vizhinjam project has been getting the sort of attention that a Rs 6000 Crore mega-infrastructure project, which can change the face of Kerala, should be getting. After the heartening progress made with the ongoing bid process, it has been embroiled in the controversy of whether it would or would not receive environmental clearance.

The recent visit to Trivandrum by Jairam Ramesh seems to have added some impetus to the project's chances of getting a green flag sooner rather than later. Despite the fact that the whole drama reeks of being staged for the benefit of the current Congress-led Government, it is to be hoped that Mr Ramesh's promise of a speedy and positive conclusion to the whole debate will be honored. Especially, in light of the fact that ports like Tata's Dhamra project in Orissa, which is in close proximity to a national park, sailed clean through with the proper mitigation measures in place.

The Environmental Question

So is the Vizhinjam deep water port going to irreparably destroy our environment? Of course, not.

Firstly, the project does not lie in an ecologically sensitive area, there are no mangrove forests or coral reefs anywhere in sight! There are no endangered species at risk from the construction of the port. Vizhinjam lies in a category of the Coastal Regulation/Management Zone that is well below the most sensitive type.

Secondly, the only environment-related response of the Environmental Clearance committee meetings that considered the project is about the question of coastal erosion. The Trivandrum coast has its share of seasonal erosion and deposition and perhaps the Committee is concerned that the massive breakwater would alter the sediment flow patterns and cause accelerated erosion in nearby areas. While this is not totally implausible, the studies conducted by top-flight agencies such as Ramboll, not to mention the simulation tests run at the wave-pool in CET years ago are clear pointers to the fact that the minimal littoral drift along the project site would not result in any massive erosional effect. Moreover, when the final design of the breakwater is done, it would incorporate sophisticated modeling techniques to ensure that adverse hydrological impacts are minimized or mitigated. This is an issue that is associated with any major marine structure, not just ports, and is not a cause for extreme concern in view of the relative benign nature of the surroundings of the project.

The other points raised by the latest EC Committee look far less scientific and more politically motivated in nature. For example, they have expressed concern about other container terminals in South India and how they would be affected by the development of Vizhinjam. For some weird reason, they even mentioned Colachel, where there is currently not even a proposal far less a concrete plan and a bid process in progress! This time, VISL - the project's nodal agency - was asked to submit an overall study of India's container sector. It seems odd that an EC discussion should focus so closely on techno-financial viability when the same EC didn't balk at sanctioning nearly a dozen major port projects just along the coast of Gujarat or gave the green flag for the Gangavaram port project just a few kilometers from the sprawling Vizag port! For an economy growing at 8 to 10% annually, which is now has the third largest GDP (in PPP terms) and which does not have even a single deep water container transshipment terminal till date, I fail to see where the question of viability or necessity lies.

That said, some of the points raised in the Terms of Reference such as marine traffic study, construction methodology and site connectivity seem to be genuine, and seem to point towards a surprising lack of completeness of the EIA submitted by VISL. Either the latter and its consultants are totally incompetent, which is hard to believe considering the consultants include global majors such as the IFC and Royal-Haskoning, or there is some sort of smoke-and-mirrors act in progress to slow down the port's development.

I believe that the project will eventually get its EIA approved. The only question is how long it will take. Hopefully, a provisional clearance can be issued with a revised application using available data, which would allow for construction to begin under carefully monitored conditions such as air and water quality, coastal erosion and so on. This is not an extraordinary practice for major projects and will allow preliminary work to begin before the results of the three season study come in (sometime in mid-2012). Without some sort of environmental nod, the current bid process is unlikely to get far and it seems the bankers are also unwilling to invest money, without such a green flag, in the Government's bid to construct the basic infrastructure.

The Landlord Model

The Good news is that the new Government is persisting with the "landlord" model of development for the project and has just awarded the Project Management Consultancy to global construction giant, AECOM. But what is this model all about? In a nutshell, this means that the Government builds and owns the basic infrastructure of the port and then leases it out to one or more operators who bring in what is called the superstructure elements - cranes and other cargo handling equipment - and operates the berths, with a share of the revenue/lease rentals accruing to the Government. This has the obvious advantages of ensuring the construction of the port itself, complete control for the State over the asset and creating confidence for investors in a greenfield project, when compared to the previously touted Build-Operate-Transfer model which would have transferred the entire burden and risk on to the private developer-operator. The Government's getting ready to invest as much as Rs 2500 Crores ($ 600 Mn) into the Phase I infrastructure, drawing on funding from a consortium of bank led by local financial giant, State Bank of Travancore (fitting indeed!).

Sounds hunky dory, doesn't it? As with anything, there are a few downsides too. When we let the Government design anything, the result typically is the most conservative and boring option possible. One major concern about the landlord model is that the Government will fail to maximize the use of India's deepest port by being conservative about its capabilities and the volume of the investment. For example, the current traffic projects are unbelievably low. If we believe what the Government has to say, Vizhinjam would see a traffic of 2.8 Million TEUs in 2030, less than what JNPT is seeing today and probably less than 3% of India's total traffic at that time. Not very bullish for the deepest and best located container transshipment terminal, is it? Especially in view of L&T Ramboll's projection of 5.5 Million TEUs during the last bid process. So either there is something wrong the fundamental logical assumption that India's deepest port, located closest to the main container routes would attract the lion's share of Indian cargo traffic or the Government is selling the project very very short. This means that the project looks much less attractive to an investor than it really is, and this would adversely impact its chances of attracting a good bid from a leading operator. Furthermore, while the current project proposal considers options such as a cruise terminal and general cargo over and above pure container traffic, there are many more options out there, as we will shortly talk about.

Secondly, the landlord model, by design, transfers a lot of the project risk from the private sector to the public sector, in this classic case of Public Private Partnership (PPP). This is beneficial in making a risky, greenfield project more attractive. However, too much of a good thing could be bad. Once more, the Government needs to avoid selling itself short. An alternative would be for VISL to underwrite the cost of developing the basic infrastructure but base the bid on how much of the cost the private operator is willing to share. This will help to minimize the burden on the Treasury (creaky as it is!) and also ensure that the private player has as much skin in the game as possible and is therefore as motivated as possible to hard-sell the port and attract as much traffic as possible. The way that the Government is pushing ahead with the Engineering Procurement Construction (EPC) contract for the basic infrastructure, I hope that they will include sufficient flexibility in the design to meet the needs of the operator's plans. In the end, it will probably mean that either the EPC tender waits till the operator on board, which could take six months to a year, or that the construction starts with the operating area left as a blank slate. The ideal scenario - conditional environmental clearance would be granted in a month or two, the operator bid goes ahead and the EPC tender is handed out in consultation with the operator in about six months from now.

What's in a Port?

So when we talk about infrastructure, connectivity and superstructure, what are we talking about? Okay, here we go into Port Construction 101!

The basic constituents of a major port project include the breakwater, berths, backup area and connectivity.

In the artist's impression above of the Vizhinjam port, the breakwater is the "J" shaped wall along the periphery of the port and stretching out into the sea. The berths are the "L" shaped area where the ships actually dock and include the cranes which handle containers and other cargo. The back-up area includes most of the rest of the port area, typically where cargo is stored. Connectivity refers to the road and rail connections which allow cargo to be brought in and taken out.

The breakwater at Vizhinjam would be a massive structure stretching between 3 and 5 Km and located in up to 20 m of water depth. It seems that Vizhinjam would use a design based on massive boulders, quarried from somewhere close by - possibly near Attingal. The breakwater shelters the port's operating area, also called the basin, from the vagaries of the sea. This sheltered area allows ships to dock in all kinds of weather conditions, ranging from the placid calm to a raging cyclone.

The berths are constructed by driving pilings into the sea and either filling the area behind with silt dredged from the sea or soil excavated from land, or using a concrete structure. Ships dock alongside the berths and they also support the cargo handling equipment - also called the port's superstructure - which includes quay cranes to handle containers, general purpose cranes and material handlers to work with bulk cargo.

The backup area is usually created by leveling existing land or by reclaiming area from the sea as in the case of Vizhinjam. It's usually used to store cargo - container, bulk materials, cars, liquid cargo and so on. Vizhinjam would involve the reclamation of over 400 acres from the sea for the berths and back-up areas, in effect expanding the State of Kerala! This avoids costly and troublesome land acquisition.

Vizhinjam will be connected to the rail and road network via dedicated links that will feed into the National Highway 47 and the main line railway from Trivandrum to Nagercoil. Survey work for this has already been completed and work is already in progress for the road connections.

All told, the deep water port will have between 3 and 6 Km of berths (if the breakwater is also utilized), allowing for up to 12 of the world's longest ships to comfortably dock. The container berths themselves could be 2 to 3 Km long, capable of handling 6 ships the size of the reigning behemoths of the seas, the Emma Maersk class, at the same time.

One Port, Many Uses

As some of us may recall, Vizhinjam started out as a general purpose port. This had its drawbacks when faced with the lack of cargo from Kerala, which is a minimally industrialized State (the port at Ernakulam gets most of its cargo from neighboring States). Next it evolved into a general purpose with a coal fired power plant attached to it, with the idea being to use the port to import the coal for the plant, as in the case of Ennore Port or the upcoming Ultra Mega Power Plants at Mundra and Krishnapatanam. Unfortunately, no one pursued this proposal to its conclusion, in which case we may have had the first energy port in India.

Ennore Port; Vizhinjam could have looked like this ten years ago

In the 2000s, as the concept of containerization caught on globally, the need for deep water transshipment terminals to facilitate movement of cargo to and from India's relatively shallow major ports became evident with the success of Colombo and Singapore as very obvious indicators. Vizhinjam metamorphosized into a transshipment terminal with its location 10 nautical miles from the strategic Suze/Gulf - Malacca shipping lane and its inherent depth of 18 m making it an unbeatable proposition. Finally, in the latest round of bidding, the project consultant recommended making the port multi-purpose once more with the container terminal as an anchor use, thus introducing more flexibility into the project and reducing market risk.

Today's economic scenario lays open a variety of uses in front of Vizhinjam. The container transshipment is a no-brainer. The rapidly expanding Indian economy is going to radically ramp up import-export volumes in the coming years and a large portion of this will be containerized. India's container traffic is expected to hit about 21 Million TEUs by 2015 (by when Phase I of Vizhinjam is expected to be operational). China's container traffic is up around 100 Million TEUs already and at India's current trade growth rates, we can confidently expect India's container traffic to be up around 100 Million TEUs by 2025 or so. There is absolutely no reason to expect that Vizhinjam which has strategic advantages over any other Indian port will not capture at least 10% of this volume through transshipment. While the deep water ports in Gujarat and those along the East Coast such as Gangavaram and Dhamra would be able to directly handle large main-line container ships (of capacity >8000 TEUs, 14 m draft), most existing major ports like JNPT, Mangalore, Ernakulam and Chennai would not be able to increase their existing drafts beyond the 12 to 14 m mark. This means that transshipment is unavoidable for these ports in order to remain competitive in view of the move by shipping lines to deploy larger and larger ships on the Asia to Europe/US routes to achieve economies of scale. This will allow Vizhinjam to tap into the traffic generated by the industrial areas in the peninsula. For starters, a deep water terminal at Vizhinjam would be able to give Colombo, the current regional transshipment hub, a real run for its money. Vizhinjam has the advantages of greater natural depth, proximity to the feeder ports (the transit between the hub and feeder ports is usually the most extensive on a per-kilometer basis) and the simplicity/security of being on Indian soil. If it is able to offer competitive tariffs (in my opinion, the Indian Government should offer subsidies to allow Vizhinjam to offer competitive rates in the National interest), there is no reason that Vizhinjam should not capture a major share of the traffic that currently flows via Colombo. Eventually, container volumes through the port should climb well past the 5 Million TEUs per year.

Another clear possibility is cruise traffic, an area that the current project proposal seem to address. India's fast becoming a major cruise destination in the Indian Ocean region with nearly 100 cruise ships calling at Indian ports like the ones at Ernakulam, Goa and Mangalore last year. The major shipping lanes across the Indian Ocean see over 300 cruise ships pass through and with the excitement over India as a tourist destination, it is not surprising that many ships are now making stops in Indian ports to allow their passengers to glimpse the wonders of our country. Vizhinjam lies closer to these shipping lanes than any other port in India, which allows the massive cruise liners to sample India with the least expense and within the least time. Moreover, Trivandrum is one of the biggest destinations for foreign tourists in India and with an international airport within 15 Kilometers of the port, tourists can fly to any part of India and then later re-join their ship at its next port of call (usually Singapore or Dubai), a type of cruise activity called cruise-fly-cruise.Ports which have cruise ships just passing through typically do not make much money because neither the ships nor the tourists stay long enough spend much other than on short tours and trinkets. The real money lies in becoming the home port for cruise ships, just like Miami, Singapore, Hong Kong or Barcelona. Other Indian ports including Mumbai and Ernakulam have tried this without success, but the fact that Vizhinjam's location in the middle of the Indian Ocean could allow ships based there to sail to a number of attractive locations such as Goa, Lakshadweep, Mauritius, Maladives, Sri Lanka and the Seychelles. Even with ships just calling at Vizhinjam, the multiplier effect on the tourism industry in Kerala that has been wilting under the effect of the recession would be justification enough for the Government to invest money in building a adequately equipped cruise terminal, rather than on grandiose schemes that some other Indian ports have been dreaming up.

The Indian Government has been looking for a couple of sites, one each on the West and East Coasts, for a world-class shipyard in an effort to boost India's presence in the global ship building and repair industry, which has come to be predominantly based in East Asia - China, South Korea and Japan. Poovar, a few Kilometers down the coast from Vizhinjam, has been proposed as a site and has gained a lot of support.The natural draft along the coast together with the proximity to a deep water port, as well as the presence of the international shipping lanes, make the Poovar site a clear winner but unfortunately the proposal has made no headway. The fact that neither the State Government nor the State's MPs seem to realize that this could be a multi-billion dollar investment doesn't help expedite the process. The port project itself could devote berth length to a ship repair facility, if not a true shipyard. This could be situated at one end of the port basin or along the breakwater. The yards at Singapore and Dubai find the majority of their thriving business due to their proximity to the shipping lane because ship owners tend to get their vessels repaired when they return empty after delivering cargo and at yard that require minimum deviation from the usual routes. Like Dubai and Singapore, Vizhinjam lies on these routes which account for about 1/3rd of the world's shipping trade, unlike major shipyards in Gujarat which lie about 3 days sailing distance away. An Indian shipyard also has the advantage of access to a more economical workforce and the massive production capacity of the Indian steel and engineering industries. A world-class ship building facility at Vizhinjam and Poovar, along the lines of the Dubai Maritime City, could finally put India on the world marine engineering map.

In the 1990s, Vizhinjam was envisaged as an energy port, one that would import coal and use it to fuel a thermal power plant. There is no reason to think otherwise now, in fact the idea makes more sense now than at any other time in the past. India plans to add over 100,000 MW of power generation capacity in the next 10 years, of which the vast majority would be coal-fired. Recent reports point to the fact that India's biggest coal producer, Coal India Limited, is going to fall far short of the demand for thermal coal as more and more power plants come online to feed the needs of India's rising giant of an economy. Moreover, Indian coal tends to be lower in energy value and more polluting that global supplies, such as those found in Australia. All of this means that a massive volume of coal imports is unavoidable into the foreseeable future. Most of this will come by sea from Australia and Indonesia. As in the case of any cargo, and more so in the case of other bulk cargo such as crude oil, coal transport sees major economies of scale - bigger ships have lower transport costs - per ton per kilometer. At present only a handful of ports like Mundra, Gangavaram and Dhamra can handle the largest coal carriers, behemoths that can carry over 200,000 tons of coal and need operating drafts of over 18 m. This is the prime reason for locating most of the giant Ultra Mega Power Projects near these ports, as each needs over 20 Million tons of coal a year. Kerala has not laid claim to one of these massive power stations but it can easily ask for one to be built somewhere in Trivandrum district, where large tracts of Government-owned land are available in the Eastern parts of the district. These UMPPs use super-critical boiler technology which minimizes pollution and produces power at low tariffs (of the order of Rs 2/unit) which is comparable to that of hydro-power. A single UMPP could not only solve Kerala's energy needs for the foreseeable future, it could export half its power to other States. If land is a major constraint, the UMPP could be built in partnership with Tamilnadu which could host the power station itself in its Kanyakumari or Tirunelveli districts (which have tens of thousands of acres of available land), with the coal being off-loaded at Vizhinjam and moved to the station by rail or long distance conveyor belt. The deep water port could also provide a facility for coal transshipment, which is analogous to container transshipment, and involves transferring coal from giant dry bulk carriers to smaller ships which can deliver to shallower, existing ports.

Vizhinjam is also the only port in India and one of the very few in the world which can accommodate Very/Ultra Large Crude Carriers at a berth. Other Indian ports have to make do by handling these giants with drafts of over 22 m at Single Point Moorings (SPM) located out at sea. For example, the refinery at Ernakulam has to use a SPM located nearly 20 Km from shore, whereas these supertankers could actually come into Vizhinjam fully loaded. This opens the possibility of having a new refinery built in or close to Trivandrum, one which could be export oriented, like the Reliance unit at Jamnagar which imports crude and exports the refined products. In short, the deep water port can lead investments of over Rs 30,000 Crores ($ 7 Billion) if the State Government plays its cards right.

Control over the Indian Ocean

Whereas once wars were fought over the control of the Aegean, the Atlantic and the Pacific, today the world's centers of maritime tension are in Asia - the Persian Gulf, the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean. The latter not only adjoins all of South and South-East Asia but East Africa and the Middle East. Almost every single barrel of the Persian Gulf's crude oil supplies passes through the Indian Ocean on its way to India, China, Japan, Europe and the US. So does the vast majority of the Asia - Europe trade and almost all of China and Japan's imports. Just how important this trade artery has become was exposed by how a few half-naked pirates were able to grab international headlines and result in the deployment of an international naval fleet seldom seen since World War II.

China has been following a "string of pearls" policy to extend its maritime influence over crucial trade routes by locating naval bases in countries along these routes. Bases have come up in Myanmar and recently in Sri Lanka, where China has just completed a deep water port at Hambantota. Recently, the Wall Street Journal and other media agencies had reported the Chinese take-over of Pakistan's deep water port at Gwador. This means that not only does China have significant secure access to the vital Indian Ocean but the Chinese Navy now has potential bases close to both the vital trade routes and Indian soil. Not to sound alarmist, but the situation is akin to the 1962 stand off between the two Superpowers, that we now call the Cuban Missile Crisis (refer X-Men: First Class!). Vizhinjam offers the Indian Navy its best possible location for a strategic base that can dominate the northern Indian Ocean and every major shipping lane passing close to India. Next to the US base at Diego Garcia, Vizhinjam offers the ideal location for a long range naval base for the Indian Navy to control the Indian Ocean. The other option is in the Andaman Islands but a mainland base would probably be more preferable. With its deep draft and the protection afforded by the Southern Air Command (SAC) fighter bases at Trivandrum, Sulur, Thirunelveli and Tanjore, the port could be a great location to deploy the Navy's new flagship, the INS Vikramaditya. Even if we are not tangling with the People's Navy (which is moving ahead with its own aircraft carrier program), long range patrol vessels located at Vizhinjam would be able to interdict any pirate threats to the shipping lanes. Indeed, the major expansion of the Coast Guard presence at Vizhinjam is a sure sign of this as are the shifting of the IAF's Maritime Operations Center to Trivandrum and the annual Dakshin Prahar exercises. The fact that SAC is being beefed up with three new fighter bases and the ongoing acquisition of both long range maritime patrol aircraft and strike aircraft like the SU-30 and the new Multi-Role Combat Aircraft is yet another sign that India is taking its Indian Ocean role very, very seriously. The Indian Navy has already asked for space to berth its ships at Vizhinjam and I would not be surprised to say a couple of missile frigates and a carrier docked in the port in the near future. In short, the port's importance as a strategic security asset is as clear as its importance as a strategic economic asset and it won't be very surprising if A.K. Antony is one of the staunchest behind-the-scenes supporters of the project!

In short, India's deepest port is far from being a simple commercial proposition. It's potential is only limited by the imagination and ambition of the Government, and it's to be hoped that the approach adopted in the coming month is not the conventional tame one but an audacious proposal which seeks to harness all the obvious advantages of Vizhinjam and transform Southern Kerala into a world-class economic powerhouse. Ideally, I would like to see the port start off with a total berth length of atleast 3 Km in Phase I with 1.5 Km devoted to container transshipment, a 300 m berth for the Indian Navy, a basic cruise terminal and the beginnings of a world-class ship repair facility in the remaining area. Simultaneously, Kerala can make a bid for a UMPP which would use Vizhinjam to import its fuel and this can form the lynch pin of Phase II that starts by around 2015, together with a doubling of the container handling capacity. From there, it all depends on the economics but I would not be surprised if the port finally ends up accommodating a greater density and diversity of uses than we discussed here. It all depends on how the first few steps - the bid, the clearances and the initial development work - fare and fingers crossed on that!

The Future Under Construction

2011-06-17T13:55:00.001-04:00

In this awesome shot, courtesy of Vijay and posted on Skyscrapercity, we can literally see the future of Trivandrum taking shape, with the 2 Million SF Infosys campus in the foreground, the 3.6 Million SF UST Global Campus behind it (yellow tower crane), the 1 Million SF Building A of Technopark Phase III (two white tower cranes) further behind and then the 4.5 Million SF bulk of Technopark Phase I in the background. Over 10 Million - 1 Crore - SF of high-quality IT space providing tens of thousands of technology jobs in the IT hub of Kerala.

And this is just the start! Stay tuned!

Welcome to New Trivandrum

2011-05-28T13:07:00.000-04:00

After my absence for the last few weeks, caused by a bad case of over-work arising from the end of my classes at MIT and a business plan that I am working on (yes, in Trivandrum, where else?!), the good news is that I am back. The bad news is that you will have to be just a little bit more patient with me!

While I work on my next article about Vizhinjam, feast your eyes on this gorgeous video that shows the emergence of New Trivandrum, in a 10 Km swathe from Menankulam to the Airport. You can see all three phases of Technopark, the Veli-Kazhakkoottam industrial belt, VSSC, the emerging lake-front residential cluster at Aakulam, Kochuveli Satellite Railway Terminal (complete with a couple of trains!), the Air India MRO and, of course, the spanking new T3.

Hats off to Arundev, for capturing this awesome video!

Stay tuned for next post in a couple of days, I hope!

India Rising....

2011-04-22T19:44:00.000-04:00

I am not usually given to posting anything unrelated to Trivandrum on here, but I thought that this momentous project happening in our country deserves some recognition here. While many of us wax eloquent about the Burj Khalifa in Dubai and the skyscrapers of New York and Shanghai, let's not forget that the second tallest building in the World is coming up in India, yes you heard me right, in India!

It's the 720 m tall "India Tower" coming up in Mumbai and it will beat all current under-construction skyscraper superstars, including 1 World Trade Center and the Shanghai Tower, to stand next only to the 828 m Burj Khalifa in sheer height. It's probably a lot better looking than the BK too! Feast your eyes on this!

Image Courtesy: Jai @ SSC India

I guess it's about time, we aimed skywards as well!

Oracle sets up base in Trivandrum

2011-04-18T09:10:00.001-04:00

Trivandrum's status as the top Tier 2 technology destination in India has once again been re-affirmed with global technology giant, Oracle Corporation, announcing the setting up of its development center in Technopark. This is possibly the first entry of a global Top 5 Software firm into a Tier 2 city.

Oracle signed the lease agreement for its start-up space at the 500,000 SF Leela building within Technopark today, and will soon be ramping up its operations in Kerala's IT hub to a global services center. Oracle's confidence in investing in Trivandrum after a year-long evaluation process which also looked at usual suspects such as Mangalore, Vizag, Coimbatore, Jaipur, Gurgaon and Ahmedabad shows the attractiveness of Trivandrum as a technology destination even on a global scale, which has also been validated by recent PwC, Morgan Stanley and McKinsey studies.

I had once mentioned that the tipping point for Trivandrum to develop to something more than just another Tier 2 technology destination would be heralded by two key events - the entry of a top global IT player and a major IT infrastructure developer. The first has now happened, and hopefully, will result in the second sooner rather than latter. The current LDF Government deserves full marks for investing in Trivandrum, through Technopark Phase III and Technocity, although they did get a bit side-tracked with other projects which have sadly (and not very surprisingly!) borne no fruit till date. It's up to the next Government to realize that focusing on Trivandrum is the one sure-fire approach to creating a globally competitive technology hub in Kerala.

The arrival of Oracle Corporation in Trivandrum is also a proud moment for TDF which was involved directly in the discussions with the senior management of the firm right from the very beginning. TDF has marked Trivandrum to many top IT firms and infrastructure developers and succeeded in putting Trivandrum firmly on their radars, but this is definitely our biggest catch till date! May it be the first of many!

Vote for Development....and Why you Should!

2011-04-09T19:01:00.000-04:00

At the beginning very year, I take an informed, albeit often optimistic, stab at what the rest of the year will bring in terms of major development milestones for our city. This year I am still to do that. At first glance, it would seem that the lapse is also on account of the hectic schedule here at MIT, which is the reason why the frequency of posts on this blog has tailed off quite alarmingly in the last few months. However, there is some method behind this particular delay. This is an election year, when the people of Kerala get another chance to determine their fate. And since a lot of the subjects that we talk about on this blog have to do with the powers-that-be who we elevate to their position for five year tenures, I thought it would be best to make this year's forecast after it becomes clear who is left in charge after the electoral storm clears up.

I wish that the choice of Government was a rational one, but the truth is that it isn't. We don't elect the best people for the best of reasons. I would like to believe that we don't elect the worst, for the worst of reasons either but the reality of democracy is somewhere in between. Be it the world's largest democracy or the world's richest one, where the elected representatives have just staved off yet another potential shutdown of Government for various trivial reasons. That said, I would like to put forward some suggestions for what you should look for before you cast your vote, if you have any concern for what your City should be like in the future and how well you and your children will live in the years and decades to come. Let's forget socio-religious leanings, political ideologies and personality cults for now and take a look at some of the development issues which should guide your votes.Isn't that one of the most critical responsibilities of an elected Government too, especially in a developing nation like ours, to usher in as much of the sort of social and economical that uplifts the population as possible?

As always, I will look at things from the perspective of our City and its surrounding areas and while I can roll off a whole laundry list of things that I would ideally like the next Government to do, I will keep my list to just the five that I think are most important for Trivandrum, not just in the short term, but for years to come.

1. Vizhinjam Deep-sea Port - The incoming Government should be able to complete the ongoing bid process successfully before the end of 2011 and award all tenders for the development of the port and its ancillary infrastructure to capable agencies by the end of the year. It should make sufficient allocation in all coming budgets to provide sufficient funding support to meet the public sector commitments in the Rs 6000 Crore Public Private Partnership project. The Government should also have the resolve to fight it out in Delhi to get all the necessary clearances and Central aid for the project against stiff competition from projects in Kerala and the neighboring States. In short, the project has to be operational before 2015.

2. Technology Industry - There is little doubt that the meal ticket for the City in the near and medium terms is going to depend on the development of the technology industry and the education sector. The latest CII-PwC study has identified Trivandrum as the top technology destination among all Tier 2 cities and the next Government has to keep this growth going by continuing the development of world-class infrastructure. The focus will be on Technocity to create up to 15 Million SF of space over the next 5-8 years but there needs to be significant investment in supporting infrastructure, such as the creation of a "Growth Corridor" stretching from Vizhinjam to Attingal with world-class road, power and water infrastructure. The incoming Government has to accept the fact that Trivandrum accounts for nearly 80% of the State's IT industry and focus on growing it into a hub that can compete with the likes of Pune and Hyderabad, of not with Bangalore itself.

3. Highway and Road Development - That we have missed out on developing our road infrastructure in the recent past is a gross understatement. The Trivandrum City Road Improvement Project (TCRIP) has been the only sign of progress, albeit a very delayed one. But now that the people of Trivandrum have been given a glimpse of world-class roads, it is critical that the NH-47 be widened to 6-lanes with immediate effect, so that the coming flood of traffic from India's biggest container port and a rapidly expanding metropolitan area can be handled without mile-long traffic jams. At the same time, work on the proposed Outer Ring Roads and JNNURM city roads has to start. Most of these projects have majority Central funding but the State Government plays the all-important role of land acquisition.

4. Land Acquisition for Airport and Railway Development - Trivandrum International Airport has just got Kerala's most advanced and biggest terminal building, but T3 is already behind in terms of the growing demand at the airport. The next phases of development on the cityside are desperately needed and the ball is in the court of the next State Government to acquire land for it. The same holds true for the development of urgently needed railway infrastructure at Nemom and the tripling of lines between Nemom and Kochuveli.

5. Urban Infrastructure - While other cities across India have been profiting from JNNURM, Trivandrum has been unable to even make effective use of funds allocated to it and this has to change if the city is going to maintain the standard of living that makes it so desirable over the next decade of explosive growth. While there is a lot of Central funding available for urban development, the State Government decides on how it is deployed and once again is responsible for critical aspects such as land acquisition and planning. Trivandrum had its first mass transit system, a Rs 440 Crore BRTS project, approved in June 2009! It's high time that these and other urban infrastructure projects be priortised in Kerala's biggest and most populous city.

So these are five check boxes that your candidate/front's manifesto should definitely be able to check off. I am guessing that some or all of these issues find some mention in many manifestos, probably much lower down the priority list than any of us would like. But do mere promises suffice? Of course not, we all know full well the probability of a manifesto promise coming to fruition. No, I would back up the promises with past records and overall attitude.

I will not get into the past records of candidates because some of them have not stood for election in Trivandrum or may not be from the city at all. Case in point being the son of the late Leader. But I will give my opinion on the track records of the two fronts. It's simple, the LDF wins hands down. Not because their leaders were all enamoured of our City and its welfare, with the notable exception of M. Vijayakumar (he deserves a statue of his being put up in a prime location, of anyone alive at this point!), but because they were unbiased or equally biased with respect to all locations. The LDF let Trivandrum get its deserved share of attention and investment. They did not ignore the sheer dominance of Trivandrum as an IT hub or the natural advantages of Vizhinjam, as the UDF has tended to do. The LDF invested in IT infrastructure across Kerala, a policy that leads even the likes of Karnataka or Tamilnadu, but did not ignore Trivandrum for the benefit of any other city. On the contrary, the previous UDF Government very openly tried to force companies that made a beeline to Trivandrum to locate in Ernakulam at a time when the State Capital still had a chance to catch up with the likes of Pune and Kolkata as a Tier 1 IT hub. The LDF has also not shied away from making public investments in infrastructure, of which Trivandrum together with Ernakulam and Kannur have been the greatest beneficiaries, be it the Rs 450 Crores invested in Vizhinjam or the Rs 800 Crores invested in Technopark and Technocity. So in terms of being unbiased and ready to put the money where the manifesto is, the LDF comes off on top.

M.Vijayakumar is not standing for re-election, a crying shame in my honest opinion, but VS is still there as an unbiased CM candidate as are strong leaders like M Sivankutty and C. Ajayakumar (Kazhakkoottam constituency), who are likely to be influential in power, if not members of an LDF Cabinet. Despite allegations about his being anti-private sector, VS has overseen, directly or indirectly, more private and PPP investment than any other CM in Kerala's history. I have interacted with him directly on more than one occasion and I have seen his commitment to worthwhile projects that can really benefit the State and its people, as evidenced by his strong sponsorship of projects like Vizhinjam, Technocity, Kannur Airport and Vallarpadam. Case in point, his strong support for the Government's "landlord" strategy for Vizhinjam and the allotment of 82 acres of land in Technocity to TCS for its Rs 2000 Crore Global Training Center even when his public disagreements with the Tata Group in Munnar are well known.

The only plus that I see on the side of the UDF is that a State Government that they may form will have big brother in power in Delhi. Not that we have benefited a lot when the Congress was in power both in Trivandrum and Delhi but I believe that the one man in the Congress who has shown no bias against Trivandrum - A.K. Antony - may be able to work some more of his Centrally funded magic and bring some benefit to the city that has become his home over the last few decades. Additionally, I also believe that the UDF's most likely CM candidate (and there are half a dozen gentlemen who have all given orders to their personal tailors) - Oommen Chandy - will finally realize that IT is not equal to only "Smart" City and that urban infrastructure also means projects other than the "Metro". I wouldn't put my money on this happening but it has become clear that folks in the Capital city have finally started to become more cognizant of what they deserve.

I still cannot get over the fact that I cannot cast my vote this time. I have voted in every single election since I got the right of Franchise (except one where my name mysteriously disappeared off the electoral roll and I discovered that only after I flew in from Mumbai on the day of the poll!). But I hope that at least a few of you will ponder over the points that I have made here and will cast your vote in favor of the most deserving candidate/Front.

Also, try out this interesting survey which polls your opinion on a wide range of issues and then tells you which party's views and ideology matches yours the closest. It's a joint venture of the University of Kerala, an IT firm and the Center for Democratic Studies. I do not agree with all points in the LDF's ideology (lol, after all, I am a bona fide capitalist!) but it was no surprise what the survey's outcome indicated. Please do not consider this the best way to decide whom to vote for but it is an useful guide to understand where your ideals and values lie on the ideology map of the major companies. This web-site allows both voters and candidates to put up their views, but unfortunately, it hardly seems to have been used. Next time, maybe.

Finally, for those of us who believe that our votes don't matter......THEY DO! If we do not exercise our right to franchise, we should not complain about the sort of Government that we get. And remember that the Government determines almost every facet of how we live, work and have fun, and take many of the decisions that could determine how our children and theirs live. So think about it and make an intelligent choice!

Bussing it up in Trivandrum!

2011-04-02T10:08:00.000-04:00

In this interesting shot captured on the fly by my friend Xeno, from SSC Trivandrum, one can see three recent additions to the Capital city's ever widening roads. An articulated bus on the left, a Volvo 8400R on the right and the top deck of a new double-decker sticking up behind the Volvo.

I remember those days when Trivandrum used to be one of the few cities in India, the others being Mumbai and Kolkata, to have double deckers, road-trains and trailer-buses plying on its roads. Folks from all across Kerala used to come and gape at these road kings all the time!

Technopark Phase III shaping up!

2011-03-27T01:38:00.003-04:00

Kerala's largest building, the 1 Million SF Technopark Phase III, is rapidly taking shape as work progresses at a brisk pace to meet its late-2011 completion deadline.

The distinctly designed angular buildings have been designed by star architect Hafeez Contractor and are designed to provide world-class, sustainable space for IT companies. At least one of the world's top 10 technology firms will be taking up space here in the months to come. Stay tuned, folks!

Image courtesy: Sudheeshnair @ Skyscrapercity - Trivandrum

And here's the awesome video tour of Phase III once again for your viewing pleasure!

TREST -Trivandrum Engineering Science and Technology Park

2011-02-16T22:49:00.000-05:00

Without much ado, another chapter in the illustrious history of Kerala's top engineering institution, the College of Engineering Trivandrum, was made today with the inauguration of the Trivandrum Engineering Science and Technology (TREST) Park at the College.

TREST will act as a center for Research & Development in fields related to Engineering and Technology by providing research space and supporting facilities and foster active cooperation between academia and industry to foster and incubate new ideas. This facility is being set up along the lines of the first institution-linked R&D park in the World, at Stanford. As far as I know, TREST will be the second one of its kind in South India after the facility at IIT Madras.

TREST has already attracted interest from technology & engineering giants such as Accenture, Infosys and Mahindra & Mahindra. Infosys CMD and one of Trivandrum's proudest sons, Kris Gopalakrishnan, was the guest of honor at the inauguration which was also attended by senior representatives from industry and academia.

TREST will leverage the presence of Technopark, Technocity, IIITM-K, Kerala University, C-DAC and ISRO, all within a few kilometers of the park. There are a dozen or more world-class R&D and educational institutions in and around the city ranging in diverse fields ranging from biotechnology to high performance computing. This is a strategic advantage which is probably pretty unique in India, except maybe for Bangalore. The sheer impact of such a park is best exemplified by the biotech/clean-tech/technology cluster that has grown up around MIT, right outside my window, which is now considered the single most important center of R&D in the whole wide World and has given birth to several Billion-dollar biotech/genetics companies such as Genzyme, AmGen and Biogen.

This new facility has the potential to become one of the most important R&D hubs in India and will help to further consolidate Trivandrum's position as a knowledge center on the global stage. Hopefully, it will follow in the footsteps of Technopark which has emerged as the top technology incubator in the country. TREST will offer R&D facilities including access to CET's sprawling network of lands, incubation space, business-support facilities, office space, food outlets, guest rooms and so much more. Already, a budget of Rs 50 Crores has been allocated to the park, with Rs 10 Crores sanctioned in this budget to kick off operations within the CET campus.

Stay tuned for more, a lot more from TREST in the years to come.

TDF meets the PM

2011-02-13T20:58:00.000-05:00

If you want something done, better knock on the boss' door.....and that is precisely what TDF has done, in association with a number of other organizations with similar interests in promoting the development of our Capital city. Along with representatives of the Trivandrum Chamber of Commerce, Trivandrum Agenda Task Force and GTech, TDF's President, Ram, met the Hon' Prime Minister of India, Dr. Manmohan Singh and submitted a memorandum outlining top priority initiatives where the PM could make a real difference.

The details of the joint memorandum are available on the TDF website but the top agenda items were:

1. Development of Highway (NH 47) from Kazhakkoottam to TN Border
2. Extension of STPI Tax Benefits
3. Development of Vizhinjam International Transhipment Container Terminal
4. Development of Kochuveli Railway Terminal
5. High Court Bench
6. User Fee at International Terminal in Trivandrum

The Prime Minister's response was very positive and he has promised to take positive steps at the earliest. TDF will be following this up through the offices of the MPs representing Trivandrum as well as with the State Government. Let's hope for the best!

Volte-face on Volvos!

2011-02-10T13:30:00.001-05:00

Ever since the JNNURM buses hit the roads in the State Capital, a few "sources" in KSRTC and a section of the media has been complaining about the buses running at a loss in Trivandrum and minting money in Ernakulam.

There have been quite a few bellyaching articles of this type.

We have been regaled by such choice observations as:

"The average income from Kochi is 42 per km while in Thiruvananthapuram it is only 28. The services has to fetch 47 per km to reach the break-even level. So chances are bright for Kochi to get more buses,” a KSRTC official said. Meanwhile, Volvo sources said that three more buses already delivered will be brought to Kochi within two or three days. “Nine more buses will be brought to Kochi by next week. So, of the 60 buses that will be allotted in the first phase, 42 will ply on Kochi roads while Thiruvananthapuram will get only 18,” sources said. KSRTC has asked Volvo to deliver the remaining 20 buses by March 31. If delivered, these buses are also expected to be allotted to Kochi, sources said."

Anyone who reads these sorts of reports would be given to think that A/C buses would never never break even in Trivandrum. This is a convenient excuse to divert the remaining buses to Kochi as has been made evident in the above article, something our dear Transport Minister seems not to be losing any sleep over. Of course, in recent reports, the "sources" remain anonymous whereas earlier they used to be attributed to top officials in the KSRTC.

Now, anyone who sees the Volvos running jam-packed during rush hours or carrying decent passenger loads even during off-peak hours would be mystified as to why this sort of revenue figure is being recorded. Very early on, TDF had filed an RTI with the KSRTC (in April 2010) to ascertain the information behind this and to see whether any scientific fleet management techniques were being applied to the Rs 100 Crore fleet of JNNURM buses. Not only did the response show that the claims about the poor performance of the Volvos in Trivandrum were unsubstantiated, it showed a shocking lack of professional management in the operation of the fleet. For example, KSRTC had made no effort to make schedule or route information available to the public via signs or leaflets nor done any traffic study. TDF appealed the RTI response to ensure that the KSRTC had to admit to additional facts that their accounting methods failed to take into account the fact that the Volvos in Trivandrum were 80% subsidized by JNNURM unlike those in Kochi which received only a 50% subsidy. During the appeal hearing, one KSRTC officer even mentioned to me, apparently proudly, that "they didn't even have a single accountant in the company!" So much for functional expertise....

The fact that public organizations were following up on the performance of the JNNURM fleet in Trivandrum seems to have had its effect on the official stand of KSRTC. The day after the above report appeared, the same newspaper published a new report which not only contradicted the earlier one, it completely changed the view on the relative profitability of the buses in the two cities, quoting Mr Sharaf Mohammed, the Special Officer for the JNNURM buses.

It appears that the suburban population of the capital has whole-heartedly accepted the low-floor AC and non-AC buses under the JNNURM scheme. Two months since the extension of JNNURM buses to mofussil towns in the district, the initial collection from all the nine AC buses pressed into service in suburban areas is quite encouraging, according to officials of the Kerala State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC).

Presently, the monthly average EPKM of all the 18 low floor AC buses in the district in January stood at Rs 40.9, whereas that of services in Ernakulam during the month was Rs 40.7.

Meanwhile, operation of non-AC low-floor buses is quite profitable in the district. For the profitable operation of these buses, an EPKM of Rs 26 is required. Presently, the 11 such buses operating from Peroorkada depot have a monthly average EPKM of Rs 36.9. The figures from other depots are: Pappanamcode (11 buses) - Rs 30.3 and Vikas Bhavan (13 buses) - Rs 28.2. However, the collection of non-AC JNNURM buses in Ernakulam district is not satisfactory. The monthly average EPKM of these services in Ernakulam are: Aluva depot (9 buses) - Rs 21.8; Angamaly (2) - Rs 25.7; Piravom (4) - Rs 20.5; Moovattupuzha (4) - Rs 18.7; Perumbavoor (5) - Rs 22.9 and North Paravur (6) - Rs 25.1.

In short, it has become evident that the AC Volvos are running at a better revenue level in Trivandrum despite being operated in a dispersed manner (all but one route has just one or two buses deployed) and little, if any, schedule information being available to the public. This makes planned ridership almost impossible because of the low frequency and the fact that one has to adopt a hit-or-miss strategy to catch a bus. The non-AC buses are running at a Rs 10/Km profit in Trivandrum which means that either the money can be used to subsidize the AC buses to over the break-even point or that the fares of the buses could be further rationalized.

The first article mentioned a revenue figure of just Rs 28 for the Volvos in Trivandrum and Rs 42 for Ernakulam whereas the truth was Rs 40.9 and Rs 40.7. So someone shaved Rs 13 or 30% off the actual figure for Trivandrum to make it look like the buses were running at a huge loss. Will the newspaper reveal its "source" since this is a clear case of fabricated facts and targeted libel against a whole city?The reality is that despite haphazard methods of operations, the buses in Trivandrum are running close to their break-even point (one which may not have accounted for the 80% capital subsidy!) Imagine how profitable the buses can become if concentrated into the most profitable routes, such as those to Technopark, Neyyatinkara and Vizhinjam (where the revenue figures are already pretty close to the break-even mark)and if schedule & route information can be made available to the general public. This does not even take into account additional revenue generation methods like advertising which contribute significantly to the profitability of bus mass transit operations across the World, including in our own Bangalore, where over 700 Volvos are currently operating.

Most of us scoff at the mention of vested interests trying to block the development of our city and the betterment of our lives. Do you need more proof? Because, I have lots more, stay tuned. In the meantime, support our public transport system, take the Volvo next time and write into KSRTC, a newspaper or your MLA to make sure that we are not denied the services that we deserve and pay for.

Sneak Peek of the New Terminal

2011-02-08T08:53:00.002-05:00

As we await the official opening of Terminal 2 or T3 of the Trivandrum International Airport on February 12th by the Prime Minister (and also while I keep working on a much longer post!), here are a couple of videos shot of the entry to the terminal and the terminal itself. The videos come courtsey my friend Nishanth.

This is the entry ramp and 6-lane elevate road into the terminal directly from the NH-47. Note that this drive is up the wrong ramp (and against the traffic) due to the correct ramp being blocked at this time.

And a more detailed once-over of the terminal which gives an idea of its sheer size!

14 Major Developers submit RFQs for Vizhinjam

2011-01-11T01:18:00.002-05:00

You will not read this bit of news in any of the major newspapers (except for, as usual, The Hindu) or see it on the regional channels, since they have decided that the common and garden variety of sundry news is far more important than an important milestone achieved by the largest infrastructure project ever initiated in the history of the State. If you are still wondering why this sort of lunacy continues in the media world, please don't waste any time on it, that's the way it is.

Meanwhile, 14 major companies/consortia submitted responses to the Request for Qualification(RFQ) issued by VISL for the Port Operator part of the Rs 6000 Crore ($1.5 Billion) BOT project. This part envisages a private entity which comes in to operate the port, especially the container transshipment terminal, and also brings in the superstructure - the cargo handling equipment - for the port. As per the current structure of the project, this entity could also opt to develop the basic infrastructure of the port including the breakwater and the quays.

Some of the giants in the fray include Reliance Infrastructure, the Adani Group (Mundra Port), GMR, GVK, Gammon Infrastructure, Leighton, Shipping Corporation of India - SKIL - HCC consortium, Condor-Brookfield consortium, Limak consortium, JP Associates and Sterlite Industries (Vedanta Group).

These bids will now go for analysis to ensure that the firms meet all the qualification criteria. That should not be a difficult proposition for some of the biggest business groups in India and across the World. Together these companies represent hundreds of billions of dollars of investments aall over the globe. Next, they may also be sent to the Central Government for security clearance and finally, the qualified companies will be issued the Request for Proposal (RFP) for the bids themselves. Hopefully, we can expect this by early March 2011.

Vizhinjam's progress has sent shivers down a few spines it seems. Apparently, at the recently concluded Maritime Conclave held by the CII in Trivandrum, the head of a nearby Port Trust made an eloquent appeal against two container transshipment terminals being set up in close proximity to each other and claimed that the funds being deployed for Vizhinjam should instead be given to one of his pet projects which has been sucking down State and Central funds for the last few years without any evident results. Trivandrum's known for its gracious hospitality, else his reception may have run out with such comments.

Anyways, when our rivals run scared before we even break ground, it's obvious that we are doing something right! More on this soon, stay tuned!

Wrapping up 2010

2011-01-10T03:21:00.001-05:00

Another year has rolled over, a fact vividly driven in by the fact that my recently concluded birthday had the ominous tone of fast approaching mid-life! Nobody was sorry to see 2009 go and I am sure that 2010 won't have too many fans either. We all wish that it could have been better but it could have been a lot worse too! That's how I want to look back at the year that I took perhaps the biggest leap of my life so far, on which the jury is still very much out. More on that later, now on to our annual tradition.

Vizhinjam: I had predicted in my forecast for 2010 that Vizhinjam would make certain headway after the disastrous outcome of 2009 when a successful bid was torpedoed by a malicious campaign, spearheaded by a shady company and certain politicians at the behest of powerful vested interests who are scared stiff of Vizhinjam's potential. And the project has definitely made a lot of headway, thanks to strong political leadership and support from the CM, Minister Vijayakumar and their Cabinet colleagues. Actual land acquisition and work on the first phase of the port's road connectivity are already in progress as are the development of the project's power and water supply. Work on its rail connectivity is also in the planning stages in conjunction with the Indian Railways. Some of the Who's Who from the global and Indian infrastructure and ports business have working very closely with VISL on the project and it looks like atleast a dozen top firms will submit RFQ proposals today before 6 PM. Moreover, a consortium of banks headed by Trivandrum-based PSU giant, SBT, have agreed to lend the Rs 2500 Crores which may be needed if the State directly develops the basic port infrastructure.

The outlook for Vizhinjam is better than before. Despite the strength of opposition, from near and far, I am quietly confident that the project will be successfully tendered in the first half of 2011 and will enter construction towards the end of the year.

Technopark: Kerala's IT hub is abuzz with construction activity, even as it heads to the next level in terms of IT exports, likely to be close to $1 Billion in 2010-11. Over 5 Million SF of space is under various stages of development across Phases I, II and III. Infosys SDB II is nearing completion while a mammoth SDB III will soon enter construction. Work on the UST Global campus and Technopark Phase III, with nearly 2 Million SF just between them, is fast progressing and the latter is expected to be commissioned in August 2011. The NEST and CDAC campuses are undergoing finishing work and will be commissioned in the first half of 2011.

Technocity: The State's largest IT infrastructure project has finally sen the light of day with its land acquisition getting completed. And no sooner than that got over, India's largest technology firm, TCS, has scooped up 82 acres of prime land in the project to set up a Rs 1500 Crore Global Training Center, which is all set to top the one Infosys has at Mysore and will be able to train 15,000 techies at one go. If TCS's iconic Siruseri campus is anything to go by, the Technocity complex will be a stunner. The Asian School of Business has just opened its campus at Technocity, becoming its first tenant. With some of the world's leading technology firms having sent top level teams to scout Trivandrum in 2010 for setting up shop, Technocity will certainly see a lot of action in 2011.

Highway Development: This has been the greatest disappointment for Trivandrum and most of Kerala, in 2010. An all-party bout of insanity about the width of the new roads derailed every contract which was set to be awarded for the development of highways in Kerala. Eventhough State and Center later kissed and made up, the opportunity to achieve progress was squandered and it remains to be seen if the projects can be brought back on track even in 2011. The only hope is that the Kazhakkoottam - Vizhinjam stretch of the NH-47 - along which over Rs 20,000 Crores of projects are currently in development - can be taken up on its own, as has been done for the bypasses at Kollam and Alleppey. All eyes are on our honorable MP in this regard as his counterparts (and Congress colleagues) have been responsible for the turn of events in the case of the two bypasses. Fingers crossed on this one project for 2011, and sadly not much else.

National Games Stadiums: The 35th National Games have been pushed to late-2012, at the earliest. Which means that we can have the brand-new stadiums ready by then. The bids for the three new stadiums (including a 50,000 seat international standard cricket and football stadium) will be received on January 17th and we can expect work to start and progress significantly by the end of 2011.

Urban Infrastructure: Kerala continues to perform abysmally in the case of the JNNURM project. The Trivandrum Corporation kept up its pathetic record in terms of bagging projects and executing awarded projects. The much-awaited Sewage Treatment Plant at Muttathara finally got off the ground and continues to lag in terms of progress. No further project has been bagged by the Corporation with a nil score in the vital area of urban transport infrastructure, despite very ambitious plans. The silver lining is that the 150 new buses alloted under the JNNURM scheme have started to trickle on to the roads. Despite the KSRTC's initial posturing that the services in Trivandrum were not profitable as an excuse to divert the buses elsewhere, they have been forced to admit other wise and start deploying more buses in the Capital city. TDF asked some very tough questions to the KSRTC via an RTI and this may have helped to drive home the point that the public was watching very earnestly how the new buses were deployed and managed. KSRTC continues to be ad hoc at best with the buses and has no scientific structure or capability to manage a world-class bus fleet but it seems the pent up demand of Kerala's biggest city and only million-plus urban center will keep them afloat any how.

TCRIP: The Trivandrum City Road Improvement Project (TCRIP) erased one constant complaint by throwing open the Bakery Junction flyover according to the revised schedule. Substantial progress has been achieved in all the remaining road corridors including the M.G. Road, Vellayambala - Sasthamangalam, Kowdiar - Peroorkada and so on, although nagging land acquisition disputes, contractor issues and the incessant rains have meant that the work continues to lag. All said and done, the remaining stretches should be polished off in 2011 except for the M.G. Road which continues to be deadlocked due to the non-availability of land. 2010 also saw substantial completion of the Thampanoor Bus Terminal and progress with the bus terminals at Eanchakkal and Medical College. (Yeah, they would be called "mobility hubs" if they were in a lil' place a wee bit north of us, but let's keep things simple and truthful, shall we?!)

Railway Development: Nix, that about sums up 2010 in this field. 2011 doesn't look much more promising and all we should hope for are a few new trains/extensions/stoppages and at best some money for improvements at Trivandrum Central and Kochuveli. My best wish is two more platforms at Kochuveli and the rail connectivity for Vizhinjam. Fingers crossed on that! Toes too.....

Trivandrum International Airport: The good news in 2010 is that the new terminal complex, T3, is ready. The bad news is that six months after getting ready it still awaits inauguration. Period! 2010 was a dull year in aviation but 2011 promises much more better tidings (if assorted bearded terrorist and pagan volcano gods permit!). Indigo has doubled domestic connectivity on many sectors from TIA and Spicejet is expected to do the same. TIA will experience no shortage of demand but a sure paucity of facilities in 2011 even after T3 becomes operational. I hope the State can find enough time in the midst of acquiring 2000 acres for the Kannur Airport, to acquire at least 50 acres for the construction of the next phase of the city-side terminal complex in 2011.

Institutions: The IISST is well and truely in business from its new campus while the IISER still bides its time to move to its own mega-campus at Vithura. Trivandrum's all set to receive a world-class Institute for Molecular Sciences soon as well. The Trivandrum Medical College, Kerala's premier medical institute, completed its expansion plans with joint Central-State funding ahead of any of the others across India and also started training and examinations for the prestigious MRCP course. The area of intellectual capital development has been one where the State Capital has been consistently doing well over the recent past and 2010 was no exception. After all, one needs smarts and good people to pull that off, and it seems that hawala currency and yellow journalism still hasn't proven good enough to emulate this sort of success.

Real Estate: This is one of the sectors that has taken the worst beating in the Recession across the world, probably financial services was the only one worse off (Although one my doubt that after you take one look at the bonuses being paid on Wall Street!!) Trivandrum's been fortunate in not seeing the erosion of sale price/rental levels nor in the contraction of actual demand unlike most other places in Kerala where the latter dried up as soon the pockets of the NRI clans took a drastic cut. (The ominous lack of loud advertisements from real estate firms for non-Trivandrum projects which used to dominate the airways and print pages is a clear enough sign) While the residential and office sector continued to be strong in 2010, retail remains the poor cousin in the city's market. Two mall quality projects were swallowed up by individual textile retailers, including perhaps the most iconic one in South India. This leaves just a couple of other under-construction projects to unveil Trivandrum's first mall experience in late-2011. However, 2011 promises to be a year of action with a plethora of launches, in all locations and sizes, across residential and commercial real estate. Stay tuned for more on this as the information becomes free to be revealed.

The only other notable event in 2010 from the perspective of this recap was the expansion of the Trivandrum Corporation to create the first and only "metropolitan" (defined as "with a population > 1 Million) Corporation in Kerala with over a 100 wards. However, the Master Plan for this metro city and its surrounding urban agglomeration continues to remain in some dusty file (I hope someone still remembers where it is...!!) and neither the Trivandrum Corporation nor TRIDA have been expanded or modified to take on their weightier roles, so even this development is unlikely to yield benefits to the citizens anytime soon.

I guess a recap of 2010 is a lot of doom and gloom, punctuated by a few bits of good news. Some of it's no one's fault and some of it it's everybody's at the same time.Not to mention the constant and decidedly unfriendly interference by various vested interests near and not-so near. At least, we have been spared the ignominy of seeing much-trumpeted projects and proposals being exposed for the fallacies that they always were or quite literally struggling to dig themselves out of the mud that they landed themselves in. Scant consolation, I guess but it's always best to stay honest and do the right things!

Thus exits 2010! Adios! And let me take this much-belated chance to wish all of you and everyone in Trivandrum a happy and prosperous 2011!

Back to Trivandrum

2010-12-19T21:56:00.000-05:00

I am headed back to Trivandrum, flying out from JFK tomorrow evening and landing up at Trivandrum International Airport (sadly, still at T2 and not T3) early on Wednesday morning. The highlight of course if that I will be winging my way out of New York on the world's biggest passenger jet! Yipeee! Stay tuned, folks, there is a lot of catching up to do on the blog!

IFFK 2010

2010-12-14T02:48:00.000-05:00

Trivandrum's standard bearer on the world cinema scene, IFFK, has rolled in for yet another edition. For the first time since 2001, I will be missing it, sigh! For the last couple of years, IFFK's been hailed as India's pre-eminent film event, outdoing the official national film festival, now held permanently in Goa, in any and all parameters - the number and quality of films, the size of the audience and the intensity of the experience - that matter to an avid movie buff or professional alike.

For starters, here is the brand new signature film, a bright and colorful cartoon, from Trivandrum's home-grown global animation giant, Toonz.

Stay tuned for more!

RFQ floated for Kerala's mega-port!

2010-11-25T15:45:00.000-05:00

The Request for Qualification (RFQ) for prospective developers of the Rs 6000 Crore Vizhinjam Deep-sea Port project has been floated, setting in motion the development process for the biggest greenfield infrastructure project in Kerala's history.

You can read more about the history of the project and every latest development here. Stay tuned, folks!

Sting and Bod Geldof at Trivandrum

2010-11-19T11:29:00.000-05:00

Here's the video of Sting and Bob Geldof at the Nishagandhi open-air theater in Trivandrum, at the closing concert of the Hay Festival.

Make sure you pass it on to everyone you know. Let the world know about the latest exciting international addition to Trivandrum's cultural calendar. And try to be next time, I know I will do my best to be!

Video Courtesy: The Telegraph, UK and Youtube

Awesome conclusion to the Trivandrum Edition of the Hay Festival!

2010-11-15T23:53:00.000-05:00

The first edition of the Hay Festival in Trivandrum was wildly successful with enthusiastic and involved audiences at all the sessions. The organizers now plan it to be an annual event at Trivandrum. Not very surprising for a city which puts a different spin on the words "intellectual capital". Long the heart and soul of Malayalam cinema and the permanent home of the International Film Festival of Kerala, not to mention the preferred haunt of many of Kerala's literary greats, it looks like the capital city has yet another internationally-acclaimed addition to its annual cultural calendar.

And as if this was not awesome news in itself, get a load of how the finale to the event panned out, a packed concert at Nishagandhi with Irish music legend Bob Geldof....and.......you better believe it, Sting!

Image Courtesy: Yentha.com

While the event garnered a lot of publicity in the National print and visual media, as well as in select international media, I wonder how well it was covered in the so-called "local" media. I wouldn't be surprised if many of the worthies who "report" for them haven't heard the word "sting" in any other connotation that the wrong end of a bee or, at best, the wrong end of Tehelka. Plus, I am sure there will soon be a bunch of loyal citizens calling for the Hay Festival to be parceled out across various towns and villages of Kerala. After all, we managed that with the IT revolution and the National Games, didn't we? I hope someone does the right thing and say "No" in this case at least!

Hay Festival in Trivandrum!

2010-11-12T01:29:00.000-05:00

No, I am not talking about an orgy of making cattle fodder here, but of the world-famous literary event that is currently being held in Trivandrum.

Some of the world's who's-who in the literary, arts and cultural spheres. Some of the attendees include Mani Shankar Aiyar, Rosie Boycott, Gillian Clarke, William Dalrymple, Tishani Doshi, Sonia Faleiro, Sebastian Faulks, Bama Faustina, Bob Geldof, Namita Gokhale, Nik Gowing, Sister Jesme, Manu Joseph, NS Madhavan, Jaishree Mishra, Anita Nair, Vivek Narayanan, Michelle Paver, Basharat Peer, Hannah Rothschild, K Satchidanandan, Marcus du Sautoy, Simon Schama, Vikram Seth, CP Surendran, Miguel Syjuco, Tarun Tejpal, Shashi Tharoor, Amrita Tripathi, Pavan Varma, Jorge Volpi and Paul Zacharia.

Impressive, eh?! Oh yes! Too bad that I am on the other side of the world but I hope those of you lucky enough to be in Trivandrum right now would spend some time listening to some really interesting people interact with each other and with the enlightened citizens of our city.

Trivandrum has had no peers in terms of cultural and intellectual achievement in Kerala, be it the printed word or the silver screen (IFFK is now widely considered as India's premier film event). The fact that the Capital City has been chosen to host such a prestigious event on an annual basis is yet another testimonial to how cosmopolitan the city has become, with its packed calendar of cultural events which have been drawing people from across the world.

The only thing I hope that the organizers mull about and modify next time is to brand the event as the Hay Festival, Trivandrum instead of Kerala. The folks in Trivandrum are happy to let their State benefit from the branding of most of the city's achievements. Sadly, not many other places are so broad-minded and it is high-time we learned how valuable geographic branding can be on a global scale.

@ ULI Fall Conference 2010

2010-10-22T22:37:00.000-04:00

Ever since I first heard the iconic exchange between Mohanlal and Sreenivasan that concerned the distance between two American cities, I had wanted to visit the Capital of the US (and the World, as many DC-ers claim). After a couple of decades, the opportunity to visit the quintessential capital city came last week when I attended the Fall Conference of the Urban Land Institute, the world's top real estate and urban development forum.

Other than a whistle stop tour of the city and listening to a bunch of interesting presentations, I also got the opportunity of interacting with the leadership of some of the top real estate developers in the world including Forest City, Tishman Speyer and Boston Properties. Of course, what I wanted to understand most is their approach to international expansion, which seemed to be getting back on track after a spell of suspended animation during the worst of the Recession. And India is pretty much right on top of the priority, and there could even be some good news specifically for Trivandrum. Stay tuned on that!

I also had a chance to meet up with representatives of a leading urban planning and development organization, the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy, which works with Governments and advocacy groups, like TDF, to promote sustainable transportation and urban design paradigms. I hope to have some interaction with them on getting a mass transit plan for Trivandrum rolling. On the same lines, MIT has recently tied up with Volvo for a new Center of Excellence on Bus Rapid Transit, and this is a resource that I hope to leverage for Trivandrum in the near future. More on these and other discoveries from the first six weeks at MIT soon!

Reporting Back!

2010-10-09T02:11:00.002-04:00

This is probably the longest time that I have been off the grid since I started writing this blog. Due apologies for being offline so long but getting used to the grind of the world's best institution of higher learning has taken its toll on my creative time. However, proverbially, I am back!

In the meantime, I have been having a lot of conversations about a bunch of topics of interest to this blog, and hopefully, to you, its readers. Some of the areas that MIT has been giving me a crash course on include Urban Design and Development, City Planning theory and the various aspects of Real Estate Development. Not only is the time spent here an opportunity to interact with some of the world's leading thinkers in urban design and development, but also to make elevator pitches about Trivandrum to some of the world's leading real estate firms. For example, at the 25th Anniversary of my current alma mater, the Center for Real Estate at MIT, some of the speakers included the owners of two multi-billion dollar real estate giants - Hines and Boston Properties. Next week, I am off to the Fall Meeting of the Urban Land Institute in Washington D.C., where the Whos-Who of the US real estate industry congregate. Opportunity beckons! In the meantime, I am hoping to get at least one new article out, stay tuned!

TCS to develop Mega-campus at Technocity

2010-09-13T12:47:00.000-04:00

Kerala's most ambitious IT infrastructure project, the 450 acre, $ 1.5 Billion Technocity has officially taken off with its first technology tenant being allotted a massive 82 acre parcel at today's Cabinet meeting.

India's biggest IT firm, Tata Consultancy Services, plans to develop a gigantic Global Training Center, or rather a University, which can churn out 10-15,000 techies in each batch! To be developed along the lines of the 1.5 million sq.ft Infosys Mysore facility, the Technocity facility would probably be even bigger and incorporates accommodation for the 15,000 trainees in each batch. Looking at the numbers that TCS is talking about, about Rs 1500 Crores on the training campus alone, we could be looking at close to 5 million sq.ft of space!

Infosys Mysore

Image Courtesy: Genial.Soul @ Forum.Xcitefun

This is probably the best vote of confidence that Trivandrum could receive as a Knowledge Destination. TCS is one of the oldest technology investors in Trivandrum with a presence here for the past 15 years or so, including its massive 500,000 sq.ft Peepul Park. By choosing Trivandrum for its biggest facility in the world, TCS has reaffirmed the city's ability to sustain massive development in the knowledge sector. What is more, TCS has promised to convert the entire campus - 40 acres - at Technopark Phase I, into a massive Development Center. Work on this project, for which the company has received all approvals, would commence as soon as the land parcel at Technocity is allotted to it. With 26 acres of SEZ space, TCS would probably bring in 15,000 IT professionals to work at this facility.

And, with the competition between the desi IT giants - TCS, Infosys, HCL and UST Global - to set up campuses in Trivandrum hotting up, the global majors are not far behind! Just as this deal has been brewing over the last few weeks, there are at least a couple of even more significant developments due to be announced over the coming weeks, which could see two of the world's biggest technology giants pick Trivandrum for their first investment in India outside the metros! Looks like the tipping point for Trivandrum is approaching.

Needless to say, stay tuned! (Any bets on how much coverage this news will get in the local media? No?!!)

Greetings from Boston!

2010-09-07T10:04:00.000-04:00

After what has probably been my longest period of absence from the blog over the past couple of years, I am back. And for the next year or so, this blog about Trivandrum will be written from Boston. Or rather, Cambridge, Massachusetts to be exact.

The last couple of weeks were so hectic, desperately trying to settle in here at MIT before classes start tomorrow, that there has been little time even for email, let alone long blog posts. But now that that's over, we will be back up to speed soon, I have a couple of topics lined up already!

In the meantime, we have made it to 100,000 visits by all of you. As always, a big thanks to all my readers for being patient and attentive with me. With any worries about me vanishing in the Bermuda Triangle put to rest, let's get back to business as usual, folks. Stay tuned!

Off to MIT - On a Bright Note!

2010-08-19T15:04:00.000-04:00

I have been literally running around feverishly to finish all the requirements of my MIT sojourn over the last few days and there has been no time even to post the momentous development of the powers-that-be in our State agreeing that the National Highways should be developed to 45 m width as they were supposed to be. The same "All-Party" gang that sabotaged the Highway development of Kerala has now cheered it on, after wasting several months and hundreds of lives and Crores in the process.

Perhaps, it hints at a new beginning for Kerala just as the 18 hour journey that I am about to embark on signals a major, hopefully positive change, for me. Let's hope for the best!

Talk to you from Boston next time! Stay tuned, folks!

RIP NH-47 Development - Back to Square One!

2010-08-07T04:02:00.001-04:00

From Good to Not-so-Good, to Bad, Worse and finally....Dead! That has been the story of the development of the NH-47 which links Kerala's two biggest cities and acts as a lifeline for half of the State and over 20 million people all told, including a portion of Southern Tamilnadu. A long deadlocked project got moving finally when it was tendered out successfully last year before it was embroiled in a politically motivated drama about the width of the proposed road. And now, the sword has finally fallen. Frustrated by the months of unnecessary delay, the Central Government has axed the project in its current form, effectively annulling the contract which was all set to be awarded to a leading construction firm. It has called for the preparation of a fresh Detailed Project Report (DPR) for the widening of NH-47 from Cherthala to Trivandrum.

Image Courtesy: Szykana

What does this mean? Simple, between one and two years of nothing! It will take a minimum of a year to prepare a new DPR. Next the cost estimates will have to be prepared and approved by NHAI, before the tender process starts all over again. Even if the tenders are awarded smoothly, the minimum time that will elapse till we see any sort of work start is two years. Two years where the congestion on the NH-47 will increase at an ever increasing rate, two years where thousands of Crores will be wasted because of slow moving traffic, millions of tons of extra pollutants generated by idling vehicles and hundreds of people killed or maimed on unsafe roads.

Will someone step and claim responsibility for this? I would guess not, apart from the political game of exchanging blame, just to keep the electorate fooled.

Bad news indeed, especially when massive projects like Technopark Phase III, the UST Global campus, Technocity, IBM and Vizhinjam are finally getting a move on. Bad news for all of us, who actually have to use the highways and cannot afford either the luxury of escorted State cars or to sit back and complain from armchairs at home or abroad.

The only sliver of hope in the midst of all this gloom is that when a new DPR is prepared, the massive increase in traffic from 2004, when the last one was completed, would be taken into account and the design would be for a 6-lane highway! A worrying aspect is that NHAI seems to be looking to cut corners in view of the opposition to tolls in Kerala, and one are they are targeting is the construction of grade separators which is the costliest component of any highway. (1 Km of 4-lane surface road costs Rs 10 Crores or so, 1 Km of 4-lane elevated road costs Rs 45 Crores or more) However, the emphasis should be one more elevated stretches not less so as to avoid small towns like Varkala, Kottiyam, Chathanoor, Karunagapally, Haripad and Ambalapuzha along the NH-47. I hope someone sees the logic in not deleting flyovers.

Bad news, indeed, but let's hope for the best, folks!

The UST Global mega-campus! Amazing pics!

2010-08-05T10:27:00.001-04:00

Trivandrum's own home-grown tech giant, UST Global, has been teasing everyone with the prospect of a massive campus of its own for a few years now, ever since it was allocated 36 acres of land in Technopark Phase II, along with Infosys. Quite a few design options were considered over the past couple of years, some were even posted on this and other blogs. But now, finally, the real deal is here!

And it is awesome, if even that is not an understatement! UST Global has gone and unveiled one of the single biggest technology campuses in India, if not the world, and it's quite the looker too!

Highlights

Total land area = 36 Acres
Overall Built-up Area = 3.6 Million Sq.ft
Overall capacity = 30,000

Phase I Built-up Area = 800,000 Sq.ft of technology space
Phase I capacity = 8,000
Number of Floors = 16
Height = 80 m

- LEED certified Green Buildings
- Mixed-use Developments incorporating non-processing areas as well such as food courts, retail, sports facilities and MLCP
- Super-tall atrium
- To be developed in 3 Phases
- Includes features such as helipads and corporate suites
- Massive waterbody to also act as rainwater collector

Campus Master Plan

The Phase I block (in the first image) is seen on the extreme left of this layout, with the NH-47 running diagonally down the left-side border. The Infosys campus would be below the bottom boundary.

Now that UST Global has unveiled its giant campus and signature buildings to go on up on next door neighbour, Infosys, it is to be seen how TCS responds with its own SEZ campus in Technopark Phase I.

Stay tuned, IT's raining campuses in Trivandrum!

Symphony in glass and steel - More Views of T3

2010-07-29T17:48:00.001-04:00

The Hindu has put together an interesting slide-show of the exteriors and interiors of the New International Terminal at the Trivandrum International Airport. Do check it out!

The Birth of Kerala's First Metro City!

2010-07-24T00:56:00.000-04:00

It's official! Kerala's largest city has just gotten even bigger.

With the Kerala High Court giving the green signal to merge five suburban panchayats with the Trivandrum Corporation, it has grown to over 100 wards with an estimated population of over 1.5 million. This means that Trivandrum has become the first official "metropolitan" corporation in Kerala, with a population of over 1 million. It has taken a long time for Kerala to have a real metro city, but we are here now and Trivandrum is set to scale more peaks in terms of its growth into a true world city over the coming years.

While pressing commitments towards my admission to MIT and a new idea that I am working on (stay tuned for updates on that, if it works out, it would lead to a major development for Trivandrum) have kept me from posting over the last couple of weeks, I plan to put one or more articles talking about how to plan for the world city of tomorrow, today. The bit of news above puts this subject in a more urgent perspective, I would say!

For the time being, welcome to a Metro!

T3 - Pre-inauguration Images - Awesome!

2010-07-07T13:06:00.000-04:00

Another set of awesome images from my friend and co-forumer at Skyscrapercity, Vivek.

Looking forward to flying out through T3!

Sojourn to MIT

2010-07-02T10:42:00.001-04:00

A couple of months ago, I had popped the idea of a new blog to focus exclusively on real estate. The response had been mixed, some of you felt that it would just dilute my writing efforts. A point well taken, and that idea had been consigned to the cold storage for some time. However, the time has now come to dust it off and also to reveal the original inspiration behind.

Many of my friends and many of you will wonder whether I have not had my fill of classrooms yet, but I am off to do yet another degree. Atleast, that's the plan, if the powers-that-be at assorted banks and the US Consulate smile on me.

The institution of choice is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at Boston, the school is the Center for Real Estate and the program is the 11 month long Master of Science in Real Estate Development.

The plan is to get an in-depth understanding of the real estate industry in a more mature industry setting, the US real estate industry being the biggest and most developed in the world. MIT's CRE, since its inception 25 years ago, sort of wrote the book on management education in the real estate industry. Next would be working for two or three years in the US, partly to experience how a more established industry works, especially in terms of crucial areas like fund raising and strategy planning, and partly to take care of that huge hole in my pocket drilled by the costs of the program. The eventual plan is to come back to India and set my a real estate development venture (the long-awaited shift from employee to employer), based out of my favorite city, of course!

The first reaction of many fans and blog readers was whether this means a temporary or permanent demise for Trivandrum Rising. Not a chance! Obviously, the frequency of posts could decline and the percentage of on-the-ground content would also come down, but this blog will continue to talk about Trivandrum's development, even when few others do. Together we will continue to chronicle and discuss the pros and cons, what happened and what didn't and share our aspirations for our wonderful city!

49 days and counting!

From Tipping Point to Talking Point

2010-06-29T14:50:00.001-04:00

When I wrote a despairing note on Kerala's IT strategy last week, I was hoping that it would earn some attention and indeed, I was very encouraged by the sort of feedback that I received from a lot of you. Today I found out that it had reached out further than I thought.

Rosebowl channel's popular talk-show about contemporary subjects, Talking Point, was at Technopark today to discuss the development of the IT/ITES industry in Kerala and the potential that it holds for our youth. After my first appearance on the show , I had put in a word with the show's producer to look me up in case any discussions about development or IT, and it seems that she remembered, looking me up yesterday to tell about this new episode.

The panelists included Technopark CEO Mervin Alexander, former CEOs - G. Vijayaraghavan and Radhakrishnan Nair, UST Global Center head Murali Gopalan, Toonz Animations' CEO and the HR heads of TCS and NEST. Plus me as an impromptu addition. The pleasant surprise was that some of the background to the show had come from last week's blog post and the anchor, Dhanya Varma, pointed this out in the course of the discussion. Looks like the Blog-FB-Twitter nexus buzz works well!

A lot of the discussion did focus on my pet peeve - Kerala's IT strategy - and it was quite gratifying to note that the overwhelming majority of the panelists had opinions along similar lines as mine - about the need to build up a critical mass and for aggressive marketing, for example. Other familiar themes included the idea of integrated development and the business ecosystem, as well as the need to develop infrastructure on a PPP basis. As one would expect, most of the audience was made up of techies from Kerala and elsewhere. And it was great to see that these young people understood more about what the State should be doing than most of the powers-that-be. The anchor seemed to be quite skeptical of the holy cows - such as assorted "Technolodges" and such-like - that much of the establishment and a section of the media seemed to be obsessed with. And she took out time to ask pointed questions about how certain IT firms were shooed away from Trivandrum for reasons, not logical in the least.Lol, it seems like the con-job about hubs-and-spokes is finally starting to wash away. Two or three of the CEOs even wondered where such brilliant stratagems had been thought up and why no one had bothered to consult the IT/ITES industry about how its future should be charted, an echo of the views aired by IT industry CEOs at a seminar organised by CII in Trivandrum in September 2009.

All in all, my respect for the ability of the common man, especially young people, to think beyond the printed text of the so-called "mass" media and to understand concepts that seem to elude our rulers, has gone up a couple of notches. And it is heartening to see that a few people, opinion makers in their own right, who once sang praises of the nonsense that passes for an "IT strategy" have now done a full volte face! Better late than never, eh?

A couple of days ago, a friend of mine who had an active part in the original report that was used by the Government to launch the hub-and-spokes strategy was chatting with me about how things have come to pass in the 3 years since the original report. As I related how disastrously wrong his recommendations had gone, he simply said -"the idea was to move to the spokes only in the long term, AFTER the hub was well developed. Someone seems to have forgotten that minor detail. Well, anyways, we have put in a standard caveat clause, so we are safe!" Well........

Kerala's IT Strategy - A Last Chance to Introspect?

2010-06-22T17:49:00.002-04:00

Ordinarily, I am not a man given to saying "I told you so" in a not too subtle manner, but there are times when one has to be candid, especially if it's for a good cause. And in recent days, the question of how Kerala's IT infrastructure strategy has been formulated has found a lot of mention in the informed section of the press (no, don't expect to find anything in the so-called "mass media", they have no clue about the subject!) In light of the recovery in the IT/ITES industry, evidenced by bullish numbers linked to growth and recruitment from most major firms, and the launch of two of Kerala's most massive IT infrastructure projects - Technopark Phase III and Technocity, it's perhaps time to take another hard look at what we are doing to attract technology firms and infrastructure developers.

Critical Mass

Critical Mass can be defined as "the smallest amount of something you need before a major change occurs" (a more comprehensive explanation can be found here.) From the point of investment promotion, it is the minimum quantum of investment and development which starts to attract more investors. Not very clear? I agree.

Let's look at the case of Trivandrum itself in terms of the technology industry. For an employee, one of the key things he or she looks at before a change of geography is the kind of variety in employment options the prospective destination can offer. Once you have a large number of companies to choose from, the city becomes more attractive to shift to, and the employee becomes more comfortable investing there. Similarly, companies looking at a prospective city also find it more attractive if the existing talent pool is large and diverse. If the city has a large portfolio of IT and social infrastructure, it again gets high marks. A city where a significant number of major companies have already invested in makes it an easier choice for new firms as the earlier ones would have done sufficient diligence already. Add all of this up, and the concept of critical mass - the number of employees, companies, IT parks etc - becomes very clear.

Critical Mass = Talent Pool Size + Number of Companies + Availability of IT infrastructure + Availability of Social Infrastructure

The way in which the growth of cities such as Hyderabad and Pune have taken off once they attained this critical mass in the mid-2000s is evident. Even in the case of the NCR, the take-off of Gurgaon was critical in enabling the region to emerge as a top IT/ITES hub with the ability to challenge the likes of even Bangalore.

Today, fortunately, there is a lot of evidence that Trivandrum has achieved or is on the verge of achieving this critical mass, possibly the first among the leading bunch of Tier II cities, which also include Chandigarh, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Mangalore, Bhubaneshwar, Vizag and Coimbatore. This is evidenced by the fact that major firms like India's #4 - HCL Technologies - and the world # 1 - IBM - seem to be making a beeline for Kerala's Capital and IT hub. Major developers, including Mahindra, have also evinced interest in partnering with the Government of Kerala in developing IT infrastructure. Adding to the bevy of national and international majors already present at Trivandrum are home-grown firms like UST Global, IBS, Suntech, Accentia and Toonz which have achieved business success across the globe. In fact, the State's IT Secretary himself highlighted Trivandrum's success in an article in The Business Line. "he said visitors to Technopark here, the showpiece of State's IT infrastructure, are all enamoured by the settings and facilities available."

A good thing, right? Well, it's not that simple.......

Eyes Wide Shut

While TDF has been talking about focusing on one hub before diversifying into a State-wide roll-out, and we have discussed it many a time on this blog, the idea still does not seem to have dawned upon the powers-that-be. In the same article in the BL as above, it is mentioned that "

Technopark used to embody all that Kerala IT stood for. But, the State of Kerala was not seen as enjoying these benefits as cited by visitors and employees alike. A second issue related to ‘brand diffusion' arising from the hub-and-spoke model expansion into Infopark and the Cyberpark. These were seen as individually scuttling each others' prospects."

TDF had warned about this "brand diffusion" in its presentation to the Kerala Government in 2009 and I had talked about in a post dated March, 2009. We had also spoken about the risk of internal competition and cannibalization among the various IT parks in Kerala. It seems to have taken over a year for it to dawn on the decision makers.

A Strategy to Develop IT/ITES Infrastructure in Kerala (TDF Presentation)

View more documents from Ajay Prasad.

The true irony of this is that Kerala should have been able to realize the risk of internal competition quite early on, given that it has played host to one of the worst instances of the adage "too much of a good thing can be bad" in the infrastructure sector. Kerala today has a population of about 30 million, over 15 million of its citizens living elsewhere in India or the World and about 10 million air travelers annually. With such hefty air traffic numbers, very near to those of the Delhi or Mumbai hub airports, one would expect Kerala to have similar air connectivity - domestic and international - as those airports. However, reality is far from this. In fact, Keralites are not able to enjoy even decent domestic connectivity (except to Bangalore, Chennai and Mumbai) or to cities across the world (with the notable exception of the Gulf). The reason for this is simple, Kerala has not one but three (and soon, five!) airports. The State's air traffic is split up among these airports and hence the critical mass of passengers needed to justify long-haul connectivity has never built up. This is easy enough to understand. Take the case of Calcutta, no individual airport in Kerala has enough traffic to justify a direct flight to Calcutta but the cumulative traffic could be more than enough. The same holds true for, say, direct flights to Europe or North America. Moreover, concentration of air traffic to achieve critical mass could have achieved economies of scale and delivered cheaper air fares. Today, Emirates operates two Airbus A-330/Boeing B-777 flights from each of Kerala's 3 airports. Had we had just one airport, the same airline could have deployed two Boeing B-747s or Airbus A-380s each day. The bigger planes are up to 20% more economical and thus, tickets could have been much less expensive.

So, why did we have 3 airports in one of India's smallest States? The argument was that people did not need to travel too far to reach an airport. The maximum that anyone in Kerala would have had to travel to reach Trivandrum International Airport, Kerala's first and India's fifth global gateway, is about 600 Km or about 11 hours by road on decent highways. This is less than the maximum distance traveled to reach any of India's major airports or major international hubs, even in most developed nations. Take the US as an example. The country with the greatest air traffic volume, has no more than a handful of true international hubs - JFK, Newark, Washington, Chicago, Miami, Houston, LAX and San Fransisco. Kerala will soon have four! At first glance, it seems that we are doing even better than the Yanks, but then we have to take non-direct flights to reach almost any major destination across the world and even in India. Kerala also sees some of the highest air fares to and from any given destination (I often pay more to travel to Delhi than from Delhi to London!) Thus, at a deeper level we have lost out by not developing an airport with a critical mass of traffic.

The same applies to the development of IT/ITES infrastructure. By creating another IT park when Technopark had just begun to mature, and forcing companies to move to the new park citing a number of, often dubious, reasons including lack of space at Technopark. I know this is a rather controversial claim to make, that the Government deliberately sabotaged the development of one of its own projects but there is ample evidence for this. In fact, a member of the senior management of erstwhile IT major Satyam, spoke out about the prevailing pressure to divert away from Technopark. He put this on record by re-affirming that the firm was interested only in Trivandrum. Equally mystifying is how a top Indian IT firm was told that since "Trivandrum already had TCS and Infosys, you should set up your center in another location." The company eventually set up elsewhere in Kerala where it has made painfully slow progress. I was there when the Chairman of the firm came to Trivandrum to scout for a location and the rest of the story was pieced together from a friend within the Government setup and another who was a member of the senior management of the firm at the center in question. Why such incidents occur is anyone's guess but it is certainly not one would expect as the outcome of a coherent strategy. One wouldn't certainly see companies coming to Bangalore being shooed away just because IBM, Accenture, Oracle, Infosys, Wipro et al are already there!

The outcome of a incoherent and often self-conflicting IT infrastructure strategy has cost Kerala dear. Not only have we delayed the development of Trivandrum into a Tier I hub by as much as half a decade or more, but the other hubs and spokes have not done particularly brilliantly either. None of the new hubs have managed to attract any major names, with the usual suspects - UST Global, Accentia, IBS, NEST and so - from Technopark forming the list of prospective tenants read out at each inauguration ceremony. Even Infopark, the second oldest IT park in Kerala, has recorded an occupancy of about 30% - about 10,000 professionals working in close to 4 million sq.ft. of built-up space as per latest reports. And despite the loud noises made in recent days about the "Kerala IT" brand, the State's brand as an IT destination is far weaker than desired.

Tipping Point

In some of the earlier posts as well as in the IT Strategy presentation (Slides 13 and 20), I had talked about two critical conditions for Trivandrum's development into a Tier 1.5 IT/ITES destination (a level currently occupied by Kolkata and from where Pune recently moved to Tier 1): 1) A top 10 multinational IT firm should establish operations in Trivandrum and 2) a top IT infrastructure developer has to commence work in the city. The former would help a great deal in differentiating Trivandrum from the bunch of Tier II cities, such as Chandigarh, Jaipur, Bhubaneshwar, Mysore and Coimbatore, which are nipping at its heels. Most of these cities have the ubiquitous presence of one or more of Infosys/TCS/Wipro/CTS/HCL. So that is no longer a differentiating factor. However, the arrival of an IBM, HP, Accenture, Microsoft or Oracle would be a very clear differentiator between the leader and the followers in terms of destinations. Correspondingly, a large developer commencing a project in Trivandrum would signal the shift from publicly funded infrastructure to the PPP mode.

Fortunately, the portents seem to be good for both the above conditions to be achieved in the coming few weeks. It is understood that at least one top 5 IT MNC has decided to open its development center in Trivandrum and that a couple of leading IT infrastructure developers are also on their way to set up shop in Kerala's IT hub. Representatives of all the companies have been in Trivandrum over the last few weeks and discussions are at a very advanced stage by now. If these developments do come to pass, then Trivandrum would have taken one more step to reprise its long-delayed role as the 4th IT hub in South India.

South India's Fourth IT hub - Are we there?

We are nearly there, and hopefully May - July 2010 will be a landmark period in the development of the IT/ITES industry in Trivandrum and Kerala. But to make sure that the changes in store really do transpire and that their effects are made best use of, it is essential for all stakeholders - the Government, the industry and the media - to extricate their collective heads from the current policy sandbox and to introspect deeply, so that a new and more pragmatic IT strategy can be evolved and operationalised without any further delays. We cannot afford any more since opportunities like these are fleeting at best and scarcely can ever be recreated.

The Old and the New!

Re-print!

2010-06-19T01:43:00.001-04:00

The tech portal, Techgoss.com, is carrying a re-print....or rather, re-post, of my article on the media's collective "eyes wide shut" gimmick on the inauguration of Technocity. It's nice to see that the message is reaching out to a wider audience. Alternate media and blogs can definitely offer a less biased alternative to conventional media organisations and, hopefully, force them to be less biased themselves. Thanks to the Editor!

Bakery Junction Flyover Inaugurated! (Photos)

2010-06-15T15:40:00.000-04:00

The Inauguration site at the Palayam End

Looking towards Bakery Junction

The descent to Panjapura Junction (Underpass)

The Center Span (Over Bakery Junction)

The View from the Top: Road towards Vanross Junction

Road up to Vazhuthacaud (and then to DPI Junction)

Commencing the descent to Panavila Junction

Approaching the Panavila Junction

The view back up from the Panavila Junction

Lovely curves on this baby!

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, she is finally ready and already carrying traffic. After long last, Kerala's first true grade separator is operational in the State Capital. And after a few walk-abouts and drive-overs, I would say the wait has definitely been worth it! The flyover looks awesome, especially at night! Do pass on the pics to everyone who's been curious about "when that flyover will get built?" Well, all you doubting Thomases out there, it is all ready and waiting for you.

Blog Updates

2010-06-15T03:20:00.001-04:00

Rainy days, not much to do....and here come a few tweaks for the blog. First, a signature at the bottom of each post, courtesy BloggerStop.net and MyLiveSignature.com. Next, a convenient "Share This" button below each post, enabling you to share anything of interest with your friends on Facebook, Twitter, Google and a number of other apps. An finally, to enable all of you to seek out related content on this blog to any post that you read and liked, a new widget courtesy of Aneesh at Bloggerplugins.org, that will display related posts by going through the labels attached to each post. It gets most of its content spot-on, although a few not-too-related posts do pop up in between.

Do let me know what you think of these upgrades, and if you like 'em, do use them on your blogs and sites.

Shame on the Media!

2010-06-10T15:52:00.001-04:00

A Rs 6000 Crore project which could generate over 100,000 direct employment opportunities and 400,000 indirect ones. The nation's 4th largest IT/ITES firm, a $ 4 Billion company. Ordinarily, one would expect the inauguration of the former and the announcement that the latter is being allotted land to set up operations to have made the headlines and to have been carried in the TV news. Right? Correct?

WRONG!

Apparently, the media in Kerala has decided that such mere tid-bits of news do not deserve to be reported. Of course not, especially not when there are earth-shaking items such as the cow elephant which fell into a well, or the latest casualty list from the ongoing slaughter on our ever so wide National Highways or some juicy lil' scandal or the other. News of events which could have a significant bearing on the economic future of the State, of each one of us does not deserve more than passing mention on the news or a couple of columns in some inside page right next to the Obituaries!

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the media of Kerala made a total no-show out of the launch of Technocity. Except for the notable exception of The Hindu, Business Line and ET , no other newspaper carried any significant report of the inauguration of Kerala's largest IT infrastructure project. One needn't compare this to the "Live" broadcast of the foundation stone laying of a bus terminal in another city a couple of days later to realize that there are some very vested interests at work here.

Not that the media brigade was not present at the inauguration function. Yours truely was there, and could not fail to notice the proliferation of cameras - TV and still - and the ubiquitous OB vans. Yet, mysteriously, all that footage and all those snaps seems to have vanished!

A lot of us have felt the same thing, that the media which cries itself hoarse about the "lack of development" in Kerala has shot itself in the its....ahem....family jewels by choosing to ignore this bit of real development news. TDF has registered its protest strongly by sending an open letter of protest to all the concerned media houses. Request all of you to join this chorus of protest, to tell the powers-that-be who imagine they can control our perception of reality by screening out inconvenient truths and feeding us the hype that the desire to perpetrate. Together, let's tell them......

Technocity Inauguration Today

2010-06-04T06:21:00.000-04:00

Kerala's largest IT infrastructure project, Technocity, will be inaugurated at 5 PM today. The Hindu Businessline carried this in-depth article about Technocity and the emergence of Trivandrum as a premier IT/ITES business destination.It's based on a recent study conducted by TDF. Do check it out.

Cowabungaa! Surf's Up at Kovalam

2010-05-31T11:14:00.001-04:00

Surf? Kovalam? Good question...and here is the answer! Be amazed and spread the word! Kerala's best beach gets even better!!!

Technocity Inauguration on June 4

2010-05-30T06:51:00.002-04:00

Kerala's biggest IT infrastructure project, the Rs 6000 Crores ($ 1.5 Billion), is set to get its official inauguration on June 4th. This marks the completion of the land acquisition stage of the project and the commencement of actual development, which will see the creation of basic infrastructure such as power and water supply, along with moves to tie up with leading infrastructure developers to kick-start actual work on the 450 acre IT/ITES-based integrated township.

From The Hindu,

"Technocity, Kerala's biggest IT/ITES project, will be launched by Chief Minister V.S. Achuthanandan on June 4. The 450-acre facility will come up at Pallippuram, near here, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Technopark Mervin Alexander has said.

On completion, the latest IT Park would generate one lakh direct and four lakh indirect employment opportunities. Technocity will be developed as an integrated township encompassing IT/ITES infrastructure, residential apartments, shopping malls, hospitals, hotels, educational institutions and other support facilities.

Acquisition of land for the project was completed earlier this year at a cost of Rs.340 crore. "An investment of over Rs.6,000 crore is expected in the mega-project which will be developed on public private partnership (PPP) basis,” Mr. Alexander said. ‘‘Considering the vast area, the project will be developed in a phased manner over a period of seven years of which the first major phase will be completed in a period of three years, to enable the parks to commence functioning by July 2012.

Kerala State IT Infrastructure Ltd. (KSITIL) is the developer of the project. The master plan for Technocity has identified the most suitable way—to break down the entire area into smaller land parcels and develop through PPP basis—to develop the IT city at the maximum possible speed."

It's understood that several major developers are interested in this mammoth project which is expected to result in the creation of between 10 to 15 million sq.ft. of business space! Together with the announcement that HCL Technologies is setting up operations in Technopark while IBM is also on the verge of setting up shop at Kerala's IT hub, this week has seen a slew of positive news for Trivandrum.

This also sets up the stage for my next article on Kerala's IT strategy which will be up in the next few days. Stay tuned for some pragmatic discussion!

A Detour Ahead for Kerala?

2010-05-29T01:39:00.001-04:00

About a week ago, I had the occasion to attend, on behalf of TDF, a briefing with Mr R.P.N. Singh - the Union Minister of State for Road Transport and Highways about the ongoing debate about highway width in Kerala. The young (by Indian political standards, of course!) and suave Minister waxed eloquent to the assembled team of industry captains (and one development activist) about how the Union Government would try and evolve a formula (a face saving one, for all concerned) to find a solution to the blocked development of the State's Highways. He appeared perplexed by the successive demands to reduce the width of the Highway, especially in view of the fact that other densely populated States like Goa and West Bengal had agreed to develop their highway stretches along the standard 60 m Right of Way (RoW). Mr Singh seemed even more disappointed that his own Congress party colleagues were on the war path as well.

The Ministry of Highways has made it clear that they are not willing to compromise on the 45 m RoW. Instead, their offer is to ensure that a fair Compensation & Rehabilitation package is provided to everyone affected by the project. About Rs 1100 Crores has already been set apart for this purpose for the 600-plus Km of roads to be widened. However, it is up to the State Government to facilitate the implementation of the package.

This view of the Union Government, protests among industry organisations - who have realized what kind of damage the hiatus in highway development can cause to the economic growth of the State - and perhaps a belated realization that the vast majority of the State's population don't want to spend the rest of their lives using narrow, congested and downright dangerous National Highways, seem to have persuaded the political leadership of the various parties in the State to have a change of heart. It started with Ministers Jose Thettayil, Elamaram Kareem and Paloli Mohammedkutty and then spread to the Opposition starting with the KPCC President as well. However, the official stand continues to be pretty obstinate with gems of wisdom such as denying widening to 45 m even in areas where the land is already available (for example, along the IT Corridor, between Kazhakkoottam and Vizhinjam) just because 30 m is the "official all-party" position and also to withdraw from an agreement to facilitate NH development.

However, all things considered, my guess is that there will be a soft detour back to the 45 m RoW, possibly with a few concessions in the most densely developed areas such as providing flyovers. The State's political leadership would claim any such changes and increases in the compensation package as a resounding victory. We will have to wait till the LSG elections are complete in September to be sure how soon the work on the Rs 10,000 Crore project can restart. A few dozen lakh pairs of fingers and toes will be crossed till then, mine included!

Twitter Mania

2010-05-16T01:09:00.000-04:00

Twitter has proved to be a key aspect of this blog, helping to let many of you know when a new post is up. So in a sense, it's come full circle when I got invited to be part of a panel discussion on Twitter, including its pros and cons. The show is being telecast on Asianet's avant garde channel, Rosebowl, today at 7 PM. Stay tuned!

An Awesome Peek inside T3 - The Future is Here!

2010-05-13T04:16:00.003-04:00

We have been following the development of the massive new International Terminal - T3 - at the Trivandrum International Airport with bated breath for over a year now. We have had to satisfy ourselves with exterior pictures till now but now my friend, Vivek, has gone and shot a stunning virtual tour of the interiors of T3. The terminal easily blows the pants off anything else in Kerala and probably outdoes the likes of BIAL and HIAL as well. Here are a few of his pictures, with his permission (more pics here and here):

Making Cities

2010-05-10T15:01:00.002-04:00

My friend and neighbour, Gulzar, who happens to be the current Collector of Hyderabad, has put up an interesting post on the proposal to create a brand new city in China. It offers several interesting insights into what planners of the expanding metropolitan areas of Kerala and of new townships such as Technocity need to be prepared for. His blog, Urbanomics, is one of the most prolific that I have come across and makes for excellent reading if you are a keen follower of the ups and downs in the world of economics, finance as well as financial and public policy.

YourSpeak on the Highway Widening issue

2010-05-08T02:43:00.000-04:00

The development of the NH-47, or rather the lack of it, seems to have roused a lot of passion, if one is to go by the number of comments that the original post received - 34 till date!

I have been stuck with a few other things lately and have been traveling a bit over the last few days, so I have not been able to reply to your views. Apologies for that, folks. So here goes.

First of all, thanks for all your support, feedback and criticism. I will try and reply to as many comments as possible.

Anonymous said... There is no plan for 45m road. Road will be 30m, but they need land of 45m. Don't get mislead with politician like silver spoon baby.

Nope, the main carriageway (4-lane) would be itself about 20 m wide with that going up to 28 m when we consider 6-lanes, which is urgently needed. Once we consider the service lanes (7 m on each side), footpaths and utility corridors (for pipelines and cables), we reach the 45 m mark.

Vinod said... Ajay, eviction required for 45m highway would be like this. Total affected would be 11283 persons. If we breakup, 5111 houses, 5643 business establishments, 187 tabernacles and 342 historic monuments. In this some are fully and some partly affected. Can’t the govt. do this for us and for future generations?

Vinod - This list, probably sourced from the DPR, does not discriminate between those who will be displaced (total or near-total loss of built-up property and land) and those who will just be affected (minor demolition or partial loss of land). The former need to be compensated fairly while the latter may even benefit from getting better business or having their property appreciate, which is usually the case when a road is widened, as is evident from the TCRIP project in Trivandrum. Has a real social audit of how many of the affected folks actually oppose widening been taken? A lot of people affected by TCRIP voluntarily gave up their land, and that was in the heart of Trivandrum city, where land is most precious!

Robin said... The problem here is the cost Govt pays for Land, they pay only Rs 30 K/cent when the prevaling rates are Rs 3 L. This is the about people who lost land for NH in Thrissur region (60 M aquired) May the govt provide at least Half the Land, Pref on NH side for the people who surrender Land.

Robin, an effective Compensation & Rehabilitation policy has to be worked out by the State and Central Governments instead of forsaking highway development. Usually, the compensation package is worked out by a committee in consultation with the public. One also should not compare pre-widening land rates with those post-widening.

Unni said... My point is, of course we need better roads, but not just expanding the current one. Why not build a highway above our railway line from mangalore to Thiruvananthapuram. There are examples in the world where they built superfast highways on concrete pillars.

Unni, an elevated highway is prohibitively expensive - five to eight times more than an ordinary one. Moreover, can you imagine constructing a highway above the rail line when even the construction of a few road overbridges has been hanging fire for over a decade. Imaginative but not practical, I am afraid.

Unni said... Also, some one quoted the numbers of evicted person doesn't make sense to me. I have traveled quite a bit from Payyanur to Calicut many many times. Let us do a rough calculation..The length of the high way is roughly around 130 km. On an average I assume that there are 2 buildings per 100 m. This is again average and this could be much more dense in town areas and little bit smaller in other areas. However it is really hard to find places where are there are no buildings within a span of 100m. Therefore I would assume at the very least there are 2 builds per 100 m on an average. Each building is connected to atleast ~ 5 person. I think this is roughly on the lower side. If you do the math, ~ 13000 people will be effected in 130km stretch. Assume the total highway is around 600 km, the total number of people affected is going to be roughly 6 lakhs.

Okay, let's do the math. 2 buildings per 100 m = 20 per Km = 100 people per Km = 13000 over 130 Km and about 60,000 for 600 Km of NH-47 and NH-17, NOT 600,000! A full order of magnitude less! And less than the population of most municipal towns in Kerala.

Let's also consider that of these buildings, many will not need to be demolished because they are set well back from the highway. In fact, there is a rule saying that any building can only be built at least 7.5 from the edge of the existing RoW.

The power of a Tweet!

2010-04-30T07:54:00.001-04:00

I had been invited to be part of a panel discussion on Rosebowl, called Talking Point, to discuss the pros and cons of Twitter. My fellow panel members, who included my friend Kenney Jacob, and I talked at length, including about the power of tweets in promoting an idea or product, or a person. But if anyone has doubts about that, take a look at what happened when Dr Tharoor tweeted a link to this blog.

"Excellent blog on NH issue http://bit.ly/nh-kerala but flies in the face of severe political resistance. In democracy popular will prevails"

The result? 50+ new followers on Twitter, 10+ new followers of the Blog and 1,400 visits in less than 24 hours!

Welcome to all of you, thanks for checking Trivandrum Rising out!

Talking about Bullock-carts........

2010-04-28T09:44:00.000-04:00

Another take on the NH width imbroglio, this time by my friend and fellow-blogger, Scorpiogenius.

I think we need to organise public opinion against this biased decision taken on a supposed "all party" consensus. With all the politicos on the same side (unheard of for any good cause!), the only way out seems to be to seek judicial intervention, read Public Interest Litigation. Or else, one has the option of taking to the gun!