A.M. Naik, who has completed five decades in India’s largest construction and engineering firm Larsen & Toubro (L&T), feels the time has come for Narendra Modi’s Government to focus on monitoring and implementation of projects than making announcements.
“This is the key to economic growth in every single sector, policy and programme. You have to bring focus,” Mr. Naik, 72, Group Executive Chairman, L&T, told the Hindu in an interview. Terming L&T as a ``firm that builds the nation’’, he argued that the company’s prospects were tied to timely implementation of infrastructure projects.
Ever since the Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) swept to power last year, expectations of reforms and speedy implementation of projects were running high. A sense of impatience, however, seems to have set it. In fact, top industry leader Deepak Parekh said last month that nothing had changed on ground on ease of doing business.
“I don’t think everybody, including some of us, realizes that the procedures have been set up over five decades. To change that radically, and quicken the whole process beyond a point require time. Now my point is …since for a decade, decade-and-a-half and two decade nothing really moved. Why can’t you give another 6-9 months to the government,” Mr. Naik said.
“In India, things will move at a snail pace. And, it will be little faster than snail because the government has absolute majority. They are not going to get majority in Rajya Sabha for the long time … at least three years. By the time, their term will near the end, and they will start preparing for new elections. I think today government …instead of announcing new programme and initiatives … must create a very dynamic implementation process,” he said.
The government has managed to get through insurance and mining bills in Rajya Sabha, but faced with opposition for Land Bill.
Mr. Naik said the Land Bill was a sensitive issue. However, he felt that passing of the Land Bill was essential for projects of public interest to come up. “We had to give back three road projects because pieces of land on the way were not available. After two-and-a-half years, the cost had gone up by 30 per cent and we would have made huge losses,” he added.
He said a lot of projects across road and railway had been spoken about. However, nothing had happened in 5-7 years, he pointed out. “Get down to something decisive,” said Mr. Naik. “The Modi government should ask for the projects which have been talked about for the last 20 years, take it out, and put them into implementation,” he added.
Mr. Naik suggested that the government should rope in CII and FICCI nominees in monitoring committee of each ministry to get a sense of the ground realities and understand the status of projects and get suggestions. “All these committees … they are all from papers that they received from bottom up. Committees are there to delay the projects,” he said.