Fast Track KMRC Now in Deep Confusion

         A new development has surfaced as the ambitious plan for the Kochi Metro Rail Corporation project is being put track so that the work starts off smoothly without any interference. This time the reports in the newspapers say that the DMRC (Delhi Metro Rail Corporation) with whom the former has tied up is too busy with its own work in Delhi and may not involve in another project quite readily. This is not lack of simple bureaucratic delay or official misunderstanding, but the simple reason is that there is no action plan that categorically states the project’s implementation and schedule route through proper supply chain of subcontracting parts of works and also the training and retraining and upgrading of personnel both on technological side and management side. If you look at things a bit carefully then you can notice that the DMRC is only an overseer and the rest of the management inputs and detailed supply chain process wherever the former has undertaken work are all with Japanese companies as stakeholder. If the KMRC (Kerala Metro Rail Corporation) has to see the project go through then it would have to invite bids whether partly or wholly on contract or subcontract basis with the Japanese Metro Rail organization and then the DMRC can oversee it along with KMRC. Sometimes, the KMRC would have to give it on subcontract to other companies around the world as it is usually done the world over for tapping into pockets of comparative technological efficiencies.

     Then what ails the project? There are perhaps only a few personnel in the DMRC who knows about the supply chain route and the ways and means of giving subcontract work to genuine overseas contractors. Unlike the Calcutta Metro Rail where the whole project was done with the supervision of the DMRC and advisory participation of the Japanese Company the present job would mean some changes in the position of the stakeholders as they would like to have a stake in the whole project. This would mean that some foreign companies might want to act as significant stakeholder in such projects. This can become politically sensitive issue in a state fraught with politics in almost all walks of life with parties taking extreme stands every now and then. From the look of it this is perhaps what is becoming a stumbling block to an otherwise great project.