Impact On Infrastructure and Service Sector

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Infrastructure
Surface Transport-comprising road transport, railways and shipping, Air Transport, Housing, Communications – comprising telecom and P&T, Power
Services
Financial intermediation – comprising stocks, debentures and insruments, loan syndication etc.
Banking and retail credit, including savings
Exim facilities
Tourism
The list is by no means exhaustive. The social goods and community services like health, drinking water, education, municipal services, irrigation etc. are left out to keep the discussion focussed.
It is noticed that in almost all cases the ‘hardware’ goes into the infrastructure whilst the ‘software’ goes into the service. For example, the roads go into infrastructure, whereas the transportation goes into serevice; the rolling stock and tracks of the Railways goes into infrastructure but the goods and passenger movement goes into service. The same is true for communications and power. The moot point I am trying to highlight is that these two are strongly related in many areas.
Self-reliance in S&T in these areas can be interpreted in two ways – self-reliance in developing new technologies and self-sufficiency in operations. In some areas, the cost of re-inventing the wheel may be too high and subsequent consumption volumes too low to attempt self reliance in technology. This is true for commercial aircraft or some telecom systems. On the other hand, most of the infrastructure and services can be satisfactorily operated without sourcing technology from outside.
Surface Transport
Shipping and Ports – Shipbuilding technology is an area where we are quite competent. The same is true for building port services. Where we need to improve is in the area of cargo handling and clearing services. Some degree of technological charges may need to be inducted in this area. Contrary to populist opinion, this will not cut jobs but protect the jobs of millions of port workers through increased throughput of cargo at Indian ports.
Railways
The total freight handled by Indian Railways has gone down steadily over the last two years, simply due to poor management of traffic and rake turnaround times. Better systems of traffic management would help to improve utilisation of rolling stock thereby reducing costs. This would make freight cost cheaper and reduce delivery periods, thereby tackling the competition from road transport. It would protect the jobs of millions of Rail employees as well as result in savings to the national economy from lower petroleum imports.
Air Transport
Poor navigation aids at the major airports severely impede both passenger and cargo movement during weather disturbances. The secondary airports lack runway length and night landing facilities. We have capabilities in building advanced defence radar systems but do not seem to be using the same capability for building civilian navigation systems for much slower flying aircraft. This is an area of serious concern. Today, air transport is not a matter of luxury but is necessitated by the demands of a rapidly changing business environment. The commercial traffic is over 90% of all traffic. The very politicians who used to brand air travel as the vehicle of the rich are today the biggest users of the same.
Housing
Major developments in technology have passed us by in this sector. None of the developments in the area of RCC structures, environment friendly low cost designs etc. have been popularised in the country. This has nothing to do with employment in the housing sector. I am not talking about pre fab technology, nor about pre mix concrete. I am talking about low cost, safer, earthquake proof, lighter designs using local materials to make housing affordable to the masses. We have to step out from the lab to the land in this sector.
Communications
Although we have had some successes in the areas design and development of Telephone Exchanges by C-DoT, political interference and vested interests have sold our souls to the MNCs. We are likely to remain forever subservient to foreign technology in this sector. From basic telephony to WLL to cellular and satphones, there is no further hope of remaining self sufficient. The RAX and MAX exchanges built by C-DoT are now history.
In the P&T services, there is tremendous scope for improvement using modern technology. Already, the benefits of satellite communications for money orders and telegrams have brought in major relief to people in far flung areas. Electronic sorting and bar coding can certainly improve efficiency and bring down costs, enabling the P&T to take on the private courier companies. As an example I can mention that the American equivalent of Speed Post competes with the best private courier companies and still has the largest share of the market. Mail tracking and forwarding systems need large inputs of technology to improve the services and to protect jobs.
Power
From generation to distribution, load management to wheeling and metering, we are still in the dark ages. There are gaps at every level that technology can fill to improve the generation and distribution of power. We have the technology in India. Sad to see that all new power plants are coming up with technology imported from outside, mostly dated products from western countries.
Financial sector
Most of the technological changes in this sector have been driven by the transaction formats, simplification of legal requirements and removal of paper based transactions. The backbone of these changes have come from on the transaction processing systems, ability to hold and manage large databases and a strong and reliable communication backbone of high bandwidth. India has proved her skills to the world outside on software and we have made a mark in the financial sector in the country. I hope that we shall continue to blaze the trail.
Tourism
A small country like Singapore earns over 30% of its GDP through tourism and the balance through trade. There is a very small contribution from other sectors. While being endowed with the best natural beauty, we have not been able to make much headway in this area. Ticketing systems need improvement (the computerised booking of railways still operators with touts), modern facilities need to be provided to tourists at destinations which are far from major towns, payment system s from such locations need improvement, technology can be used to create stable ski slopes, par sailing, water rafting etc. in far flung areas, ambiences like nature trails, aquariums, bird parks, zoos in or around congested cities (see Singapore) to bring in the tourists by the millions.
A common line that runs through all these themes is investment. Contrary to the latest advocates of liberalisation and disinvestment, these can only be taken up by the Government. The private sector in his country is only willing to go for things where they can either make quick profits from shortages or where they can use licensing restrictions to prevent competition. In no country has S&T come to the foreground without the State being the chief player in the game.