Away from the din and bustle of the Louis Berger bribery scandal, has the government or the political class done a rethink on the manner in which multi-million dollar projects are sourced, selected and commissioned. Across the country, and Goa is increasingly following the same pattern, the only class of professionals who are making money at State expense, are consultants with no accountability. Charging by the hour and charging for everything that they do, the moment they step out of bed, consultants are risk free. Thus when the absolutely absurd plan to have a sea link from Dona Paula to Vasco was thought of by the then Chief Minister Digambar Kamat, the same Louis Berger group was quickly roped in to consult. The sea link will never show up and rightly so but Louis Berger got a cool Rs 8 crore, perhaps to make the same commonsense argument and you and I would make. Except that we do not bill the government for doing so.
Moving on, the Louis Berger bribery scandal should be a major wake up call for against appointing consultants for every step of a project especially the Public Private Projects or PPP. The cost benefit ratio of consultant’s fees to the project benefit fees is pretty skewed. Take the Panjim master plan for instance. The GSIDC had appointed LKS India Pvt Ltd, to prepare a holistic design of infrastructure for Panjim including storm and water drains. The contract was issued in February 2013. LKS India has submitted a 1016-page sector-wise detailed project report on Panjim. Consultants SN Bhobe and Associates Pvt Ltd were also hired to draw up plans for Mormugao. That’s hardly surprising as this consultant “offers consultancy” to the BJP government and the Chief Minister on almost every aspect of life and governance.
With the LKS India private ltd consultancy which was touted as a holistic plan for Panjim, the basis on which the government is justifying all the digging and destruction of Panjim, still running, the GSIDC has decided to appoint yet another consultant for the preparation of plans for funds to come in for the development of Panjim as a smart city. What baffles is why a new consultant is needed to cut and paste what the previous one did. The “City-wide Concept Plan” which the new consultant will draw up will be along the lines of the Panjim master plan which LKS India has drawn up to enable the Rs 500 crore funding to arrive. However the government track record in drawing up plans and pitching for central funding has been pretty abysmal. Goa had the ignominy of being the only state which did not draw plans and ask for amounts under the JNNURM schemes regularly.
The new consultant, who will look into the work of LKS consultants, will also look at the Imagine Panaji Plan, the City mobility plan, the St Inez Creek development plan and the solid waste management plan and some of these plans have indeed been paid for. But precious little is seen on the ground. Every plan from traffic to parking to mobility, to the creek development are heavy on consultants and planning with zero implementation.
The government does not tire of consultants though. So here’s a new one. Jones Lang LaSalle for the IT habitat in Chimbel and the Chief Minister’s dream project in his own backyard, the Electronics System Design and Manufacturing city (ESDM) at Tuem where the forest department has cleared the rampant felling of trees in a hilly slope area. Now the manner in which Jones Lang LaSalle was chosen needs to be examined. In all likelihood the fine tradition of selecting consultants without consultation or a proper tender process has been followed.
The Chief Minister should actually call the Prime Minister and ask him what he thinks of his consultant hiring spree. This week the Prime Minister while addressing industry captains remarked, “Risk taking is in your DNA. That is why you are businessmen and not consultants drawing a salary”. And since these consultants fund PPP projects, the public P spends more than the private P, in the overall context, while it is the private P which functions only on profit since it has no social responsibility. The consultants are only an arm of this profit making universe at the cost of the people’s universe where our taxes pay for the government’s excesses.
