US senator to visit IIM-A

It is time for another politician to set foot on the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (IIM-A) campus, this time an American.

Senator Edward Murray, a native of Washington state, who has represented Seattle's 43rd legislative district since 1995 is all set to deliver a lecture on Public-Private Partnerships in Infrastructure at the campus on May 16.

The proposal for Murray's talk at IIM-A came about with co-ordination from the US embassy who were in touch with officials of the Centre for Infrastructure Policy and Regulation at the institute.

The lecture will be delivered especially to participants of IIM-A's latest programme, PGP-PMP which is the one-year post graduate programme in public management and policy.

Participants for the programme are mid-career executives with at least seven years of work experience in the public sector.

The lecture will also be attended by students of the post graduate programme in management for executives (PGPX) who are present in the campus.

"Senator Murray who visited the campus last year for a lecture will speak on the US experience with public-private partnership in transportation and other infrastructure sectors in the US. He will share his experiences about cases that have worked and those which haven't been successful. He will also discuss issues of financing infrastructure projects by the private financing industry are resolved in the US when project owners are the government and the private partner is unable to use the project as collateral," said Sebastian Morris, Chairperson of the Centre for Infrastructure Policy and Regulation and PGP-PMP programme at IIM-A.

Murray's tenure as the vice-chair of the Senate Transportation Committee and previously as Chair of the House Transportation Committee had seen him pass the largest ever revenue package in 2005 to finance transportation in Washington after almost 15 years of gridlock.

His invitation to the IIM-A has come about on account of the measures he had inititated like safety investments in infrastructure, congestion relief on roads, significant increases in High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes, assistance to transit agencies and tougher emission standards for vehicles, investments in freight and passenger rail among others.

In 2006, IIM-A had seen talks from a number of top politicians including Lalu Prasad Yadav, Union Minister for Railways, Nitish Kumar, Chief Minister of Bihar and Sitaram Yechury, CPM politburo member.