Infrastructure management needs a bricks-and-clicks approach

I happened to use the Bangalore International Airport twice in the first week of its operations. I must admit that on the first look, I was quite impressed by it.

Also, to my pleasant surprise, I found that most of the “problems” being discussed in the media prior to the opening up of the airport were highly exaggerated - be it the quality of the access road or the time taken to reach the city centre.

However, what was not so impressive was the amount of time I had to wait for getting a cab from one of the two agencies officially approved by the airport. When I landed at around 9.30 pm, I had to wait for close to 25 minutes to get a cab, even though there were very few passengers. It was not a long queue; it was just that the cabs were slow to come by.

When I eventually got a cab, I was curious to know why there was such a scarcity. So, I steered my conversation with the driver towards that. While he had many grievances, I could easily figure out the primary reason behind being late, despite having enough number of cabs waiting in the parking. The driver told me that for every pick-up from the airport, a cab has to pay Rs 125 to the agency. This payment is collected by a few people in cash and since there were not too many of these “collectors” that day, they were letting go only five cabs at a time - the maximum number they could handle. Never mind if the passengers had to wait for half an hour.

The next day, I had to fly out of the city. I started well in time and reached much earlier than I had estimated. The moment I entered, I found unusually long queues in front of all the booking counters. The reason: the entire computer system of the airport had failed. And that meant any pre-allotted seats were no longer valid. Poor airline staff were trying their best to pacify angry customers.

And this is supposed to be India’s most modern airport.  My intention here is not to write a critique of the Bangalore International Airport. Many colleagues in the media have done a prolific job of it.

For that matter, I am not even singling out Bangalore Airport. Take the Delhi-Jaipur expressway. As someone living in Delhi and working in Gurgaon, I take this road everyday to work. Again, I must tell you the road is one of the best in India and I really love it when my colleagues and friends in Mumbai and Bangalore envy me for travelling 25 km in half-an-hour. But, when the toll collection started in March this year, it was a complete chaos for quite a few days. At certain times of the day, it took more than half-an-hour just to cross the toll gate. Since then, it has improved significantly. And I am sure so will the services in Bangalore Airport.

My simple question is: why do services always have to be an after-thought? After all, the airport is for passengers and the toll road is for commuters. They have not been built to be showpieces. Why then does the customer convenience come last in the list of priorities?

That is a question we have asked some of these new infrastructure creators. The answers we have received are, of course, not convincing. But I must point out here the commonality in all those answers. In most cases, the most common answer is: they never anticipated those problems. Of course, they don’t derive pleasure out of troubling users. For that matter, many of them genuinely want to do something about it. It is just that when it was being planned built, how people would use it was not really a major item in the agenda.

The reason I am writing all this is because I am convinced this is exactly where technology (read IT) can make a real difference. Take for instance the cab handling in Bangalore airport. In the city that the whole world looks to for solving their problems through IT, it is embarrassing to see that a little application of technology that could eliminate this problem completely has not been thought of.

I am sure in your everyday life you can identify many such infrastructure bottlenecks. Many of these can be eliminated by the right application of technology. Of course, technology is not the panacea for all infrastructure issues. India’s big problem is lack of basic infrastructure. IT can do very little about it. But with lots of thrust now on infrastructure, hopefully lots of new infrastructure will come up.

The point I am making is: when they are being planned, the end products should be thought of as “service”, not as showpieces of brick and mortar. If not operated well, the best of infrastructure will be of little use to anyone.

One time-tested approach which can be tried in India is outsourcing - outsourcing the management of infrastructure. This can be done with the existing, old infrastructure as well but most certainly for new greenfield infrastructure. In the US, many of the public infrastructure management areas, such as toll, parking and even traffic, are outsourced to large IT BPO vendors like EDS, CSC and ACS.

With such a mature and vibrant outsourcing industry in India, I do not see any reason why this cannot be done in India.

But as I mentioned earlier, the first step is to start thinking that infrastructure is a service; the next step is to have a strong belief that IT can truly make a difference in terms of not just providing a better customer experience, but making the management far more efficient, resulting in faster return on investment.

Shyamanuja Das is editor of Dataquest, a CyberMedia publication