All Indian metros without exception are managed by SPVs.

Land acquisition is not something that gets over. It is a continuous process. Then the court cases if any always show up with some delay, and that can revoke transfers. Then you have to look for alternative land parcels, which may involve minor reroutes in the worst case. It's the same with finances, everything comes in tranches, land, money, everything.

> Pune

You can see this entire documentation[1], make sure to click on the two section headers to reveal content. While no doubt the document might mislead you about the extent of the delay, and really % done means nothing in these projects where the unknowns are unknown, you can clearly see it's the exact coordination issues I had mentioned earlier: utility coordination, handling expanding flyovers/roads, etc.

> All are perpetually delayed

Because, it's not an internal organisation issue or a personnel issue (i.e "hire more engineers"). The exact organisation does not matter when the problems are of the external kind mentioned above.

Now, the problems mentioned in TFA don't occur here because the SPVs house long term employees with - for government standards - fairly robust institutional knowledge.

The top comment now has content refuting the article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48582433

> Look at the memes for Pune metro line 3 and for Karnataka metro (forgot which line)

The same memes exist everywhere: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48582563

> Even though private

If you want real private efficiencies, you have to give the entire responsibility of many departments to the private company. So, a near-private whole sub-municipality. Just making the metro SPV private is meaningless, although definitely better than having it under PWD...

[1] https://www.pmrda.gov.in/en/pune-metro-line-3/maan-hinjawadi...

Interesting. So do they not work on the things were land acquisition is solved?

I see at least 4 stations daily where there has been literally 0 progress in the past few months.

They could finish rest of the job right? Until land issue is resolved (which don't revokve around that land like stairs etc)

Two possibilties, one, less likely: typically they work on the bottleneck things first and redeploy the people there.

Two: most likely, an earlier contract to construct the station (and especially for interiors like stairs, it's always a different contract) was cancelled[1] and they have decided to postpone tendering a new contractor for that station, until the nagging land issue is closer to being solved, lest the same issue happen again with the new contractor.

If you meant why can't it be decoupled, well that's because in general some entity in the chain won't give you a completion certificate trusting that you will integrate the two decoupled projects properly later. If you want to make the integration a separate step, no contractor will assume responsibility for it and sign it since the two components are done by others and it becomes a game afterwards of who takes the blame. It's also extremely low margin work. Sometimes, you will see TATA led businesses take the risk and somehow do it, out of altruism towards nation building, but I have not seen any one else do it.

In general the rule with govt contracts is that if there's any problem at all with the contract, all work even if it's unrelated physically speaking, will stop. Because it's related contractually speaking. Such is life.

[1] e.g because the timeline after delays stops being viable for him

> I see at least 4 stations daily where there has been literally 0 progress in the past few months

Where do you live? Delhi Metro has been quietly expanding rapidly over the past decade, and you can see fairly constant construction and execution. Same with the Gurgaon Metro.

If you are in Bangalore, its metro was a victim of the Siddarmiah-Shivakumar rivalry (Siddaramaiah backed Mysore and Mangalore at the expense of Bangalore to undercut Shivakumar who has significant investments in Bangalore).

> Until land issue is resolved...

This is the biggest timesink for any Indian infrastructure project. Eminent Domain is basically impossible in India under the LARR, which has constantly delayed infra projects across India.

In some way, it works out. Because of LARR being the way it is, the system descends into things being built on politician owned land and them pocketing the money, or politicians buying up land near an upcoming project where they know LA is done. While that sounds bad, overall this leads to positive infra development. Much better than the alternative of a principled politician who doesn't indulge in such corruption, but due to the inherent difficulty of LA also gets nothing done. Also considering the politicians are voted for, you also get a little bit of alignment to public interest. I.e Mr. X knows he can campaign on a sports center in the corner there without worrying about LARR on the existing old office building - his brother owns it.

Of course this is not business friendly at all... And you end up needing SEZs and special "Foo Cities" for land acquisition to even be remotely feasible for Foo companies. But hey atleast SEZs/special cities don't face the same problems.

It slows down SEZ creation as well, becuase an SEZ needs land, which forces state planning commissions to deal with the LARR headache, but at least it's state governments that are facing the headache instead of businesses.

It also prevents the development of mass dormitories for migrant workers in factories, which is the de facto model adopted across Asia.

> the system descends into things being built on politician owned land and them pocketing the money, or politicians buying up land near an upcoming project where they know LA is done

It works until it doesn't, as can be seen with Bangalore because of the Siddaramiah (Mysore) versus Shivakumar (Bangalore) rivalry, or Panchkula whenever Haryana got a BJP CM because former CM Hooda had significant land interests in Panchkula.

---

Eminent domain and "bulldozer raj" might be undemocratic, but it's what helped Urban China clean up in the early 2010s [0][1], when it was in similar shoes to India today. So did South Korea in the 2000s to present [2][3]; Japan in the 1980s to 2000s [4]; and Taiwan in the 1990s to 2010s [5][6].

Urban villages, abadis, bastis, jhuggis, and other informal settlements should be demolished and expropriated to development authorities if India wishes to replicate the Asian model.

[0] - https://archive.nytimes.com/sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/201...

[1] - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Sk46cwSCkTs

[2] - https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2009-feb-09-fg-korea...

[3] - https://www.listentothecity.org/Resisting-Seoul-s-brutal-apa...

[4] - https://www.toshiseibi.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/documents/d/toshise...

[5] - https://www.taiwantoday.tw/print/Environment/Taiwan-Review/2...

[6] - https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2013/05/21/...

In tamil nadu atleast, building housing for workers nearby the workplace is not the part that causes issues. The way it typically happens is that the business bears the costs, and at the least gets to do the maintenance contract themselves. And the state government provides security (especially when its a lot of women workers) and other utility services. Fairly smooth. The issue primarily is in the earlier negotiation and things like subsidies.

> SEZ dealing with SARR, but atleast its the state governments that face the headache and not the businesses

Can't underestimate the benefit of this difference, it's massive.

> It works until it doesn't

Yep, the failure modes are also of the ugly kind.

> Urban villages, abadis, bastis, jhuggis, and other informal settlements should be demolished and expropriated to development authorities if India wishes to replicate the Asian model.

I don't think we will replicate that model. I am not entirely sure what the model will be, since it's extremely unique. From my weak knowledge of asian countries, I think they took up, loosely speaking, individualistic capitalism, way more than I see among indians, income level and opportunity cost held equal.

I haven't yet seen an explanation for this, and the easy ones (e.g language, community) don't hold up to what I have seen.

> From my weak knowledge of asian countries, I think they took up, loosely speaking, individualistic capitalism

Not really based on my personal experience on the ground.

The main difference was light authoritarianism. India has too much democracy at the local level, where any wannabe neta can block a project by building a Mandir/Masjid or naarabazi-ing "laal salam" or "Jai bhim".

When demolitions and urban renewal projects are executed in China, Korea, Taiwan, or Japan the full might of the system is used to push it through. No PILs or human interest media stories slow down those demolitions and urban renewals. If they need to crack heads or break a few legs, they will.

India under Indira used to be able to execute at such frequency, but then the counter-reaction in the 1980s and 1990s led to India neutering it's eminent domain laws.

TN historically worked because if I wanted a factory built, I knew who to call in the DMK and they would get land and permitting completed in a single window. It's the same in Telangana, Andhra, Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Haryana. UP and Chhattisgarh have also started to operate in that manner too. You used to be able to do that in Karnataka but the politics changed in 2021.

> The main difference was light authoritarianism. India has too much democracy at the local level, where any wannabe neta can block a project

Makes sense. In some ways, the opposite problem also exists. The municipalities dont have much money/power and are de-facto just a branch of the state govt and a neglected one at that. Cause of many urban infra issues.

> TN historically worked because if I wanted a factory built, I knew who to call in the DMK and they would get land and permitting completed in a single window

Yep, this is the kind of thing I alluded to up-thread.