Sometimes I wish my life had a erase/rewind button

Monday, June 25, 2007

Improving Infrastructure

The monsoon season is here again. Mumbai has had painful experiences of infrastructure crumbling at the first sign of rains. There were lots of promises, lots of money spent but as people have come to expect, nothing has improved.
My own take is that while we do not have enough money to spend on infrastructure, what we do spend is also wasted by misplaced priorities, vested interests, apathy, incompetence and corruption. The real sufferers are the citizens. So I've been thinking. Why do we pay taxes? So that government can spend money on common good right? Now making infrastructure upto mark is a common good.
Here is my take, instead of paying taxes that still do not serve the purpose, why not create a special purpose vehicle (SPV) that reports to a high body (not necessarily made up of politicians, lets face it, no one trusts them to do the right thing). The body can float bonds that companies and individuals can subscribe to. The amount you subscribe is deducted from the taxes that you have to pay through some formula so that the whole amount is deducted over say 10 years.
This SPV will be a listed company like any other with full oversight by regulators and all. The SPV can now create storm drains, improve roads etc. Being a listed company, it cannot get away with corruption, shoddy job and all. The infrastructure created is operated on Build Operate Transfer (BOT) basis for say whichever is the number of years your tax bonds work for.
By taking the power of spending money as per whim, this will ensure that a designated part of the tax actually works for what its supposed to work for. Since owners (companies+individuals) are those who loose money / life because of lack of infrastructure they will do a good job of it. Win Win

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