Construction in North East

Over the past 1 decade, India has successfully executed projects such as the Golden

Quadrilateral road programme and the expansion of ports in the country. India’s rapid

economic growth over the last 10 years has placed tremendous stress on its limited

infrastructure. The sector has received growing attention from the government and the

public, bringing the shortage of infrastructure to the fore. The country needs to urgently

accelerate the conceptualisation and implementation of all its infrastructure development to

enable planned growth of all the regions including that of the North East of India. It is

because poor infrastructure due to varied reasons that the North Eastern states of India are

aloof of the economic growth which India as a whole is experiencing.

India’s north eastern region has been witnessing a lack-lustre demand from private construction and infrastructure developers to take up projects largely due to security concerns and threats from local terrorist groups. Private players have been staying away from development projects in the region as officials have been kidnapped and ransoms are demanded. Besides that machinery and equipment are being burnt down by local terrorist groups which again forces the private sector to stay away from these projects. There are other concerns as well like the issue of land acquisition and labour issues.

We validated our research through our interaction with Mr. Shekhar Kumar Sahu, Planning & Site Engineer, L&T ECC who is a native of Assam and has been working in the various regions of North East for five years. Mr. Sahu was of the opinion that most of the projects in North East gets delay due to lack of execution of the projects as per planning because of the reasons beyond their purview of control. Few of the pointers that primarily cause delay in the execution are:-

Political scenario (e.g.:- the massacre in Assam in Dec,2014 halted L&T ‘s transmission line job; militancy)Environmental concerns(e.g.:- forest clearances,landslides,heavy rainfall,etc)Initial approvals related to design, administrative approvalsDelay in mobilisation of resources

According to him, the respective State Government should play a larger role in acquiring the

land and clearances from the various departments. Also the delay in mobilisation of

resources has been largely stymied because of the political scenario (regular strikes, militant

attacks, money extortion by local outfits) besides environmental issues like heavy rainfall

and frequent landslides. Poor Infrastructure ultimately leads to delay in clearing the roads

post landslides.

Also because of the heavy rainfall that the north eastern region generally receives, it

becomes very difficult for the construction companies to carry out the job all throughout the

year, Hence the best possible months for carrying out infrastructure and construction work is

the 3 month period of January to March. In these 3 months, there is a supply demand gap in

the 3 months (January-March).This is the peak season of construction in North East owing to

little or no rainfall and its less subsequent implication of landslide. The possible way to

mitigate this is proper planning and building up of inventory for construction material

(generally termed as material stocking) based upon forecasting in the month of December

for the peak season of January to March.

One key aspect which we learnt during this interaction was that regarding the labour issues

prevailing in the region. He was of the opinion that in North East, skilled labourers are not

available. Often work is being carried out by migrated labourers which at times have led to

communal clashes. Also, very often the local communities don’t allow the migrated labourers

to work creating problems and delay in execution of the project. Very often, there might be a

gang leader for these labourers which for their own benefit create unrest in the site of

construction. To set things right, they often charge hefty amount of money. They also indulge

in unscrupulous acts of material pilferage.

Also there are issues of the sub-contractors related to child labour and the number of people

working are more than the number stipulated in the licence sanctioned to contractor by the

Labour Department. Sub-contractors generally tend to get licence for less no of people (say

500 but the actual number of people working at the site would be 1000, sometimes even

1500.

Owing to the factors mentioned above, North East of India has been deprived of

developmental projects. The sooner these get resolved, the better it is for the people and

economy of the reason as infrastructure plays an integral part in fulfilling India’s goal of

inclusive growth for all.