A Friday evening with Assam CM

[The article below is fictitious with the events taking place in the future. The names of the locations, however, have been kept accurate. I have tried my best to give due respect to the products, persons and their positions referred in the article. In case anyone is offended please feel free to write a stinker comment. And apologies in advance for the same.

Happy reading.]

It was a Friday evening in Oct 2024 in the CM's office in Dispur. Additional Secretary, Mr Ryan Sain was taking signatures of the CM in some of the important files. He was done and was about to leave the CM's chamber when the CM asked.

"Mr Sain, its Friday evening...what plans?"

"Sir, nothing special, go home to wife and kids..."

"We have still 1 hour to go. Mind having a little conversation....Fri evening types...come take a seat"

"Ohh, yup why not....yes, tell me what you wish to talk about"

"Wait…."

The CM pressed the buzzer. One office boy came in.

"Baba, doota can loi aan soon", he said in Assamese.

The office boy went back. Addressing Mr Sain, the CM said, "Let it be a proper evening discussion, what say..."

Mr Sain looked slightly puzzled.

Soon, the office boy came back with 2 cans of Heineken and after keeping in front of the CM he went back.

Mr Sain could not believe his eyes!!!

"Sir, here?"

"Hahaha, yes here....have it. And mind you, this is the best non-alcoholic beer you can get in the market!!!"

Mr Sain gave an assured smile.

Both of them opened the Heineken Zeros. Cheers!!!

"So, Mr Sain, tell me, its been hardly six months here in Assam. How are you liking it here?"

"Very nice, sir, very nice...its very different than Delhi but I am pleasantly surprised how efficient everything is here"

"Aaah, really. Its quite a surprise you say that....we are mostly accused of being lahe-lahe, means slowly and slowly!!!"

"Hmmm, guess I should not say in your face, but seems you have brought some change in the mindset. I genuinely see things happening for the better and at a fast pace"

"Well, I will take that as a compliment. If indeed you feel so, it must be but I am not happy as yet....there are so many things still to be done"

"Should I be surprised, sir?"

"Yeah...well sometimes even I get confused where, what and how to prioritize..."

"Hmm, sir, if I may...ok, I have come from Delhi so I can give you the outsider's perspective of Assam. If I look at the map of Assam, it is almost like the letter 'T', with the width of just about 700 KMs and height of 300 KMs. And Guwahati, being the primary city, sits slightly to the left of the center of the state, I would say no point in Assam is more than 550KMs away from Guwahati. I would say, one of your top priorities should be to improve communication with Guwahati with various parts of Assam"

"Hmm, it already is, if I am not wrong Mr Sain, I agree maybe some stretches of the road may not be up to standards..."

"I think I will have to explain.... communication are of 2 kinds, one is information communication and the 2nd is physical communication. Due to proliferation of smartphones and internet, we are up to speed when it comes to information communication....we are as good as any other part of the world. We can communicate information in an instant via smartphones and I believe there is no place in Assam without mobile signals. But when it comes to physical communication, we may have a long way to go. There are still places in Assam, from where you will need more than 14 hours to reach Guwahati. I think you should make it a goal for yourself that no major population center in Assam should be more than 10 hours away from Guwahati. Whats your take on this, sir?"

"Yeah, that is a good goal to have. So, how to proceed on this?"

"I guess, sir, you will have to give some uber level directions, something like, every road bridge above 500 meters should be 4 laned but majorly you will have to take help of external consultants, who can devise the most optimized route map of Assam, I mean the consultants will figure out which highways will need to be widened or to be newly constructed as well as new rail routes....they can also provide advisories for construction of bridges.....for ex: the experts can make a mathematical model based on current & future population growth, and also taking consideration of econometric models, advise the no. of road/rail bridges to be made over the Brahmaputra, maybe one every 75Kms, maybe every 50 kms, I don't know"

"Hmmm, interesting, I hope you have studied the transport map of Assam closely. Do you see any route which if constructed will give disproportionate benefits?"

"Well, yes, there is one on top of my mind. This route is through the Kaziranga National Park. I know huge issues are being raised by the environmentalists because of which the 4 laning of the highway is not getting done and from our end we are proposing a very long elevated corridor, but yes there is a solution which hopefully can keep the greens activists at bay. My proposal involves constructing a tunnel, specially using cut and cover method instead of using tunnel boring machines, to lower costs. To even further reduce the costs we can involve the railways as well..."

"Railways?"

"Sir, if you look at the railway map closely then you will find that if you make a line connecting Jakhalabandha railway station to Khumtai railway station, then you will see that one can travel from Guwahati to Dibrugarh in much less time, avoiding the circuitous route through Lumding. I am proposing to add this line into the road tunnel project as well. The railways can share some of the costs of construction. It will be win-win."

"Ohh, interesting!!!"

"And I have a further idea of constructing a tall observation platform over the highway as a viewing point of the Kaziranga National Park. We just have to construct the platform and the selfie & reels generation will do the rest".

The CM looked at Mr Sain with disbelief. Mr Sain sensed that too.

"Ok, ok, I get it. Its difficult to visualize. Let me draw a sketch."

Mr Sain quickly fetched a blank sheet of paper from his file and started sketching.

The CM could not help himself. He grabbed the beer can and looked closely. Yes, indeed it's non-alcoholic!!!

After few minutes Mr Sain handed the sketch to the CM.

"Waao, Mr Sain, I see you can indeed sketch. This is very detailed. Ok, so I leave this to you to make a formal proposal and lets take it forward"

"Thanks, sir!!"

"But Mr Sain, your idea is of course very appreciable and worth pursuing, but this is just one project. It will help only one set of population. Is there anything which if implemented can be universally beneficial...well, after all I am a politician, and its only 1 and half years to go for the next election....you getting what I mean"

"I have a solution for that too."

Taking one more sip, Mr Sain said to CM, "That was a good beer".

The CM got the hint and pressed the buzzer and indicated to the office boy when he was about to enter, to bring 2 more cans.

The moment cans opened again, Mr Sain started speaking.

"So, sir, if I may be frank, the objective is to win elections and what better way to win, than to use the ground of infrastructure development. I believe this government should start working on multiple projects, of varying durations but spread homogeneously across Assam. And sir, you should not try to complete all the projects before the elections, in fact you should complete some, deliberately keep some under construction stage and leave some at to be done stage. And sir (smiling), you should also take the help of the opposition to guide you through the projects"

"Huh, opposition? Do I even have an opposition?"

Mr Sain looked into the eyes of the CM with a blank face without uttering a word.

"Sorry, very sorry Mr Sain. I should be humbled and always be grounded. Sorry for my loose tongue.....So, Mr Sain, please explain your idea with the opposition"

"Ok, you will make a public statement that the opposition in Assam is not working properly as they do not point out the development shortcomings of the state government. The opposition will of course take the bait and will point out the multiple areas of failures to the government. Keeping this list in mind you will ask the consultants to frame projects of varying sizes and time durations. Lets say you have a budget of Rs 1000 crore. The consultants will be asked to frame 50 projects of 10 crore each, and 6 projects of 50 crores and 2 projects of Rs 100 crore. And you will publicly announce the details of all the projects to the people of Assam"

"Ohh, let me think, you said many things"

The CM started thinking. After few minutes pondering, he said, "So, how to select which projects to pick, who will decide and on what parameters?"

"Yes, that is a very valid question. I would say the consulting firm which will win the tender, will decide on the list of projects. And yes, your question on parameters is very pertinent. There has to be some form of visible and measurable parameters based on which a methodology can be formulated to select the projects, lets say based on the descending order of objectively and mathematically calculated project scores. I can specify an example, something similar can be used or the firm can devise some formula on its own. For ex: a small bridge, under 10 crore, needs to be constructed. Now, after construction of this bridge people will save lot of time...say, 20 minutes of boat ride in a day. Now, assume that 1000 people cross the bridge daily. That means 20,000 minutes saved daily. Multiply that for a year and you get the idea. Its simple maths. Now, imagine somehow, we can convert per minute into money saved, then we can also arrive at how much money saved per year. We can also have the metric of jobs created, considering both temporary jobs during construction phase and permanent jobs post project completion. We will specify in our tender requirement that the selected firm will have to specify the mathematical model for listing out the project scores. What do you think, sir?"

"Very good, indeed very good....but I still have one doubt. How do we select the firm? Of course, we will have to go with the L1 (lowest) bidder. But imagine, had there been another firm then, the list of projects may have looked different. I mean, how do we ensure that the total no. of projects we are selecting are the ones most promising or the most required?"

"Hmmm, this is a difficult question and precisely for this reason I am saying measurable parameters. And as a client, I can simply say to the vendor firm that the numbers appear suspect, please show me the next project in your list. In fact, sir, you can set up a team of experts, who will go through the list of the projects, especially the big ones."

"Naah, not any more expert committees please, we have anyway too many for almost everything.....is there any idea through which the project selection can be distanced from the government and we can exclusively focus on project execution & implementation without any distractions and controversies"

"Sir, no wonder I am impressed with you.....what a beautiful question you have asked. Please give me 2 minutes to think"

Mr Sain took one sip and started looking at the ceiling. The CM was looking intently.

“OK, sir, here is the idea...you will speak to the people of Assam through a public message that the Government of Assam is seeking project ideas of various budget amounts regarding infrastructure development, anyone across the world can upload the details of the idea into a website that we will specify. In fact, we can build a mobile app through which the ideas can be shared. To ensure that the ideas are shared seriously by the public, while submitting the idea, either in website or through app, mobile OTP (one time password) will have to be entered. All the ideas will be visible on the website and also there will be a feature through which other users can get associated with an existing idea after sharing their cell no and OTPs. The idea details and idea proposer/supporter names will be visible in the app or the site too but without the cell no, which will be hidden. This entire ideas data dump, including cell phone no, will be shared with the L1 consultancy firm, which will be recommended to shortlist projects from this list, of course they can evaluate projects on their own too. But whatever projects they shortlist and rank, they will have to share the project scores, which they will share with the people of Assam as well, preferably through the same website. Why and how they calculated the project scores, all such questions will be directed to the consultancy firm. So, in this way all the criticisms will be directed to the vendor and government will strictly take a hands-off policy. Once everything is sorted by the firm, the government will earnestly start working on the execution on the projects as per the descending order of project scores"

"Yeah, this way the government will not have to answer why we are choosing which project....brilliant!!!"

"But sir, this method will work only if the consultancy tender is won by the firms with very high reputation in the market, firms who take their reputation very seriously. That means we will have to specify some stringent eligibility criteria in our tender documents"?

"Totally agree.....Just curious, what kind of infra projects we are getting into....."

"Mainly, infrastructure related projects, projects associated with common people and which are visible...bridges, small roads, pond construction, irrigation, river dykes and groynes, preparing industrial plots with basic infra developed and ready for factories and businesses.....basically anything which is visible and which is spoken about by the common man and very imp, once the projects are finalized and work starts, the messaging should go consistently, clearly and unambiguously through social media......well, lets say till quarter 1, 2026, till the model code of conduct kicks in. Hehehe!!!!"

"You are quite a politician yourself!!! So, now I have to manage the finances, right!!!"

"Yes, but seriously, Assam is lucky to have a man like you at the top.....I am not at all concerned about the finances.....with your personal equations with the center, I am sure you will manage it, we just have to focus on execution, as you said just a few minutes back"

"Hmmm, I will take that as a compliment and yes Mr Sain, you have lot of work to do now. You have got us a good challenge. On a separate note, do you have any specific ideas for Guwahati city?"

"Hmm there are 2 ideas, one, Brahmaputra Riverfront development, with Marinas, cafes, boardwalks, etc and two, develop the Silsako Lake on the lines of Basai Lake District, Gurgaon. Hmmm, now that you have asked me, I would say you should construct a well demarcated, strong and very much visible perimeter wall for the Deepar Bill, otherwise sooner or later it will disappear due to illegal encroachments"

"Ohh, you were quick""

Mr Sain nodded and he got up from his chair.

"Sir, it is getting late, I think I should make a move. Thanks for the beers!!"

"Ya Mr Sain, it was a pleasure talking with you...must say, you have quite some ideas!!!"

"Well, sir, to be very honest, these were not my ideas. Everything I said, was mentioned and discussed with one of my cousins, who works in Gurgaon. He keeps writing in LinkedIn. He wrote about Guwahati Metro Rail and Brahmaputra Expressway too. I got these ideas from him."

Mr Sain was about to exit the room when the CM asked, "Hmmm, Mr Sain, would it be possible to have your cousin work in Assam Government as one of my advisors?"

Mr Sain did not answer but giving a mysterious smile, he closed the door and left the CM's cabin.