India needs a new Highway Services Authority

Every organisation has a core purpose — or DNA, as it is popularly referred to. So BHEL’s DNA is to produce power generation equipment, whilst NTPC’s is to generate power. BHEL does not generate power; nor does NTPC make power equipment.
 
In a similar vein, the DNA of the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) is to construct. The NHAI has rightfully earned laurels in fulfilling its institutional mandate in the two-and-a-half decades it has been in existence. It has a string of record-breaking achievements, including now being within striking distance of 40 kms/day of road construction, having achieved 34 kms/day recently. But the point to note is that its core purpose, its DNA, is, and should continue to be — construction of roads. Along with “construction” comes various associated activities — planning, engineering, land acquisition, utilities removal, state support agreements, forest, environment and related permissions, consultant and contractor management, fund-raising, project and programme management and, of course, litigation management.

 
Now, that is quite a handful; and without doubt the pressure to continue to construct at a frenetic pace will last for the foreseeable future. India, across the next many decades, will still have to build thousands of kilometres of greenfield expressways, expand brownfield carriageways and construct tunnels, bridges, bypasses, flyovers and underpasses. So, it is best to allow and encourage the NHAI to stick to its core competency of “construction.”
 

However, the demands and requirements of the softer “services” side of the highways landscape has changed dramatically. Consider the following dimensions that go far beyond construction.
 

On top of the priority list is road safety. India accounts for 11 per cent of global deaths in road accidents, according to the World Bank; and Road Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari has been quoted saying that “India’s road accidents are more dangerous than the Covid-19 pandemic.” India has about 4.5 lakh crashes per annum, in which 150,000 people die. Road safety involves a chain of interventions from safety in design of roads to start with and then moving on to strict enforcement of traffic discipline, provision of emergency medical services, and vehicle safety features, as well as regulator route patrolling. In the second week of April 2021, the Finance Ministry gave in-principle clearance for setting up of a National Road Safety Board.

 
Next is the area of customer satisfaction, i.e. driving comfort. This comes from impeccable road maintenance and a hassle-free driving environment. There is increasing public anger about the poor driving experience on Indian roads — even after paying tolls, and that there seems to be no correlation between the charge for a service and an assured delivery of the service itself. Highway amenities of international standards are singularly lacking too.
 
Moving on to technology, the new leap of faith is that toll collections are poised to shift to a GPS-based system. Mr Gadkari informed Parliament in March, 2021, that within one year, all physical toll booths in the country would be removed and toll collection would happen via a GPS-based system. This will require heightened modes of service integration. There is in existence a less-visible company called the Indian Highways Management Company Limited that handles electronic tolling and related support services for the NHAI.

 
The inter-locking nature of goods movement means that roads are part of larger systems that connect industrial areas, ports and other economic nodes. Inter-modality too is a specialised discipline. This would relate to increasing the penetration of RORO (Roll On/Roll Off) services with the Railways on trunk routes and developing linkages with nascent sectors like inland waterways and coastal shipping. Recently, the NHAI has constituted a new company called the National Highways Logistics Management Company to oversee multi-model logistics parks and port-connectivity projects.
 
Disaster management will continue to be a recurring necessity for highways. There are always incidences of heavy snowfall, floods, landslides, earthquakes or, nowadays, even long-drawn out public agitations blocking road usage.

 
It has been a matter of resentment that the rapid escalation of land values abetting highway projects is captured not by the state, not by the public, but by the community of real estate speculators. Concepts such as betterment levies, land-banking, value-capture financing need to be adopted and implemented. Aspects like ribbon-development rights, as well as auctioning of exit points off access-controlled highways have also often been discussed; but not implemented.
 
Finally, is the whole aspect of professional management of PPP Partners. InvITs, ToT, revenue assurance, BOT, and HAM are all PPP formats that have sets of different private investors and operating partners. The gathering momentum towards asset monetisation means regular interactions are necessary with each of these long-term investor groups to sort out day-to-day problems and provide comfort on their investments. Then only can we motivate a new generation of investors to come in.

 
So, as can be seen, whilst construction is an important cornerstone of the overall scheme of developing road networks; it has to be acknowledged that these multiple dimensions of “service delivery” strongly suggest that India needs a new Highway Services Authority. This new Authority should be distinct, and distanced, from the “asset creation” role of the existing NHAI; and have its own board, governance structure and performance metrics. The time has come.
 
The writer  is  Chairman of Feedback Infra