India's transportsystem--especially surface transport--is seriouslydeficient, and its services are highly inefficient byinternational standards. The economic losses from congestionand poor roads are estimated at 120 to 300 billion rupees ayear. This report takes a critical assessment of the keypolicy and institutional issues that continue to contributeto the poor performance of the transport sector in India.After an introduction, Chapter 2 provides an overview ofrapid demand change and poor supply response, and theresulting adverse impacts on the Indian economy and society.Chapter 3 examines the causes of poor supply response byfocusing on four major problems: unclear responsibilities,inadequate resource mobilization, poor asset management, andinadequate imposition of accountability. Chapter 4 reviewsrecent reforms and lessons learned. Chapter 5 proposes shortto medium term actions for each of the main transportsubsectors. Three factors make it particularly opportunetime for India to expedite transport reform: 1) Initialreform momentum has been built up. 2) There is a growingconsensus within India that transport should be managed asan economic sector. 3) There are many successful models fortransport reform from around the world. The resistance toreform should be overcome considering the high cost of slowor inadequate action to the Indian economy and society.
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