Getting Things Done and Who Can Do It - Implosion: India's Tryst with Reality - page 48

Japan, though Dikshit also gave surprisingly enthusiastic support to a rival ill-planned and
chaotic Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) System. 13
Sreedharan became internationally recognized for his achievements. A slim, rather
austere-looking man, he had earned his reputation as a top project manager during a long
career with the railways, finishing as a board member. From 1990, he was in charge of
building the 760-km Konkan Railway on India's west coast. Cutting through difficult ter-
rain, across the mountains and rivers of the Western Ghats, with nearly 150 bridges and 92
tunnels, 14 the railway runs from Mumbai through Goa to Mangalore in Karnataka.
At the Delhi Metro, Sreedharan used his authority to insist, before he was appointed in
1997, that he would have full autonomy and would be free from any political interference -
which, he was, apart from an early battle over whether the track should be broad or stand-
ard gauge, which he lost. He was able to insist on that independence, he told me in 2005,
because at his age he had no career ambitions and could walk out at any time. 15 That meant
he could set new parameters for public project management in a country where politicians
and bureaucrats routinely interfere and demand favours from public sector corporations.
Before Sreedharan was appointed, it had seemed as though the metro would be doomed
to go the same way as other major projects. After years of talk, the corporation (jointly
owned 50-50 by the governments of India and Delhi) was registered in 1995, but nothing
much happened, partly because of problems finding someone to head it. 'That's how gov-
ernment works,' said Sreedharan. 'No one wants to take responsibility for an action.' He
was appointed when Japan threatened to withdraw substantial soft loan funding, without
which the project would not have been feasible. 'People have to become aware that delay
means money,' he said. The first stage of the system was built within budget and opened
in 2002, three years ahead of schedule - a dramatic change from India's only other metro
railway, which had taken 23 years to build in Kolkata.
Sreedharan applied private-sector methods that most public-sector bosses would never
dare attempt, starting with a work culture that encouraged executives to take 'fast and trans-
parent' decisions. Faced with the need to divert complex services such as communication
cables and sewers, Sreedharan insisted that the corporation should take the work away from
Delhi's state government departments. 'We did in a few days what they would have taken
months to do,' he told me. When construction of an underground section was running eight
months late after four-and-a-half-years of work, he gave contractors acceleration payments
to speed up their pace. 'I'll get that back in one month's revenues,' he said. Corruption was
also significantly reduced. Sreedharan says he selected senior staff for their integrity, in-
troduced strict systems, and did not allow agents to come between the corporation and its
contractors. Government officials often delay paying suppliers in order to demand bribes
for sanctioning partial payments, so Sreedharan insisted bills were paid quickly - 80 per
cent were paid within 24 hours of falling due. 16