A Governance Analysis of Transportation in India

Sriraman attempts to understand the impact of the governance structure in the Indian context on the provision of transport infrastructure and services. Government owned railways have taken some initiatives to promote freight movement in a big way by the establishment of dedicated corridors with a different model of investment and operation. Equally significant are the initiatives taken up by the different transport related Ministries to promote multi-modalism which involves a change in governance structure. The issue is whether there can be effective implementation of these policy initiatives given continuing poor practices and deviation from an ideal institutional governance framework. One other issue discussed critically relates to the effective implementation of planning and operating of information technology practices in the context of smart cities that are being encouraged in a background of poor urban physical infrastructure.