A fillip for the ‘Make in India’ programme

Standardisation and indigenisation of metro components can help local industry

India’s creaky mass public transport infrastructure and efforts at decongesting the cities got a boost this week with the Centre announcing that it has given an in-principle approval to five proposed metro projects — Indore, Bhopal, Kanpur, Agra, and Delhi (phase 4) — at an estimated cost of ~1.07 lakh crore. This announcement to expand the metro network should be read along with an equally crucial development that took place last week: the Centre set up a panel to lay down norms for standardisation and indigenisation of components, which will be used by metros being built or those that will be built with the Centre’s financial help.

The twin objectives are in line with the metro policy approved in 2017, which emphasised the need to standardise and indigenise components. At present, only the rolling stock and communication systems of the metro systems are standardised. This means that metro systems are buying the other components from different vendors, mostly foreign, according to their specifications. This is pushing up costs, which is not good news for a mass transport system. The plan to standardise and indigenise is important because work on 537 km is in progress in 13 cities. Besides, metro projects with a total length of 595 km across 10 new cities are at various stages of planning and appraisal.

Standardisation will not just help in lowering costs, product development and designing of components, but also in its manufacturing, distribution and service, and long-term maintenance. Indigenisation could help increase local content in the conditions of procurement, encouraging bulk tendering for similar components, giving component manufacturers a reason to set up units in India. This could then positively impact employment generation and skill development sectors, and also give a strong push to the NDA’s ‘Make in India’ programme, which is yet to become a substantial success.