City Pulse

This a public rejoinder to a series of articles which appeared in a section of the media on Tender SURE roads and also to clarify certain issues relating to Tender SURE roads.

Over the past fortnight, Bangalore Mirror ran a high-visibility series on the Tender SURE project in their front pages.  The writer made serious allegations about various actors, a large share of which were directed at me and my institution - Jana Urban Space.

Ever since on-ground execution of the Tender SURE project began in March 2014, there have been many queries and concerns that have been raised.  Many well-wishers of the Tender SURE project provided their views.  For myself, I responded to those questions or criticisms that were legitimate areas of concern, while ignoring those that were baseless allegations.

In my view, this current series falls into the second category, and I would normally have moved on.  However, the series is so personal and devoid of facts, that it cannot be ignored.  It paints a picture that does not correspond to any reality.

I am therefore responding to various points that have been raised in the paper.

1. What exactly is a Tender SURE road

A city road is not just the road, but a carrier of multiple other utilities. They are the “super seven” - power, water, sewage, drainage, telecom (many), gas (new) and security surveillance & traffic management.

Unfortunately, in Bangalore (and most cities), these multiple services are run by different civic agencies.  The BBMP is in charge of the road works. The BWSSB is in charge of the water and sewage. BESCOM in charge of power lines, KPTCL in charge of major power transmission. The Traffic police in charge of traffic and surveillance infrastructure. The telecom has BSNL (central government), and many private players regulated by the BBMP.

Each one of these agencies builds their infrastructure in silo, through their individual contractors, without knowledge or consideration to the networks of other agencies. Every time there is a problem, the road is dug up and costs are incurred. In such a broken system, what we see as users of the roads is nothing but chaos: badly designed roads, poorly constructed underground systems, and repeated cut-relaying-cut expenses.

Einstein said insanity is to keep doing the same thing over and over again, yet expecting a different result each time.  Our responses to our bad roads have been like this: not trying anything different, but simply repeating our past mistakes and expecting different outcomes.

Solving this was the core idea behind Tender SURE: fix both the road, and also what under the road with an “Integrated Road Design”, and we fix the problem.

As we all know our footpaths and roads are in a sorry state from frequent digging and sub-standard fixes. Media agencies have frequently pointed to the pecuniary benefits of this system, which derives benefits from the same thing being done over and over. And even the Bangalore Mirror series itself admits, there has been no allegation of corruption in the Tender SURE system. Change cannot come from perpetuating the same mistakes over and over.

2. The “Tender” in Tender SURE

The reason this initiative is called ‘Tender SURE’ is because the tender document is a key aspect of the overall approach.

In 2011, I took the design standards for such an “Integrated Road Design” to the then Chief Secretary Mr SV Ranganath, he was struck by the concept, but cautioned, “The only way to make this happen is to re-do the tender document for how our city roads are built, so that the needs of all the civic agencies are integrated into a single procurement document.”  Such an integrated approach to building our city roads had never been done.  In the present system, each civic agency floats its independent tender to get its portion of the network infrastructure done. 

Mr Ranganath urged me to come up with the draft protocols for such an integrated tender document.  This resulted in a two-volume Tender SURE Guidelines for Urban Roads and Utilities, where Volume I was the specifications for integrated road design, and Volume II was the tender details.  Members of Bangalore City Connect saw merit in the idea of Tender SURE, and led by Kiran Mazumdar, Lakshminarayan and Ravichandar, advocated with the government to support this approach, and the Chief Minister Mr Sadananda Gowda formally lent his support to the Tender SURE project.

3. The tendering process and award of contracts

Even though there were multiple civic bodies involved, it was logical that BBMP would be the nodal agency to actually float the Tender SURE contract and award the work.  This also meant that BBMP would need to actively engage with all the other civic agencies in order to ensure that the integrated, holistic approach needed for Tender SURE to succeed was not lost.

The first two tender packages were floated in 2013, for the first set of roads to be taken up under the Tender SURE system.  Disappointingly, there was no bidder for the tender.  Large and reputed companies like L&T refused outright to participate in the tender, citing the complexity of urban roads, and the long delays in payment on municipal works.  The technical committee of the BBMP examined the tender pre-requisites and relaxed some of the more stringent financial norms. The tender was refloated for the second time. Two companies bid this time – RNS, and NAPC. However, both were rejected by the engineering department upon evaluation of the bid. We were stumped, and BBMP invited some of the regular BBMP contractors to understand the situation. One of the BBMP contractors provided the key insight – it was because the Tender SURE integrated contract required the same contractor to deliver ALL the networked infrastructure of all the civic agencies for the roads. The bid pre-qualifications set for minimum quantitites of similar works was too high, since no contractor had done such work before.  Hence, no one was able to even bid for the project.

Based on this feedback, the tender package was broken into two packages, and re-released – this time successfully. It may surprise many of your readers to know that Bangalore actually has not one but two Tender SURE road packages that are being executed.

The first set of Tender SURE projects were awarded to RNS, for five roads to be taken up directly under the BBMP design and execution supervision (Nrupathunga Road, KG road, etc), and seven roads by NAPC, under the design and supervision of Jana Urban Space (St Marks Road, Cunningham Road etc).

It is noteworthy that the focus of this series of articles in Bangalore Mirror is exclusively on the second Tender SURE package, with never a mention of the first five roads of the Tender SURE road package, where the BBMP engineers have every chance to showcase their technical skills.  It would be educative to investigate the comparative quality of design drawings and on-ground details, provided to the contracting agency for the other set of Tender SURE roads.

4. The challenges in execution

The execution of the Tender SURE project was filled with complex challenges from day one. 

Many of these challenges were due to the design integration efforts needed across multiple civic agencies: this was the first time that different agencies were coming together to make joint decisions, and that too, in a time-bound manner. 

The lack of reliable institutional knowledge of the road assets owned by each civic agency, or any records on such assets, made the challenges a day-to-day fire-fighting exercise. 

We would suddenly discover (on road cutting) a Cauvery pipeline or a high-tension power line that nobody knew about.  We would find missing sections of sewer lines, properties that didn’t have sewage connections but were letting them into the side drains, hundreds of instances of crossed lines between power and telecom and water supply, networks that were virtually impossible to untangle.  Given that each of these was a ‘live’ connection, it was not possible to simply cut these lines and create a more logical network.  All these needed to be factored real-time into the design drawings, which needed to be changed to reflect such new realities, without which the contractor could not proceed with coherence.

As a result of all this, the field and design support to the contractor to enable good execution, was unimaginably complex. The learning process was also a factor, given the pioneering nature of the project.

5. The Engineering Department in BBMP

If the technical challenges were hard, the added challenge was coping with and countering an entrenched system and vested interests in the engineering department.  The BBMP spends hundreds of crores on road works every year; these expenses are incurred with minimal accountability from the engineering department.  Every time a road is cut by another agency, or potholes appear, it means more money spent to bring the road back to its original condition.  It is inevitable that Tender SURE will be seen as a threat – where every rupee is spent only on the road, and which cuts off the need for money on the same job over and over again.

Is there one person in Bangalore who would defend the status quo of how our roads are built, and how our engineering department runs?  But what Bangalore Mirror journalist takes away from the Chief Engineer’s opposition, is that he is a paragon of duty and due process, defending the public interest against a vast conspiracy that included not only my organisation, but also extended to the Chief Minister and the Chief Secretary.  It is ironical that the Bangalore Mirror series ran at the same time as the controversy where several BBMP officials – many of them engineers – were charge-sheeted for corruption, over the demolition of illegal buildings on storm water drains in Bangalore.

From the very beginning of the Tender SURE execution, attempts were made to dilute the project, to make arbitrary and random changes to the design drawings. Dealing with this resistance became a regular affair.  The engineering team under the Chief engineer, constantly attempted to undermine our work, pointing to vague ‘gaps’ in the RFP and technical drawings.  Finally, at one such meeting, I said to the Chief Engineer (and this is in the minutes of that meeting), ‘You keep saying that our drawings don’t measure up to your standards.  Please show me one, just one RFP and one set of technical drawings for one road in Bangalore that you consider to be the standard of how this should be done, and one road where this has been built to such a standard.  We will gladly upgrade our work to meet that standard.’ That exchange was over two years ago.  I am still waiting.

Unfortunately, in the initial months of the Tender SURE project implementation, the vested interests were slowly but surely undermining and diluting every aspect of how the Tender SURE roads were to be built.

6. Overcoming the vested interests

It was then that I contacted the Chief Secretary, Mr Kaushik Mukherjee, whom I had never met before. Mr Mukherjee listened. He saw all the material that I provided.  He examined the technical drawings.  He formed his own conclusion based on the facts.  And he then went on to whole-heartedly support the Tender SURE project. He used his office to not only to de-fang the vested interests, but also to convene integration between the civic agencies.

Kaushik Mukherjee nurtured the project to overcome the first set of hurdles. Over time, there were many officials across multiple civic agencies (including in the BBMP’s own engineering department) who provided support – some outstanding - for the work on Tender SURE.

7. RTI and matters of transparency

The Bangalore Mirror journalist of the Tender SURE series makes several references to the use of RTI and selected documents that were ‘unearthed’.  He also makes several references to the lack of transparency in the Tender SURE project from its very inception.

Let us start at the very beginning.  Is it ‘arbitrary’ for a sitting Chief Minister to hear an idea like Tender SURE and then support it?  If the highest elected political leader of a state cannot make a decision to support an idea, then who will? Mr Sadananda Gowda’s support was not done in private - it was at a public event, in the full glare of the media and the public. 

Tender SURE was led by two different strands of political leadership, initiated by Mr Sadanand Gowda’s BJP leadership, but implemented under the Congress leadership. If it was indeed so ‘arbitrary’, then wouldn’t the successor Mr Siddaramaiah have cancelled the project?  Instead, Mr Siddaramaiah’s government has not only taken it forward, but is expanding it. 

As to RTI and papers being extracted, the Bangalore Mirror journalist has been misleading and selective in quoting the letters and minutes. Over the past three years, thousands of letters and minutes have been generated, relating to general meetings and issues and specific details with agencies. No other municipal project in BBMP’s history has witnessed such recording.

A cursory review of these documents would reveal the enormous effort and battles involved it to get even the simplest items done – like moving a BSNL telephone box from a footpath, or organising a meeting with all the telecom companies.

I have separately requested all related agencies, to suo moto place all Tender SURE communication in the public domain, rather than wait for RTI petitions to be filed in the future, so that there can be careful scrutiny of all relevant documents, and fair conclusions reached.

8. Criticisms and motivation

As I stated at the outset, the Tender SURE project has been a complex one, having to overcome many challenges and wage many battles with an entrenched, archaic system.  Over the course of this journey, there have been many genuine questions raised, to which responses were given in a factual manner from time to time.

We live in a democracy, and therefore everyone has the right to criticise.  But this does not make every criticism right. The writer of this series in Bangalore Mirror does not raise legitimate questions. Instead, his is a personal opinion series, loaded with his own biased and tinted view of various ‘agendas’ that he sees in this project.

What can possibly be the agenda of those of us supporting Tender SURE? Is it possible that the only agenda we have is to see our city get out of the mess that it is in? Instead of watching it go from bad to worse with every passing day, I am choosing to actively do something about it. I believe that Tender SURE will make a huge difference to how every one of us experiences our city roads - pedestrians to motorists, old to young.

9. The public and Tender SURE

In the final analysis, we must agree that irrespective of our personal views – mine will no doubt be to defend Tender SURE, while the writer feels strongly opposed to it – what ultimately matters is what the public thinks of the project.

And here, the simplest test for the project is this: the Chief Minister announced that the Karnataka government would be taking up more Tender SURE roads on a much bigger scale than the first phase.  And when the list of roads was announced, residents of many areas complained about being left out of the Tender SURE project. 

Surely, public demand and political response to such demand, is the final test of any idea in a democracy?