The telecommunications sector has emerged as one of the key sectors that have put the Indian economy on a revival path. Proactive policies such as opening up the sector to private players and competition, unbundling the policy, regulatory and operational roles of the government, removal of...

This paper focuses on the process of introducing the Goods and Services Tax (GST), bringing out the perspectives of different stakeholders and the contentious issues. The GST was expected to subsume a variety of taxes and simplify the indirect tax regime. The Empowered Committee (EC) was...

In India, railways are under the control of the government which is the sole provider of the infrastructure, operations and regulatory functions. Private participation, though very limited, was largely in the domain of infrastructure creation. In January 2006, in a landmark initiative to...

The concession agreement for the modernization and operation of Indira Gandhi International airport in Delhi and Chhatrapati Shivaji International airport at Mumbai respectively is referred to as Operation Management and Development Agreement (OMDA). The OMDA was a part of a set of transaction...

PPP mode of investment in Indian ports has made a significant headway and is preferred for investments today. The 12 major ports and about 200 minor ports along the 7,500 km coastline of the country have together traded about 935 mt of cargo in 2012-13. The traffic is growing each year. The...

Bangalore Mysore Infrastructure Corridor pioneered the idea of leveraging land for revenue generation to make a project viable. The project was conceived as early as 1988. It had the twin objectives of (i) connecting Bangalore and Mysore (two rapidly growing cities in Karnataka) with an...

In 2007-08, Indian Railways (IR) carried 6.5 billion passengers (highest in the world as a single system, and second highest in the world as a country after Japan at 9.0 billion passengers), serviced 770 billion passenger kms (second highest in the world, close to China at 773 billion passenger...

This white paper attempts to provide a roadmap for India to move towards logistics excellence. Apart from raising issues that are currently relevant, it also draws from the issues that were raised in the previous three logistics summits and continue to be relevant today. As a departure from the...

Axle loading had contributed significantly to the ‘turnaround’ of the Indian Railways (IR) in the two years 2004-06. As the Minister of Railways (MR) stated, “A one ton extra loading per wagon implied additional revenue of Rs 500 crore per annum for IR.” The axle loading initiative was a...

The Ghaziabad (GZB) goods shed was one of the top rail goods handling points in the National Capital Region (NCR). The growth was expected to be robust in the forthcoming years, since GZB and Noida were high growth districts in the Uttar Pradesh part of the NCR. GZB goods shed was one of the...