Straying from the subject: a vision for infrastructure development, Ahluwalia decided to take the select gathering on the inside track of why things took time. In a crisp overview, he gave a historical perspective on India's infrastructure and the reasons why it was impacting decisions today.

According to Ahluwalia, India has inherited a natural monopoly in every infrastructure sector. And the decision toopen infrastructure to the private sector stemmed not from the need for competition, but because these natural monopolies were broke. This is one reason for the politicised nature of tariffs.

Another reason drove the government to open the doors. Infrastructure sectors, particularly those like public transport and water involve a level of subsidy. For economically healthy, fiscally strong governments and explicit subsidy creates no problem (as has been the case in the social democratic European countries), says Ahluwalia. But a country like India could not afford and explicit subsidy and had to opt for cross subsidy.

According to Ahluwalia, cross subsidy taken be taken beyond a point as it drives away customers (like industry setting up captive power plants). Blocked on all front, natural monopolies in infrastructure have found themselves in a financial crisis, he summed up. The critical need now, warned Ahluwalia is to get out of the inefficient user charge syndrome. Not doing so would only leave thegovernment with the option of bringing in the private sector on a sweetheart deal, leaving the government and the natural monopolies more broke than ever before.

As Ahluwalia sees it, there is really no choice. Consumers will really have to choose between paying for services, or very poor quality services.

Among his suggestions is: immediate reform of user tariff and transferring power from ministries to regulatory authorities. The latter he warned would go through a phase where it would be inundated by demands from various interests groups, but this, Ahluwalia feels is a process that must be endured if it is to be a stable transition. He said, "When a change is made, you never get it right in the first go."

Deepak Parekh, chairman and managing director, IDFC, speaking on the vision for the future was also optimistic. He pointed out that people were willing to pay for better services. And there was no better indication than the fact that there has been no resistance to the diesel and petrol price hiketo create the road fund. Like Ahluwalia he mentioned pricing as a critical factor for the entry of the private sector. However, Parekh believes that there will be high demand for services which are rationed and a lower demand for services which have so far been subsidised (for instance, people may be consuming more water because it comes practically free).

Highlighting the micro issues, managing director, Airfreight, Cyrus Guzder, put forth a mission statement, "to transport goods from anywhere in India to anywhere in three days." In a brilliantly structured presentation, Guzder linked the growth of rural markets to the need of corporates to get their goods to these markets in time, cost-effectively. To the amusement of the delegates, Guzder waved a variety of consumer goods - ranging from tea to detergent, packed in tiny sachets - in the air to demonstrate what was being sold in the villages.

Guzdar believes that the battle for the consumer will become the battle of the better supply chain. This meansthat corporates will increasing need to use as many modes of transport as possible to get their goods to their destination the fastest.

Calling for a National Mission on Logistics, Guzder asked for these issues to be weighted before coming up with mega plans, that may not serve the purpose they are intended for.