I have seen some municipal corporations in India taking over three decades to implement even mundane water supply projects which could have been done in one or two years time. I also find many cities and towns with no water supply and sanitation services. Regrettably many cities and towns of India also do not have any plans for making such facilities in the near future. Even progressive cities like Thiruvananthapuram, the capital of the most literate state of India, have failed in implementing and managing good waste handling and disposal facilities.
Any developed and progressive country can perhaps call itself developed when the majority of its citizens are able to get good drinking water in sufficient quantities and also when they enjoy decent sanitation and waste disposal services.
Unfortunately, India stands at a pathetic low level of development when water supply and sanitation norms are concerned.
Waste disposal facilities are virtually non existent.
As a professional engineer with decades of experience in this area, I feel ashamed of such a pathetic situation in this country.
It is not very difficult to design and implement good water supply systems and sanitation systems linked to effective municipal effluent treatment plant systems for any cities or communities having a population of 5000 or more. So also is the case with solid waste management. However, very few cities and communities in India have such systems.
What are the reasons for this kind of situation in India ?
Why is it that the Indian leaders and administrators do not feel ashamed of such deplorable conditions of their country ?
In my opinion, such a situation arise out of many things, all linked to each other in one way or the other.
The following are some of the main reasons as I see it:
1. Deterioration in City Management : Excepting a few large metropolitan cities, the city and municipal corporations have degraded to become play grounds of local politicians. As a result, the bureaucratic organizations that are required to assist the democratic city governments have become lethargic or non committal or ineffective to do any proper planning or city management.Often, the city administrations are headed by pliable or incompetent bureaucrats who are posted by the state administration as per political compulsions and priorities. Besides, the personnel and staff that get in to these administrative organizations of the municipalities and corporations are selected without any due consideration of their specialist experience or qualifications that they soon become vested interest groups. Specialist wings of the city administration such as the town planning, public health engineering, water supply and sewerage, public works, etc become side tracked to such an extent that their specialists and engineers no more are required to show any professional competence. It becomes all the more convenient for the incompetent political heads and bureaucratic chiefs to have such incompetent technical people as their subordinates that the former never feel the necessity to improve the competency of the latter. Soon, for any infrastructural development involving water supply, water treatment, sewage treatment, solid waste management etc the political heads and bureaucratic chiefs become the decision makers including those matters that are purely technical in nature. Such decisions eventually create nonviable or inferior schemes and projects which would either never get fully implemented or commissioned for the benefit of the people. Such technical incompetence soon creeps in to the operation and maintenance areas as well.
2. Inter departmental Conflicts: Lack of coordination among various governmental agencies and departments.
3. Lack of respect of contractual obligations. Indians are infamous for this kind of an attitude. Once contracts are placed, the Indian authorities at all levels seem to create undue problems for the contractors mostly for personal benefits. Delays of payments and works on account of such objections created by the officers and staff of the city governments often create a situation that good EPC (Engineering, Procurement, Construction) contract firms with expertise and experience in the relevant fields avoid taking up such contracts.
4. Centralized Decision Making: Indian top authorities are keen to keep all major decisions to themselves even when they are not competent to take such decisions. Delegation of powers exist only in theory and not in practice. The root cause of this situation is the eagerness to get importance for unfair gains.
5. Incompetence of vigilance personnel and authorities to judge technical issues. Often such a situation makes the technical personnel from taking firm and sound decisions for the overall good of public projects. Again, this situation arises out of the lack of vision of the law makers who create such rules and regulations without due consideration of expert opinions. In my opinion, it is not a good practice to allow non technical authorities to find fault with technical decisions and file vigilance cases based on such findings. Even when there is a prima facie technical error, it has to be based on the recommendations of an expert technical committee.
6. Lack of Respect to Engineering Expertise and Training: In India, disciplines of engineers do not carry much value once an engineer gets posted. It makes the engineers who are trained in some discipline not getting the appropriate jobs and making the particular engineering discipline becoming a non preferable one for fresh students eventually creating a shortage of trained man power in certain areas. A typical example is the shortage of sanitation engineers or environmental engineers in the Indian city administrations.
7. Isolated Academics: Indian engineering institutions and technical universities plan their engineering curricula quite arbitrarily without due research on the requirements of the potential employers and their needs. The courses are planned based on the aspirations of the youngsters who are pretty unaware of the usefulness of the courses that they are going to study.
8. Isolated Engineering Profession: Experienced engineers have practically no say in the selection and deployment of fresh engineers within their organizations in India. This function is almost entirely decided by non technical people who have no idea about the work of engineers. This creates adverse imbalances in engineering expertise within even engineering organisations. Technical groups of city administrations are no exception.
9. Incompatible Group Competence :Technical groups in India which are required to do collective engineering tasks are made up of technical personnel having incompatible capabilities and competence. The continued practice of reservations, favoritism, etc play an important role in this. The result is failure of the group to perform effectively even when there are exceptionally good individuals in the group.
10. Lack of Long term Business Opportunities: Lack of consistent opportunities for EPC firms to maintain their expertise on a long term basis. There is no guarantee of work in areas such as water and waste water engineering, solid waste management, etc from the local authorities. The allocation of budgets and funds are erratic. This causes much uncertainties for EPC firms to maintain their expert engineers and technicians on a long term basis. Much bunching of work also happens making all work to suffer of time schedules and quality . EPC entrepreneurs try to maintain their technical organizations without enough numbers of permanent experts and managing the show somehow by outsourcing or entering into temporary understandings to form consortia or similar other gimmicks making a mess of things that eventually everything proceeds without any proper direction or planning.
11. Proliferation of Textbook Experts : India now has a number of so-called environmentalists who are text book experts and have no practical experience or expertise. They copy impractical norms and quality parameters and make big noises of not achieving certain values of quality parameters with regard to environmental quality norms on water, treated effluents, land fills, air , etc. These so called experts often make things complicated and often provide much fodder for the non technical media and the public. In the developed countries, often decisions on such things are taken on the basis of best achievable technology (BAT) and best practical technology (BPT) . In India, text book experts are least concerned about practical aspects and costs involved. This compels many organizations to spend huge sums of money for practically achieving no results, especially in the areas of water treatment, effluent treatment and air pollution control.
12. Organizational Inability to Retain Expertise : Indian organizations do not allow planned development of expertise in engineering and technology. Whatever experience the engineers gain happen randomly and in much unplanned manner. Hence it is not very easy to identify and evaluate the real experience and expertise of engineers. Again this evaluation is left to the whims and fancies of non technical personnel, making many experienced engineers wasting their times without actually contributing to works where they could do it well or important engineering assignments getting in to the hands of inexperienced engineers and non technical leaders bull dozing them to commit gross errors.
13. Inconsistencies in Political Policy Making: There is no political will in India to make these services privatized allowing reasonable charges to be levied from even the affluent class of urban citizens. There is no reason to fear that the affluent urban citizens are so selfish and ignorant that they resist such facilities that would make their lives better. However, the present political atmosphere is such that every good move by one political party is opposed by the other parties who are not in power. This kind of attitude can change only when the mind set of the politicians change and they think collectively for the citizens and their country rather than for themselves.
14. Ineffective Town Planning: Indian cities develop and grow in the most unscientific manner due to the absence of effective town planning. Very few cities have free spaces earmarked for development of infrastructural facilities for water treatment, waste water treatment, waste processing, laying of pipe lines, etc. Even after 60 years of independence and even after the whole world has progressed, the Indian authorities feel that these are important matters which require firm actions. Ministries handling urban development, housing, water, environment, etc all seem to work in different directions. Few Indian citizens are aware of the existence of such ministries or their objectives. Incidentally these ministries keep changing every now and then with different names and objectives making any sustained actions never taking place with regard to water supply, sanitation and waste disposal in urban or rural India.
15. Absence of Key Drivers to Infrastructural Projects : No one India seems to be in control of planning and execution of infrastructural projects with regard to water supply, sanitation and solid waste management for the Indian cities. It could perhaps be a good idea to notify the names of the key drivers of such projects with their responsibilities and authorities known to the public.
16. Decline in Design and Engineering Professionals: India has an acute shortage of design and engineering personnel who can formulate and plan an infrastructural project on water supply and waste water management for the cities and to do the detailed engineering works involved. As of now, India may be good in developing computer software, but it is not good in works involving conventional and core engineering due to its expertise and capacity continuously on the decline in this area for the last many years. Serious thinking and corrective steps at the highest levels only can save India from becoming a slave to other nations in the future. One of the reasons for this shortage is the reluctance of brilliant engineers to take up this career in India because in this country being in this field of work they earn little respect now and of the prospects of being at the receiving end to be bull dozed by their not-so-brilliant colleagues who chanced to climb up the career by taking up other easier routes. No wonder why the brilliant IITians of India prefer to become IIMees by doing an unlearning of their difficult engineering- a thing perhaps never happen in a developed nation !
It is a big opportunity to prove India's capabilities first in Water Supply, Sanitation and Solid Waste Management and making India filth-less and hygienic before trying to make the missiles, bombs and the rockets using borrowed technologies. This field has enormous potential for job generation. It also has enormous potential to generate income for the government.
I know the stories of many young men from India who never got any worth while employment in India, getting good paying employment in small county water treatment and sewage treatment plants in the USA. If the US could pay over $ 5000 per month to an Indian born supervisor of a water treatment plant of a county of 5000 odd population, why can't India do it ? USA is rich, because the majority there think big. The moment the Americans think like the Indians they too are going to be doomed !
Improving the health of the citizens is good for every one. Even for those who have made vast fortunes in India and thinking of staying in alien countries for breathing well.
Any developed and progressive country can perhaps call itself developed when the majority of its citizens are able to get good drinking water in sufficient quantities and also when they enjoy decent sanitation and waste disposal services.
Unfortunately, India stands at a pathetic low level of development when water supply and sanitation norms are concerned.
Waste disposal facilities are virtually non existent.
As a professional engineer with decades of experience in this area, I feel ashamed of such a pathetic situation in this country.
It is not very difficult to design and implement good water supply systems and sanitation systems linked to effective municipal effluent treatment plant systems for any cities or communities having a population of 5000 or more. So also is the case with solid waste management. However, very few cities and communities in India have such systems.
What are the reasons for this kind of situation in India ?
Why is it that the Indian leaders and administrators do not feel ashamed of such deplorable conditions of their country ?
In my opinion, such a situation arise out of many things, all linked to each other in one way or the other.
The following are some of the main reasons as I see it:
1. Deterioration in City Management : Excepting a few large metropolitan cities, the city and municipal corporations have degraded to become play grounds of local politicians. As a result, the bureaucratic organizations that are required to assist the democratic city governments have become lethargic or non committal or ineffective to do any proper planning or city management.Often, the city administrations are headed by pliable or incompetent bureaucrats who are posted by the state administration as per political compulsions and priorities. Besides, the personnel and staff that get in to these administrative organizations of the municipalities and corporations are selected without any due consideration of their specialist experience or qualifications that they soon become vested interest groups. Specialist wings of the city administration such as the town planning, public health engineering, water supply and sewerage, public works, etc become side tracked to such an extent that their specialists and engineers no more are required to show any professional competence. It becomes all the more convenient for the incompetent political heads and bureaucratic chiefs to have such incompetent technical people as their subordinates that the former never feel the necessity to improve the competency of the latter. Soon, for any infrastructural development involving water supply, water treatment, sewage treatment, solid waste management etc the political heads and bureaucratic chiefs become the decision makers including those matters that are purely technical in nature. Such decisions eventually create nonviable or inferior schemes and projects which would either never get fully implemented or commissioned for the benefit of the people. Such technical incompetence soon creeps in to the operation and maintenance areas as well.
2. Inter departmental Conflicts: Lack of coordination among various governmental agencies and departments.
3. Lack of respect of contractual obligations. Indians are infamous for this kind of an attitude. Once contracts are placed, the Indian authorities at all levels seem to create undue problems for the contractors mostly for personal benefits. Delays of payments and works on account of such objections created by the officers and staff of the city governments often create a situation that good EPC (Engineering, Procurement, Construction) contract firms with expertise and experience in the relevant fields avoid taking up such contracts.
4. Centralized Decision Making: Indian top authorities are keen to keep all major decisions to themselves even when they are not competent to take such decisions. Delegation of powers exist only in theory and not in practice. The root cause of this situation is the eagerness to get importance for unfair gains.
5. Incompetence of vigilance personnel and authorities to judge technical issues. Often such a situation makes the technical personnel from taking firm and sound decisions for the overall good of public projects. Again, this situation arises out of the lack of vision of the law makers who create such rules and regulations without due consideration of expert opinions. In my opinion, it is not a good practice to allow non technical authorities to find fault with technical decisions and file vigilance cases based on such findings. Even when there is a prima facie technical error, it has to be based on the recommendations of an expert technical committee.
6. Lack of Respect to Engineering Expertise and Training: In India, disciplines of engineers do not carry much value once an engineer gets posted. It makes the engineers who are trained in some discipline not getting the appropriate jobs and making the particular engineering discipline becoming a non preferable one for fresh students eventually creating a shortage of trained man power in certain areas. A typical example is the shortage of sanitation engineers or environmental engineers in the Indian city administrations.
7. Isolated Academics: Indian engineering institutions and technical universities plan their engineering curricula quite arbitrarily without due research on the requirements of the potential employers and their needs. The courses are planned based on the aspirations of the youngsters who are pretty unaware of the usefulness of the courses that they are going to study.
8. Isolated Engineering Profession: Experienced engineers have practically no say in the selection and deployment of fresh engineers within their organizations in India. This function is almost entirely decided by non technical people who have no idea about the work of engineers. This creates adverse imbalances in engineering expertise within even engineering organisations. Technical groups of city administrations are no exception.
9. Incompatible Group Competence :Technical groups in India which are required to do collective engineering tasks are made up of technical personnel having incompatible capabilities and competence. The continued practice of reservations, favoritism, etc play an important role in this. The result is failure of the group to perform effectively even when there are exceptionally good individuals in the group.
10. Lack of Long term Business Opportunities: Lack of consistent opportunities for EPC firms to maintain their expertise on a long term basis. There is no guarantee of work in areas such as water and waste water engineering, solid waste management, etc from the local authorities. The allocation of budgets and funds are erratic. This causes much uncertainties for EPC firms to maintain their expert engineers and technicians on a long term basis. Much bunching of work also happens making all work to suffer of time schedules and quality . EPC entrepreneurs try to maintain their technical organizations without enough numbers of permanent experts and managing the show somehow by outsourcing or entering into temporary understandings to form consortia or similar other gimmicks making a mess of things that eventually everything proceeds without any proper direction or planning.
11. Proliferation of Textbook Experts : India now has a number of so-called environmentalists who are text book experts and have no practical experience or expertise. They copy impractical norms and quality parameters and make big noises of not achieving certain values of quality parameters with regard to environmental quality norms on water, treated effluents, land fills, air , etc. These so called experts often make things complicated and often provide much fodder for the non technical media and the public. In the developed countries, often decisions on such things are taken on the basis of best achievable technology (BAT) and best practical technology (BPT) . In India, text book experts are least concerned about practical aspects and costs involved. This compels many organizations to spend huge sums of money for practically achieving no results, especially in the areas of water treatment, effluent treatment and air pollution control.
12. Organizational Inability to Retain Expertise : Indian organizations do not allow planned development of expertise in engineering and technology. Whatever experience the engineers gain happen randomly and in much unplanned manner. Hence it is not very easy to identify and evaluate the real experience and expertise of engineers. Again this evaluation is left to the whims and fancies of non technical personnel, making many experienced engineers wasting their times without actually contributing to works where they could do it well or important engineering assignments getting in to the hands of inexperienced engineers and non technical leaders bull dozing them to commit gross errors.
13. Inconsistencies in Political Policy Making: There is no political will in India to make these services privatized allowing reasonable charges to be levied from even the affluent class of urban citizens. There is no reason to fear that the affluent urban citizens are so selfish and ignorant that they resist such facilities that would make their lives better. However, the present political atmosphere is such that every good move by one political party is opposed by the other parties who are not in power. This kind of attitude can change only when the mind set of the politicians change and they think collectively for the citizens and their country rather than for themselves.
14. Ineffective Town Planning: Indian cities develop and grow in the most unscientific manner due to the absence of effective town planning. Very few cities have free spaces earmarked for development of infrastructural facilities for water treatment, waste water treatment, waste processing, laying of pipe lines, etc. Even after 60 years of independence and even after the whole world has progressed, the Indian authorities feel that these are important matters which require firm actions. Ministries handling urban development, housing, water, environment, etc all seem to work in different directions. Few Indian citizens are aware of the existence of such ministries or their objectives. Incidentally these ministries keep changing every now and then with different names and objectives making any sustained actions never taking place with regard to water supply, sanitation and waste disposal in urban or rural India.
15. Absence of Key Drivers to Infrastructural Projects : No one India seems to be in control of planning and execution of infrastructural projects with regard to water supply, sanitation and solid waste management for the Indian cities. It could perhaps be a good idea to notify the names of the key drivers of such projects with their responsibilities and authorities known to the public.
16. Decline in Design and Engineering Professionals: India has an acute shortage of design and engineering personnel who can formulate and plan an infrastructural project on water supply and waste water management for the cities and to do the detailed engineering works involved. As of now, India may be good in developing computer software, but it is not good in works involving conventional and core engineering due to its expertise and capacity continuously on the decline in this area for the last many years. Serious thinking and corrective steps at the highest levels only can save India from becoming a slave to other nations in the future. One of the reasons for this shortage is the reluctance of brilliant engineers to take up this career in India because in this country being in this field of work they earn little respect now and of the prospects of being at the receiving end to be bull dozed by their not-so-brilliant colleagues who chanced to climb up the career by taking up other easier routes. No wonder why the brilliant IITians of India prefer to become IIMees by doing an unlearning of their difficult engineering- a thing perhaps never happen in a developed nation !
It is a big opportunity to prove India's capabilities first in Water Supply, Sanitation and Solid Waste Management and making India filth-less and hygienic before trying to make the missiles, bombs and the rockets using borrowed technologies. This field has enormous potential for job generation. It also has enormous potential to generate income for the government.
I know the stories of many young men from India who never got any worth while employment in India, getting good paying employment in small county water treatment and sewage treatment plants in the USA. If the US could pay over $ 5000 per month to an Indian born supervisor of a water treatment plant of a county of 5000 odd population, why can't India do it ? USA is rich, because the majority there think big. The moment the Americans think like the Indians they too are going to be doomed !
Improving the health of the citizens is good for every one. Even for those who have made vast fortunes in India and thinking of staying in alien countries for breathing well.
[Reproduced partly from Rajan C Mathew's Blogs: View the Original Blog Here !]
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