National Monetisation Pipeline: Critical Analysis

• Union Budget 2021-22 has identified the monetisation of operating public infrastructure assets as a key means for sustainable infrastructure financing.
• Towards this, the Budget provided for the preparation of a ‘National Monetisation Pipeline (NMP)’ of potential brownfield infrastructure assets. NITI Aayog in consultation with infra line ministries has prepared the report on NMP.
• NMP aims to provide a medium-term roadmap of the programme for public asset owners; along with visibility on potential assets to the private sector.

The report on NMP has been organised into two volumes.

• Volume I is structured as a guide book, detailing the conceptual approaches and potential models for asset monetisation.
• Volume II is the actual roadmap for monetisation, including the pipeline of core infrastructure assets under Central Govt.

Framework

• The pipeline has been prepared based on inputs and consultations from respective line ministries and departments, along with the assessment of total asset base available therein.
• Monetization through Disinvestment and monetization of non-core assets have not been included in the NMP.
• Further, currently, only assets of central government line ministries and CPSEs in infrastructure sectors have been included. The process of coordination and collation of asset pipeline from states is currently ongoing and the same is envisaged to be included in due course.

The framework for monetisation of core asset monetisation has three key imperatives:

This includes the selection of de-risked and brownfield assets with a stable revenue generation profile with the overall transaction structured around revenue rights. The primary ownership of the assets under these structures, hence, continues to be with the Government with the framework envisaging a hand back of assets to the public authority at the end of transaction life.

Estimated Potential

• Considering that infrastructure creation is inextricably linked to monetisation, the period for NMP has been decided so as to be a co-terminus with the balance period under National Infrastructure Pipeline (NIP).
• The aggregate asset pipeline under NMP over the four-year period, FY 2022-2025, is indicatively valued at Rs 6.0 lakh crore.
• The estimated value corresponds to ~14% of the proposed outlay for Centre under NIP (Rs 43 lakh crore). This includes more than 12 line ministries and more than 20 asset classes.
• The sectors included are roads, ports, airports, railways, warehousing, gas & product pipeline, power generation and transmission, mining, telecom, stadium, hospitality and housing.
• The top 5 sectors (by estimated value) capture ~83% of the aggregate pipeline value. These top 5 sectors include: Roads (27%) followed by Railways (25%), Power (15%), oil & gas pipelines (8%) and Telecom (6%).
• In terms of annual phasing by value, 15% of assets with an indicative value of Rs 0.88 lakh crore are envisaged to be rolled out in the current financial year (FY 2021-22). However, the aggregate, as well as year-on-year value under NMP, is only an indicative value with the actual realization for public assets depending on the timing, transaction structuring, investor interest etc.
• The assets and transactions identified under the NMP are expected to be rolled out through a range of instruments. These include direct contractual instruments such as public-private partnership concessions and capital market instruments such as Infrastructure Investment Trusts (InvIT) among others. The choice of instrument will be determined by the sector, nature of the asset, timing of transactions (including market considerations), target investor profile and the level of operational/investment control envisaged to be retained by the asset owner etc.
• The monetisation value that is expected to be realised by the public asset owner through the asset monetisation process, may either be in form of upfront accruals or by way of private sector investment.
• The potential value assessed under NMP is only an indicative high level estimate based on thumb rules. This is based on various approaches such as market or cost or book or enterprise value etc. as applicable and available for respective sectors.

Implementation & Monitoring Mechanism

• As an overall strategy, significant share of the asset base will remain with the government.
• The programme is envisaged to be supported through necessary policy and regulatory interventions by the Government in order to ensure an efficient and effective process of asset monetisation. These will include streamlining operational modalities, encouraging investor participation and facilitating commercial efficiency, among others. Real-time monitoring will be undertaken through the asset monetisation dashboard, as envisaged under Union Budget 2021-22, to be rolled out shortly.
• The end objective of this initiative to enable ‘Infrastructure Creation through Monetisation’ wherein the public and private sector collaborate, each excelling in their core areas of competence, so as to deliver socio-economic growth and quality of life to the country’s citizens.

India’s first Smog Tower in Delhi

Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Monday inaugurated a ‘smog tower in Connaught Place and said similar towers would be built across the city if the results of the current pilot project are satisfactory.

What is a Smog Tower?

• The smog tower is a 24-metre-high structure fitted with fans and air filters. This is to solve the problem of Air Pollution in Delhi.
• It will draw in polluted air from the top and release filtered air near the ground through fans fitted on the sides. The tower has 40 big fans and 5,000 filters to clean the air.
• These are electrostatic air filters that can filter out microparticles, including those that constitute smoke, household dust and pollen, according to the project description. A Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system has been installed in the tower to collect data and monitor its functioning.
• This tower has been established as a pilot project and detailed studies will be conducted on its performance. IIT-Delhi and IIT-Bombay will analyse data and submit a report on the effectiveness of the tower.
• The tower will take in air from a radius of 1 km. It has a capacity of cleaning 1,000 cubic metres of air per second. It is estimated that the area will see a rapid change in air quality due to this smog tower.
• On January 13 last year, the Supreme Court had ordered the Delhi government to build a ‘smog tower’ at Connaught Place by April 13, 2020, to control air pollution.
• On the same day, the court also ordered a smog tower to be installed in Anand Vihar by the Central Pollution Control Board, by the same time.

Critical Analysis of Delhi Air Pollution

• Every winter, Delhi- NCR is covered in a thick blanket of smog and the Environmental Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority’ has to declare a public health emergency.
• After AQI levels escalated following the annual episode of stubbleburning last year, the Supreme Court instructed the Delhi government and the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) to erect smog towers.
• However, experts are unsure of the effectiveness of solitary smog towers spread few and far inbetween Delhi-NCR.
• “This is pseudoscience the Supreme Court believes in. There is no scientific evidence that says smog towers actually help. If smog towers are the solution, we will need lakhs and lakhs of smog towers. The judiciary should base its decision on evidence and experts’ comments, instead of notions and intuitions,” says Activist and Swechha Founder Vimlendu Jha, adding, “In January, Gautam Gambhir put up a smog tower at Lajpat Nagar. Did anybody do a survey to figure out whether it had any impact? No.”
• India took the decision of installing smog towers following China’s footsteps, but experts say China is implementing strong pollution control rules across sectors, which India hasn’t.
• Environmentalist Jai Dhar Gupta observes that “Smog towers have failed everywhere in the world. There is no reason it will work here. They (SC) are pretending to put forth a solution that is not even a solution.”
• Smog towers can solve problems very small areas around them, but not the whole city, says Sumit Sharma, Director, Earth Science and Climate Change Division, TERI. “It will only act upon the air in its vicinity of a few 100 metres.”

How do smog towers work?

• There are different technologies used to clean the air. One uses HEPA filters, (used in indoor air purifiers), which filters PM 2.5 particles. Another uses electrostatic precipitators that attract PM 2.5 particles and collect them at the base of the tower.
• Both would work in closed spaces, but are ineffective in open spaces. We don’t know what technology the IIT-Bombay or University of Minnesota is using because that hasn’t been shared in public.
• One smog tower costs around Rs 7-8 lakh, so you can do the math. Even worse, if we use filters to clean the air, who is going to dispose of them once they get clogged?”

What is the solution?

• The only way to reduce air pollution is to reduce emissions at the sources. Our problem is so severe and we have no option but to move away from fossil fuels. We know what percentage of emission comes from which source. Be it industrial, biomass burning, paddy burning or vehicular pollution.
• We can also incentivise good behaviour and penalise bad behaviour. For instance, people driving electric cars can be given benefits, and those driving diesel cars can be penalised.
• In a month, paddy burning will start in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Punjab, and the whole area from Pakistan to Bangladesh will turn into a hellhole. The SC has imposed a ban on stubble burning, but it is not being enforced properly.
• There is a technology called flu gas desulphurisation – it is like putting a sieve on the chimney outlets of coal fired power plants. All thermal power plants must have these Those who don’t should be penalized.
• If public money is being spent, and the Court is fixated on smog towers, Experts suggest, they should be placed in enclosed spaces with high footfalls, like hospitals, underground metro stations and indoor stadiums.

Air Pollution in Delhi

Background
An AQI between 0-50 is considered ‘good’, 51-100 ‘satisfactory’, 101-200 ‘moderate’, 201-300 ‘poor’, 301-400 ‘very poor’ and 401-500 ‘severe’. Above 500 falls in the ‘severe-plus emergency’ category.

Measures announced under GRAP- Severe+ or Emergency- (PM 2.5 over 300 µg/cubic metre or PM10 over 500 µg/cu. m. for 48+ hours):

1. Stop entry of trucks into Delhi (except essential commodities).
2. Stop construction work.
3. Introduce odd/even scheme for private vehicles and minimise exemptions.
4. Task Force to decide any additional steps including shutting of schools.

Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP):

• Approved by the Supreme Court in 2016.
• It works only as an emergency measure.
• As such, the plan does not include action by various state governments to be taken throughout the year to tackle industrial, vehicular and combustion emissions.
• When the air quality shifts from poor to very poor, the measures listed have to be followed since the plan is incremental in nature.

Has it been helpful?

• It has created a step-by-step plan for the entire Delhi-NCR region and getting on board several agencies including pollution control boards, industrial area authorities, municipal corporations, regional officials of the India Meteorological Department, and others.
• It has been successful in fixing accountability and deadlines. For each action to be taken under a particular air quality category, executing agencies are clearly marked.
• Coordination among as many as 13 agencies from four states is simplified to a degree because of the clear demarcation of responsibilities.
• Three major policy decisions that can be credited to EPCA and GRAP are the closure of the thermal power plant at Badarpur, bringing BS-VI fuel to Delhi before the deadline set initially, and the ban on Pet coke as a fuel in Delhi NCR.

To address this menace, we need a permanent solution which might include the following:

1. Strict enforcement of lower pollution norms: Trucks and buses mixing kerosene and diesel should be impounded, and fined.
2. Buses from other states should be allowed to enter Delhi only if they meet certain pollution norms.
3. Constant monitoring of garbage dumps such as those in Bhalswa and New Ashok Nagar and any fire incidents at these places need to be proactively put out.
4. A complete ban on the burning of leaves in Delhi throughout the year.
5. All construction activity in Delhi should be done with draping, to ensure that dust and dirt don’t fly into the air. This is done everywhere else in the world.
6. Dust soppers can be run through Delhi roads regularly, every morning.
7. To prevent the burning of wood etc during peak winters, build shelters for the homeless to sleep at night in the winters. Some of this has been done by the govt. More needs to be done.
8. Move Brick kilns out of Delhi within 3 years. This was done with tanneries almost 20 yrs ago.

Earthquake-resistant buildings using Thermocol

• Thermocol could be the material of the future for the construction of Earthquake resistant buildings, with thermal insulation and could also save the energy required to develop construction materials.
• Researchers at IIT Roorkee have found that thermoacol or Expanded Polystyrene (EPS) is used as a composite material in the core of reinforced concrete sandwiches, and could resist earthquake forces on up to four-storey buildings.
• The researchers tested a full-scale building and a number of wall elements constructed with thermocol sandwiched between two layers of concrete at the National Seismic Test Facility (NSTF) of the Department of Earthquake Engineering, IIT Roorkee, developed under the Fund for Improvement of S&T Infrastructure (FIST) programme of Department of Science & Technology (DST), Government of India. Mr Adil Ahmad, the research Scholar who conducted the tests, evaluated the behaviour of the constructions under lateral forces, as earthquake causes a force predominantly in the lateral direction.
• The investigation was supplemented with a detailed computer simulation of a realistic 4-storey building. Prof. Yogendra Singh, supervising the research, informed that the analysis shows that a four-storey building constructed with this technique is capable of resisting earthquake forces, even in the most seismic zone (V) of the country, without any additional structural support.
• They have attributed this earthquake resistance capability to the fact that the EPS layer is sandwiched between two layers of concrete having reinforcement in the form of welded wire mesh.
• The researchers said that the force being applied on a building during an earthquake arises due to the inertia effect and hence depends on the mass of the building. Thermocol resists earthquakes by reducing the mass of the building.
• In this technique, the EPS core and the wire mesh reinforcement is produced in a factory. The building skeleton is first erected from the factory-made core and reinforcement panels, and then concrete is sprayed on the skeleton core. This technique does not require any shuttering and hence can be constructed very fast.
• Besides resisting earthquakes, the use of expanded polystyrene core in concrete walls of a building can result in thermal comfort. The core provides the necessary insulation against the heat transfer between the building's interior and exterior environment. This can help in keeping the building interiors cool in hot environments and warm during cold conditions. India suffers a large variation in temperature in different parts of the country and during different seasons of the year. Therefore, thermal comfort is a crucial consideration along with structural safety.
• The technology also has the potential of saving construction materials and energy, with an overall reduction in the carbon footprint of buildings. It replaces a large portion of concrete volume from the walls and floor/roof. This replacement of concrete with the extremely lightweight EPS not only reduces mass, thereby decreasing the earthquake force acting on a building but also diminishes the burden on the natural resources and energy required to produce the cement concrete.

Yuktadhara - Geospatial Planning Portal

• Yuktadhara is a geospatial planning portal for facilitating Gram Panchayat level planning of MGNREGA activities across India using Remote Sensing and GIS-based information.
• It integrates a wide variety of spatial information contents to enable a holistic approach toward planning using open source GIS tools.
• The current level of integration under Yuktdhara, as a part of Bhuvan, incorporates multi-temporal IRS satellite data of better than 3 m detail in natural colour, digital terrain, thematic layers as well as locations of MGNREGA works and watershed management assets.
• This platform will serve as a repository of assets (Geotags) created under various national rural development programmes i.e. MGNREGA, Integrated Watershed Management Programme, Per Drop More Crop and Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana etc., along with field photographs.
• The name given is very apt as word ‘Yukt’ is derived from Yojanam, the planning and ‘Dhara’ indicates the flow. It is a culmination of untiring joint efforts of ISRO and Ministry of Rural Development made towards realising a G2G service for rural planning in support of decentralized decision making.
• Dr. Singh acknowledged the potential and services of ISRO’s Geoportal Bhuvan and said highlighted that due to its rich information base, satellite images and analytical capabilities, Bhuvan, in fact, has become a de-facto geospatial platform for number of developmental planning activities in the country.
• This portal integrates wide variety of thematic layers, multi-temporal high resolution earth observation data with analysis tools.
• Planners will analyse previous assets under various schemes and facilitates identification of new works using online tools.
• Plans prepared will be evaluated by appropriate authorities under State Departments.
• Thus, Yuktdhara based plans will be prepared by grassroot functionary and verified by appropriate authorities for relevance and resource allocation. This would ensure quality of plan and enable a long term monitoring of the assets created over the years.
• The Before-During-After Geotagging of assets has successfully implemented the progress based disbursement of the funds during the process of creation of rural assets.
• Also, a Citizen-centric Mobile Application JANMANREGA has helped rural population for providing feedback using Bhuvan services.
• Dr. Singh said that the Customisation on Bhuvan as per process requirement of Ministry of Rural Development, continuous handholding of State functionaries and also enthusiasm demonstrated by State Department personnel in adopting the technology for building GeoMGNREGA database is noteworthy and is a first of its kind massive exercise in the whole world.