A K Bhattacharya: Delhi's strained infrastructure

RAISINA HILL

The chief minister must look at improving the management teams that run Delhi's civic services.

Delhi Chief Minister Shiela Dikshit was in trouble last week. She had to tender a public apology for her statement on the city's problems arising out of the influx of thousands of people from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

"People come in from UP, Bihar and other states, but there is no law by which we can stop them and any way they have a right to earn their livelihood," Dikshit had said while referring to the strain the city's civic infrastructure came under because of such large-scale immigration. As expected, it did not take long for her political rivals to use this opportunity to attack the Delhi CM.

So severe was the attack that by the evening Dikshit had come out with an apology. "Five lakh people come into Delhi every year. It does put a strain on infrastructure. I have not said anything wrong, but if it has hurt the sentiments of anyone, I apologise," she said.

Was Dikshit wrong in making that statement? As she herself pointed out, the reality of lakhs of people from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar coming to Delhi cannot be wished away and this is bound to have an impact on the city's civic infrastructure. Politically incorrect she was. But there was no factual inaccuracy in her statement.

If at all Dikshit had to be faulted, it was not so much for that statement as for her inept management of the city's civic infrastructure, which has only made matters worse. She may be credited for having taken care of Delhi's roads with more flyovers, but her track record in providing a decent bus service or a public healthcare system in the city has so far been poor. This is also borne out by a recent government report on the poor performance of the state-owned Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) and the four hospitals the government runs in the city.

Take the bus service first. DTC, whose cumulative losses increased from Rs 1,082 crore in 2001-02 to Rs 4,008 crore in 2005-06, has a total fleet of 3,469 buses, of which 28 per cent are less than four years old and over 70 per cent are between four and eight years old. And yet, its vehicle productivity (that is, the distance travelled by each bus per day) at 211-230 kilometres in the last four years was lower than Chennai's where the average age of the buses was 7.6 years against 3.2 years for DTC.

And if you thought that DTC's vehicle productivity was lower because it might not have the adequate number of employees to run these buses, take a look at its wage bill. DTC's staff cost as a percentage of its total revenues went up from 68 per cent in 2001-02 to 101 per cent in 2005-06. In other words, the Corporation's entire revenue was not enough to meet its wage bill.

The public healthcare scenario in Delhi is no different. In at least two Delhi government hospitals "" Lok Nayak Hospital and Deen Dayal Upadhyay Hospital "" the average bed occupancy has remained at over 123 per cent for the last four years. This means each bed has been occupied by more than one person.

One of the reasons for the long waiting period for patients to get treatment done at these hospitals is staff shortage. There is a 25-37 per cent shortfall in staff availability against the sanctioned strength in Lok Nayak Hospital, while the shortfall in para-medical staff in Deen Dayal Upadhyay Hospital was as high as 42 per cent.

The problems afflicting DTC and the public hospitals in Delhi are not insurmountable. It is true that the influx of lakhs of people from outside the city strains the city's infrastructure. And those managing the city's civic infrastructure must be given adequate resources to increase capacity. But the problem will not be solved by just creating extra capacity.

As the performance of DTC and the hospitals in Delhi shows, there is an equally vital issue of how well the already existing facilities are managed and used to achieve the best results. It would not be a bad idea for Shiela Dikshit to pay attention to such issues first, and to start with, put in place more competent management teams at the helm of DTC and the public hospitals.