The bullet train is a far reaching and momentous project for India

When India embarked upon its mobile telephony journey, critics accused it of misplaced priorities and foolish ambition. When there is so much poverty and paucity of fiscal resources, why invest in a luxury? Two decades later, India’s telecom story is celebrated not just for fast growth, innovation, and low cost, but for having impacted the lives of the poorest of the poor. It is an ongoing revolution, which has spurred economic development and welfare. Digital connectivity has been accorded the status of a basic right for all citizens. In a similar vein, India’s Mars mission was also criticised as a project that it could ill afford. But having executed it at one-tenth of the comparable global cost, and with six-sigma precision, the space science and engineering community in India has earned global respect. The spillover effect of ISRO’s missions are manifold: Nourishing the research and development culture and mindset, developing indigenous intellectual property, using space technology for developmental purposes and of course generating employment and inspiring youngsters. Nobody grudges ISRO its budget; in fact, more is recommended.

A similar story can be told of the early days of Delhi Metro. But you get the drift. What initially seems like misplaced priority among competing fiscal needs, turns out to be a long-term winner. Indeed, when it comes to public transport, all major cities of India are committed to building metro rail as essential and inevitable. It requires holistic planning, multi-modal long-term approach and executing in situ, within highly congested environments. It is high cost, only if you forget that these are long-term and long-gestation projects. The benefits accrue to several generations. One must remember the adage, attributed to Gustavo Petro: “A developed country is not where the poor can afford cars, but where even the rich use public transportation.” One could add, a poor country with increasingly congested cities can no longer afford to postpone public transportation projects.

The bullet train, too, is such a far reaching and momentous project for India. When Prime Ministers Shinzo Abe and Narendra Modi lay the foundation stone this Thursday for the Mumbai-Ahmedabad High-Speed Rail (MAHSR) project, it will be not too soon. Japan’s first Shinkansen (bullet train) commenced in 1964. It has had a fantastic safety record; not even one fatal accident in its last 53 years. Its on-time record is the envy of even the Swiss. The high-speed rail network was an integral part of Japan’s early fiscal strategy for economic development. It led to the development of satellite towns and cities and decongested larger cities.

A similar strategy is now being pursued by China in the past 10 years. It is now building a 22,000-km network of high-speed rail, the biggest infrastructure project in history. In the next four years, it plans to connect 80 per cent of its major cities. This will impact migration patterns, reduce urban congestion as commuters choose to live farther, reduce vehicular pollution, ease urban real estate prices and spread development more evenly. It will, of course, generate significant employment. It is important to note that China’s early high-speed rail projects were built with Japanese technology.

The MAHSR is one of the crown jewels in the robust Indo-Japan relationship. Its concessional funding of $15 billion, at an interest rate of 0.1 per cent, is from Japan International Cooperation Agency, to be repaid over 50 years after an initial 15-year moratorium. This funding is specifically earmarked for MAHSR and is not fungible. Japan is an acknowledged world leader in high-speed rail technology, whose focus is on reliability and safety. Their approach is integrating transport and development, not merely to achieve high-speed connection. The project envisages technology and skill transfer, indigenous manufacturing and employment. Don’t forget that Japan had a major role to play in India becoming a hub of small-car manufacturing in the world. That’s the story of Maruti Suzuki. Japan also was instrumental in the setting up of Delhi Metro. It may be useful to note that the Tokyo metro system is one of the world’s most sophisticated, with 158 lines criss-crossing 2,200 stations serving 40 million passenger rides daily. All this with a near-zero accident rate. Hence the safety aspect of MAHSR has the Shinkansen mindset and approach behind it.

India and Japan signed an economic cooperation agreement in 2011, which will enhance free trade of goods, services, technology and people between the two nations. Japanese FDI into India is increasing, and PM Abe is committed to bringing in 10,000 Indian IT workers into Japan every year. Cooperation in diverse areas like nuclear energy, urban waste management, transportation and even aerospace is on the cards. The MAHSR project is a great catalyst which will energise the bilateral relationship with its success. That success will need to surmount many challenges, such as land acquisition, clearing bureaucratic hurdles and speedy approvals. It will need mission-mode thinking. It is like a Mars mission for the railways. It can seed many other high-speed projects between other metros of India.

The author is a renowned economist