Developers???
Posted by: Niranjan Mudholkar
The excessive and uncontrolled growth within the city is driving the unplanned growth on its fringes. Lack of proper infrastructure hurts both!
One of the biggest drawbacks of the real estate industry in India is that it is extremely fragmented in nature. While one must acknowledge that things are changing - thanks to the efforts of the organised players, there's still a long way to go. Yesterday evening, I was in the remote part of Mumbai's suburb called Mira Road.
This location - situated on the other side of the Western Express Highway and on the fringes of the National Park - has several residential buildings coming up in and around it. It seems to be going through somekind of boom time with several new projects coming up. Most projects have a sign board proclaming the name of the builder. What hurts is the fact that most of them call themselves 'developers'. Why it hurts is because these areas do not have any proper infrastructure - whether roads, water and electricity supply, sewage systems, public transport, hospitals, schools, organised retail outlets, etc.
And these 'developers' are least bothered about providing any. They are well aware that they cater to the requitrements of those who cannot afford to buy a house anywhere near the proper city locations. But the demand is so extreme, these buyers are forced to ignore the lack of infrastructure and buy a house here no matter what.
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roads
Lead is a dangerous toxin
According to a new study done by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), the paints used in Indian homes have a very heavy lead content. Most of the popular brands of paints contain high quantities of lead, a toxin especially dangerous for children -- says the CSE study. CSE’s Pollution Monitoring Laboratory tested these brands for their lead content for the last two years and it found out that 72% of the samples had lead much higher than the voluntary limit specified by the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS).
There is no mandatory standard for lead levels in paints in the country. “Every moment, we are building a stock of unwanted, toxic chemicals in our bodies. Lead from our house paints is one of them. It’s deadly because it can lower children’s IQ," said Sunita Narain, director, CSE in a press statement. In 2008, CSE’s laboratory had procured 25 samples of popular enamel paints randomly from Delhi markets and analysed them for lead content. The brands tested were Apcolite (Asian Paints), Nerolac (Kansai Nerolac Paints), Luxol (Berger Paints India), Superlac (Shalimar Paints) and Dulux (ICI India). The study covered five of the six major companies in the organised sector, which control 75 per cent of the household paints market. The results were startling.
Lead was found in 23 of the 25 samples tested. Seventy-two per cent of the samples – 18 samples -- contained lead much higher than the 1,000 ppm limit specified by the BIS.
The highest lead content was in the deep orange paint of the Shalimar’s Superlac brand – 185 times the BIS limit and 308 times the US paints limit of 600 ppm.
Berger brand Luxol’s golden yellow color had a staggering 162,559 ppm lead – 163 times the BIS limit and 271 times the US paints limit.
All the samples of ICI-Dulux had lead much below the specified limit....
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The power behind this blast started the biggest prize of them all
Motivation can come from really strange places. Read on. It was the morning of 1888. A great inventor woke up to find his obituary published in a newspaper. It was a mistake. Actually, his brother had died.
It was sad enough for the inventor but what pained him further was the way he had been described in the obituary. The obituary traced his rise as a great industrialist to his invention that also brought death. There was hardly any reference to his philanthropic activities. He was pained to see the way the world saw him. And he decided to change it.
He immediately rewrote his will. The most important outcome of this new will was the endowment of an award. I am sure you have guessed his name by now. Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite. The award - of course - is the Nobel prize.
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Inside the logistics centre mentioned in the post
I was at the SME Expo-Logistics & Material Handling 2009 today morning. Have been following it ever since ICICI Bank started it four years ago. Was in fact quite interested in it when I was doing a weekly page in a leading business newspaper for the SME sector.
Interestingly this year, the expo has a conference titled “Logistics and Infrastructure: Exploring opportunitiess". The title is quite self-explanatory. Indeed, we all know how significant infrastructure is for good logistics. However, just building infrastructure is not enough. It is equally important to provide the right kind of infrastructure. A Deloitte spokesperson - at the expo - pointed out most Indian roads are not suitable for multi-axle trucks. Nevertheless, these trucks keep running on such unsutiable roads. The result is increased cost of road maintenance, repair and obviously re-construction. When will we wake up to these logical issues?
To be fair to it, the progress made by the Indian logistics industry - driven by the SME sector as pointed out by the expo - is quite amazing, particularly in the last ten years. It is good to notice that organised players are now realising the importance of transforming their industry from being asset intensive to being solution and knowledge intensive. The move towards providing total solutions against partial services is also commendable.
Couldn't help mentioning my recent visit to Palwal in Haryana where MJ Logistics is building the hub of its hub and spoke model. Anil Arora, the MD of MJ insists that logistics be given infrastructure status. Makes sense. After all, the opportunities are as big as the possibilities.
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I met Rob Mackay the president of Ritchie Bros Auctioneers last year around September in Mumbai. His company was planning its first Indian auction around the end of the calendar year then. With the economic slowdown happening, Ritchie Bros gave up the idea for then.
Now, the company has announced that it will hold its first unreserved equipment auction in India on September 25, 2009 in Hyderabad. The company is expecting that a large selection of construction, transportation and agricultural equipment items will be sold with no minimum bids or reserve prices on auction day. The unreserved public auction is also expected to attract an international crowd of bidders.
I definitely see a positive indication that things are improving for the industry. Do you?
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Show me the roads
According to the latest data released by the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (Siam), Mercedes-Benz India Pvt Ltd has overtaken BMW India Pvt Ltd in terms of sales in July by selling 297 units against BMW’s 261. By now, you will have most auto magazines (both B2C & B2B) analysing this rivalry between the two German giants for the top slot in the foreign luxury car segment. (Incidentally, the segment is relatively small accounting for just 2.5% of total cars sold annually in India. But that's not the point; the point is despite the recession, 2008 sales of luxury cars in India (minimum ticket price of Rs25 lakh) continued to grow with an estimated 7,000-7,500 units sold.).
While a month's figures are hardly indicative of any trend, I am foxed by another question. Where are the roads for these beauties? Notwithstanding the ambitious 20km a day road development plan of the Ministry of Road Transport & Highways (Morth), the fact remains that there are already too many vehicles on our roads - luxury cars or otherwise. And we aren't even talking about commercial vehicles as yet. Someone might put it the other way - there are not sufficient roads for all the vehicles that are coming out of the factories or are being imported to India. And things are only going to get worse. You don't need nano technology to predict what will happen when Nano (the car!) really starts rolling out of the assembly line to meet the demand.
While I agree with someone who said that 'statistics are like a bikini, they reveal a lot but hide the vital parts' I also feel that they (statistics) give a very good indication about what you don't see. So here's some more food for thought. The per-capita car ownership ratio of cars in the US (765) and the Europe (300) is already in three figures indicating that those two markets - particularly the US market - are quite saturated....
more...
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Kamal Nath
road infrastructure development
commercial vehicles
Niranjan Mudholkar, Editor, Construction Week India
"What a silly idea and insane way to spend money. Leave flying to birds." That is what most people including their father told Orville and Wilbur Wright.
Their response was simple: "We have a dream, and we can make it happen." As we all know, their silly idea worked. It took off from a place in North Carolina called Kitty Hawk and became the first aeroplane.
Couldn't help remembering this as I closed the August issue focussing on airport infrastructure yesterday.
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Niranjan Mudholkar, Editor, Construction Week India
The Indian construction industry has been very slow in the adoption of IT. Primarily because of lack of awareness about the tangible benefits and also the way the industry has been functioning so far. But with huge monies being spent in construction projects and international competition breathing at their necks, enhancing
productivity, efficiency and performance is not a choice any more for Indian construction companies.
Incidentally, a good step has been taken in this context recently. The National Institute of Construction Management and Research (NICMAR), India's leading institute that prepares the techno-managers for the construction industry has announced that it will soon have the country's first ERP Lab across its three
centres.
Yesterday, I had a rather stimulating talk with Dr Mangesh Koregaoankar, the director general of NICMAR. "I am a firm believer in ERP," he said. Interestingly, Dr Koregaonkar who comes from a manufacturing background was quick to point out that the Indian manufacturing sector was a pioneer in the adoption of
ERP solutions. "That is exactly why this sector was better able to deal with the market dynamics during the recession," he said.
A mega infrastructure project involves several players who need to interact with each other and work on a common data platform. If there is no cohesiveness amongst these players, it could lead to disasters. The recent DMRC accidents - an insider tells me - happened because different parties were working in isolation without sharing data. Adopting the right ERP solution would enable construction companies to deliver projects efficiently and safely, and prepare them for tomorrow's changes, felt Dr Koregaonkar. NICMAR's ERP lab - Dr Koregaonkar is...
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Labels:manufacturing
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