Hydro Power: Challenges

Foreign investors are shy of participating in Indian infrastructure due to our one-sided contact documents. This needs to be corrected says author. Our country is achieving a GDP growth of about 10 per cent and desires to maintain or accelerate it during the ongoing Five Year Plan. The main issues which need to be addressed now are: a political will at state and central governments level and evolving an equitable contract document to enable the executing authority to resolve disputes during the pendency of the contract. If this is achieved then the cashflow required for speedy executioncould be maintained thereby executing the job expeditiously. As on date the contract document is one-sided and there is no effective mechanism to resolve disputes or give the executing agency required relief during the construction period. This results in insufficient cashflow and delays in execution. In the present scenario even if the client genuinely feels that payment is admissible to the executing agency he prefers to tell him to seek such relief under arbitration. A decade ago formation of a Dispute Resolution Board (DRB) was conceived and everybody felt that this was a big step forward and it would result in eliminating disputes in a major way and hence it would help expeditious execution of work.