Expanding the metro rail network across the country with complete disregard for cost overruns and operating losses will have disastrous consequences on the state and national exchequers.
Do you know what is common to every leader across generations? Each of them wants to build monuments to cement their legacy: pyramids, statues, airports, dams, bridges, stadiums, temples, which are supposed to be civilization-defining structures, remembered through generations. Our post-independence history is littered with megaprojects that were once justified but have ended up being major disappointments, both operationally and financially. Damodar Valley Corporation, which was supposed to power a generation of Indian industry through hydropower, has become one of India’s most problematic public sector power generation companies. More than a decade since its launch, GIFT City in Gujarat has …
Rohit Chandra is an assistant professor at IIT Delhi’s School of Public Policy and also a visiting fellow at the Centre for Policy Research. Primarily a political scientist and economic historian, his academic work spans the areas of energy policy, state capitalism and infrastructure finance; he has spent the last decade studying the coal and power sectors.
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