PM Modi has promised to fire up India's notoriously slow bureaucracy.
NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi is personally taking on India's notorious red tape to clear tens of billions of dollars worth of stalled public projects, hoping that his hands-on intervention can bend a vast, dysfunctional bureaucracy.
Once a month, Modi holds a meeting with top state and federal bureaucrats to check why projects have not got off the ground. Since March this year, his intervention has helped revive nearly $60 billion in central and state projects, according to government data through September seen by Reuters.
Modi has won plaudits for the initiative that has chipped away at a $150 billion backlog of planned roads, ports, railways, power stations and other projects. But equally, critics say, the fact he needs to personally intervene shows the level of government inertia in Asia's third-biggest economy.
"It is a systemic problem that the Prime Minister needs to work on," said Arun Maira, a management consultant and member of the previous Congress government.
The initiative, launched by Modi in March and publicised on his personal website and Twitter feed, is called pro-active governance and timely implementation, or Pragati, which means "progress" in the Hindi language.
Federal and state bureaucrats are linked by video to Modi's office for the meeting, usually held on the fourth Wednesday of each month. They are typically from the finance, law, land, environment, transport and energy ministries whose clearances are needed for many projects.
The agenda is set the previous week and usually has about a dozen stalled projects, public grievances and other governance issues.
A senior official who has attended said that when a project comes up for discussion, Modi turns to the representative of the ministry where it is being held up.
He simply asks, "Please tell me why it hasn't happened," the official said.
Several months into Pragati, the official said, a majority of the projects are cleared before they come up for discussion.
The chief minister of Uttar Pradesh state, Akhilesh Yadav, a political rival of Modi, wrote to the Prime Minister's office requesting the inclusion of a $1 billion metro rail project in the state capital at one Pragati meeting.
It got the clearances, including a pledge of centralFUNDING
, at the September meeting.
"This is a welcome move which would go a long way in doing away with avoidable delays," said Alok Ranjan, the state's top bureaucrat.
Once a month, Modi holds a meeting with top state and federal bureaucrats to check why projects have not got off the ground. Since March this year, his intervention has helped revive nearly $60 billion in central and state projects, according to government data through September seen by Reuters.
Modi has won plaudits for the initiative that has chipped away at a $150 billion backlog of planned roads, ports, railways, power stations and other projects. But equally, critics say, the fact he needs to personally intervene shows the level of government inertia in Asia's third-biggest economy.
The initiative, launched by Modi in March and publicised on his personal website and Twitter feed, is called pro-active governance and timely implementation, or Pragati, which means "progress" in the Hindi language.
Federal and state bureaucrats are linked by video to Modi's office for the meeting, usually held on the fourth Wednesday of each month. They are typically from the finance, law, land, environment, transport and energy ministries whose clearances are needed for many projects.
The agenda is set the previous week and usually has about a dozen stalled projects, public grievances and other governance issues.
A senior official who has attended said that when a project comes up for discussion, Modi turns to the representative of the ministry where it is being held up.
He simply asks, "Please tell me why it hasn't happened," the official said.
Several months into Pragati, the official said, a majority of the projects are cleared before they come up for discussion.
The chief minister of Uttar Pradesh state, Akhilesh Yadav, a political rival of Modi, wrote to the Prime Minister's office requesting the inclusion of a $1 billion metro rail project in the state capital at one Pragati meeting.
It got the clearances, including a pledge of centralFUNDING
, at the September meeting."This is a welcome move which would go a long way in doing away with avoidable delays," said Alok Ranjan, the state's top bureaucrat.
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