A Bengal government tender for a toll plaza contract has ended up underlining what the Centre appears desperate to hide: that the Indian economy has hit a bumpy road.
The tender was floated to pick an agency to manage a toll plaza in Birbhum for a 65km stretch of state highway, connecting Panagarh in East Burdwan on NH2 to Dubrajpur in Birbhum on NH60.
After a three-month wait, during which a poor response forced the tender to be floated three times, the public works department was forced to accept a bid that offered Rs 1.28 lakh less every day than the toll plaza’s previous manager was contracted for.
“Nobody was ready to pay the base price of Rs 5.13 lakh a day. We had to accept a bid that proposed Rs 3.85 lakh a day,” a senior government official said. The new agency began collecting toll from December 7.
This means the state government will be losing over Rs 4.6 crore annually from the toll plaza.
But the bigger point is about the economy. The lower bid suggests the company that will be managing the toll plaza is expecting lower earnings because of a reduced traffic, presumably of goods carriers.
As Dubrajpur’s neighbourhood is dotted with stone and sand quarries, this stretch of highway has always witnessed a heavy movement of trucks laden with sand and stones, the lifeblood of real estate development.
“This stretch of road has always played an important role in Bengal’s economy, as it connects Calcutta and the north Bengal districts with the sand quarries and stone-crushing units of Birbhum,” an official said.
“Besides, it shortens the distance between Calcutta and the north Bengal districts by at least 40km.”
Any decline in the traffic of goods vehicles along this stretch would therefore imply a lower demand for sand and stones — a telltale sign of an economic downturn.
“A lower realisation from a toll plaza is an indicator that the overall economic activity is low,” said a professor of economics at Visva-Bharati who did not wish to be named.
There’s a growing consensus among economists that it is to hide just such signs of distress in the economy that the Centre has withheld the consumer expenditure survey results of 2017-18.
Leaked reports suggest that the average amount an Indian spent in a month fell 3.7 per cent in 2017-18 compared with the base year of 2011-12.
Bengal government sources said the effect of the slowdown became palpable earlier this year when the payments by the agency that then ran the toll plaza fell far below the promised Rs 5.13 lakh a day.
Despite repeated prods from the state government, the agency deposited at best Rs 4 lakh a day between June and July this year.
“The agency told us the number of goods vehicles had fallen drastically since February-March. We terminated the agency’s contract and floated a fresh tender,” an official said.
After a PWD survey revealed that the traffic of goods vehicles along the stretch had dropped by at least 30 per cent in the preceding few months, sources said, the department decided to settle for a lower amount from the new agency.
Some officials said the closure of stone quarries in Birbhum following a green bench order too had a role in reducing the traffic of goods vehicles along the stretch.
But the owners of the stone-crushing units said the production of stone chips had not stopped and that they were bringing the raw material from Jharkhand. They acknowledged, however, that the demand for stone chips had dropped by 25 to 30 per cent over the past few months.
The movement of goods carriers has fallen along other highways too over the past few months, conversations with a few agencies that run toll plazas in Odisha and Jharkhand revealed, implying a drop in demand for consumer items or construction materials.
“Apart from Bengal, I operate toll plazas in Odisha and Jharkhand, where the situation is the same. We are facing huge losses,” said Subhadip Das, a toll operator who lives in Nalhati, Birbhum.
