Delayed projects

The lead news story in the Sunday edition of this newspaper is indeed very disheartening. It tells about a large number of central government projects in the Northeastern Region running behind schedule, which in turn has led to massive cost overruns. The news story is more disheartening because while the BJP regimes at the Centre and in the states have been in the habit of blaming the previous Congress governments for failing to implement various developmental projects and schemes well within the set deadlines, the same has been happening to a number of crucial projects when the BJP-led alliances are in power both in Delhi and in the states of the Northeast. According to Sunday's news story, as many as 52 central projects in the region – whose total present cost is around Rs 50,000 crore – are running much behind schedule due to delay in execution. Those which have been completed in the past couple of years had also suffered major delays and missed several deadlines, thus costing a lot of additional burden to the public exchequer. While it is for the Central Government to expedite implementation of these projects, the Prime Minister's Office should ideally take a call on this issue, identify the culprits responsible for the delays and fix responsibility including penalties on individual officers if required. It is a fact that the State governments too have to share a part of the blame for the delays. While land acquisition has been a major issue, maintenance of law and order and ensuring that the departments and companies engaged in the projects are not disturbed by various kinds of local elements is also a state government responsibility. There are a large number of self-styled 'nationalistic' organizations across the region which thrives by way of extortion of government officers and contractor firms engaged in various developmental projects. Local bandhs and highway blockades too are additional reasons, while the contribution of corruption – including demand for donations – is also a factor causing delay. It is an open secret that a large number of organizations, from political parties to Bihu committees press companies engaged in developmental projects for donations. These affect the implementation of projects because contractors do not pay from their pockets, but from the projects themselves. It is also true that monsoons and floods also stand in the way of timely completion of projects.