India’s Metro Man, 85, former DMRC head and now adviser to Metro projects in many cities, tells The Indian Express what he finds wrong with New Metro Policy.

The Ministry of Urban Development has in the past argued that internationally several cities have tried the PPP model for urban rail projects.

Nowhere in the world has the construction and maintenance model of PPP in Metro rail completely succeeded. There have been cases where the government has invested all the money in setting up infrastructure and handed over operations to private parties. But that’s a very foolish thing to do, to put in public investment and allow the private person to enjoy the revenue. How will the government pay back the loan it has taken in the first place? Even if the private player is to spend on just the rolling stock, that constitutes only 18% of the total project cost.

How has past experience with PPP in Metro rail projects been in India?

PPP in India was tried out in Mumbai, Hyderabad, and the Airport line of Delhi. All three are a failure. In the airport line, DMRC invested 55% of the cost (50% of which was borrowed from Japan). Reliance Infrastructure, which was the only private player to come forward, invested in the rolling stock, electrification, and signalling. Reliance started operating the line, they found it loss-making, so they abandoned it, and ran away. We had taken it over and run it ourselves. In Mumbai Metro Line 1, Reliance Infrastructure took almost 7 years to complete 11 km of the relatively easier elevated line and they now claim to be losing 50 lakh per day in revenue everyday despite the very high fares they are charging. In Chennai, the state and central governments invested all the money with borrowing from Japan.

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