India's $100-billion Idea.

India has embarked on creating the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC) in collaboration with Japan.

The US$100-billion project is expected to double employment potential, triple industrial output and quadruple exports from the region in five years.

Total employment to be generated by the project is estimated at 3 million people, mostly in the manufacturing and processing sectors.

Plans call for a 4,000-megawatt power plant, three seaports and six airports, in addition to connectivity with existing ports. Construction is scheduled to be complete by 2018, and the corridor will house and employ more than 1.5 million.

"The concept of the DMIC is that economic growth in India has to remain at least 9% each year," said DMIC president Amitabh Kant. "It can be achieved if the industrial sector continues to grow rapidly."

The service industry, he says, simply does not create enough jobs.

The DMIC concept coincides with the National Manufacturing Policy, which aims to increase the sector's share of the country's GDP to more than 25% by 2022 from the current 16% and create 100 million jobs in the next 10 years.

The project is aimed at developing an industrial zone spanning six Indian states. It received a major boost after India and Japan inked an agreement to set up a project development fund.

The initial size of the fund will be $223 million, with both the Japanese and Indian governments contributing equally.

The corridor will include six major investment regions of 200 square kilometres each and will run through the states of Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Maharashtra _ spreading across 2,700 km with an additional 5,000 km of feeder lines connecting Mumbai to West Bengal.

A dedicated rail freight corridor will reduce the Delhi-Mumbai transit time from 60 to 36 hours. Ecologically sound new cities will use sustainable energy, contrasting with other Indian cities and their images of dirty streets, open sewers, slums and pollution.

But the new cities are still in the early planning stages. It will take some time before actual construction work can begin. Critics say there are many hurdles to overcome, mainly related to acquiring agricultural land for industrial and housing purposes.

Large developments like these in India are often marred by large-scale corruption or a simple lack of quality. Mr Kant says good planning may prevent this.

"Planning and construction never go hand in hand here in India," he said.

"This time we've got the best planners in the world in one place who will make sure that the master plans are ready by the time construction begins. There is no haste. And we won't start building until the very last building permit has been issued."

On a map in the office of the National Highways Authority of India, a red line runs from Delhi to Mumbai, marking out a new six-lane project.

The 1,375-km span is one of the four arms of the Golden Quadrilateral _ begun during the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government in 1998 _ connecting four major cities in the country.

This is the platinum stretch of the Golden Quadrilateral. The NHAI took bids last month for expanding the 550-km Kishengarh-Udaipur-Ahmedabad leg to six lanes. Ten companies responded, with each bidder willing to pay a premium of more than 3 billion rupees for the next 26 years.

Experts and data suggest that projects in India's north-to-west corridor promise the highest toll revenue. Generally a company endures losses for the first five years and breaks even after that. On the Delhi-Mumbai routes, however, companies are expected to break even by the third year.

Transport officials say Delhi-Mumbai will continue to lead toll revenue collections for at least another decade. Traffic growth on the Delhi-Mumbai route is growing at 8% a year, versus 6.5% for the rest of the highway network.

According to a recent McKinsey report, the Delhi-Mumbai sector tops a list of 10 routes with the country's densest freight traffic. Thane-Chennai, Delhi-Kolkata and Delhi-Amritsar also figured on McKinsey's list.

The Golden Quadrilateral accounts for over 60% of goods transported in India, and the Delhi-Mumbai route accounts for 40% of these goods.

Furthermore, the volume of air cargo in the country will be 2.64 million tonnes this year (with Delhi accounting for 600,000 tonnes and Mumbai accounting for 500,000 tonnes).

Truckers operating in the region say its prospects are higher relative to the south or the east of India.

"The northwest is being developed as a logistical hub, as it is expected that a bulk of goods movement will be in this region," said Mukesh Dave, a senior executive with the All India Motor Transport Congress. "Every manufacturer in the country is now stepping up to develop and expand warehouses along this zone _ mainly in Gujarat, Rajasthan and Delhi."

A network of mass transport systems is imperative to avert urban vehicular traffic, as the number of cities with more than one million people will increase from 48 to 68 in the next two decades.

India has seven cities at present with a population of at least 4 million. By 2030, Mumbai is likely to have 33 million people, followed by Delhi with 26 million, Kolkata (23 million), Chennai (11 million), Bangalore and Pune (10 million each), Hyderabad (9.8 million), Ahmedabad (8.4 million), Surat (7.4 million), Jaipur (5.4 million), Nagpur (5.2 million) and Kanpur and Vadodra (4.2 million each).

Town planners say cities will account for 69% of the country's GDP in the next two decades. Total urban population is already 377 million and may exceed an earlier projection of 590 million by 2030.

The critical issue in times to come will be efficient transport to ease burgeoning urban vehicular traffic. The challenge for urban planners: seven mega-cities with 20% of India's population will demand 40% of the $1.2 trillion projected for infrastructure investment.

Source : bangkokpost.com