Thursday, August 3, 2023

Overview - Topics and Articles

 Latest Article:

The Case For Staying With Ethanol 10

Ethanol blending over 10 per cent may be desirable but a full understanding of its environmental and economic impacts is crucial.

Shyam Ponappa  August 3, 2023



Shyam Ponappa on ResearchGate

Comprehensive, Integrated Strategy & Execution
India has been coasting along on a post-feudal-colonial mélange of currents and tides, with the brigandage of opportunistic politics fed by our (the voters’) greed for short-term benefits. The result is grotesque populism and corruption, in lieu of the deferred gratification of pleasing cities and countryside with the appurtenances of proper governance: sidewalks and drains, toilets, transport, administration and order, hospitals and schools.

We have to organize and manage ourselves, “engineer” our way ahead, taking steps to build and develop our solutions, building systems and processes, and not just wait for things to happen. We need a comprehensive and integrated, systemic, silo-busting, problem-solving approach.

This applies across the board in the broadest “spatial planning” sense that integrates housing and land use at all levels with commercial, industrial, cultural, scientific and educational activity, transportation, and all governance and infrastructure: water, sewerage, energy, communications, basic health and education. Infrastructure being the first level of enablement is
 the essential starting point.


Previously, India’s leaders acknowledged that infrastructure is India’s great need. Yet, they took no steps [exception: NTP-2011 in October, 2011] to marshal forces to draw up a credible strategy and execution plan. This is what needed and needs doing. Only good intentions and/or money won’t do, because delivery systems and processes have to be developed, i.e., planned, and built from scratch.

It looks like the NDA II will seriously address the development of enabling infrastructure.  A beginning on a long way ahead.  The next few months will demonstrate the resolve of the NDA II to really break the mould and get the job done.

- July 2014

And it got worse for Digital India with another spectrum auction [March 2015] and the attendant deprivation of network rollout and service delivery. 

...And worse: another auction with Rs. 109,000 crore (~$17.6 billion). - April 2015

... And yet worse, as another auction reduced investment by over Rs. 65,000  crore  (~$10 billion). - October 2016

... And annual auctions threatened from 2017! - March 2017

Lack of integrated systems and controls led to the worst bank fraud in India - PNB $2 billion - February 2018  And IL&FS - September 2018

The National Digital Communications Policy 2018 is only an aspirational statement - October 4, 2018

Big bang for Wi-Fi!  5 GHz regulations similar to the US FCC. - October 2018

As the sector stalls, government talks 5G spectrum auction, wanting more cash while the industry drowns in debt. - January 2021  

The Supreme Court reverses previous rulings in favour of telecom operators on retroactive charges for spectrum based on an all-inclusive definition of Adjusted Gross Revenues continues...

Another ill-advised auction - March 2021.  And another monumental failure, neither serving the government's cash needs (too much left on the table), nor the consumers (too much spectrum left untouched).

A reversal (FINALLY!) of the retroactive tax amendment affecting Vodafone, Cairn, and others - August 5, 2021.

Spectrum Usage Charge zeroed; past due demands being reconsidered? - October 7, 2021

5G Spectrum Auction July 2022 nets Rs. 1.5 lakh crore (about $19 billion), making that amount of capital unavailable for investment in networks.  Allocation of an even larger amount to reviving BSNL and MTNL increases uncertainty of outcomes.



The Case For Staying With Ethanol 10

Ethanol blending over 10 per cent may be desirable but a full understanding of its environmental and economic impacts is crucial.

Shyam Ponappa Aug 03 2023 

India’s biofuel initiatives have been successful in getting us to a 10 per cent ethanol blend with petrol (E10). At this level, petrol engines sold in India since 2008 are not harmed, although older engines need modifications or no ethanol. Also, molasses as feedstock for ethanol from sugar factories have been adequate, supplemented by grain in good years, while the effluents are manageable, and there is less risk of “phase separation”, where a water-ethanol mix separates from the fuel. However, increasing ethanol to 20 per cent (E20) by the target date of 2025 is likely to be too disruptive. 

Food Stocks For Ethanol Production

To begin with, food stocks needed to produce ethanol are lower than expected. In keeping with the planned Food Corporation of India (FCI) rice supply for ethanol, stocks were provided at Rs 2,000 per quintal to ethanol producers, but states could not buy FCI rice in June, even at Rs 3,400 per quintal.  This is unsustainable and contrary to FCI’s purpose of providing foodgrains at stable prices. Press reports indicate FCI stopped rice supplies for ethanol in the third week of July, although the official position was unclear.1 By then, ethanol production from rice had already reached the target for the year, although producers reportedly expect to manufacture 970 million litres more, from 2.2 million tonnes of FCI rice.

The initial plan was that surplus rice from FCI would enable an increase in ethanol production from 2023 to 2025.  Instead, erratic weather has led to uncertain crop yields. India, which accounts for 40 per cent of the international rice trade, has banned non-basmati rice exports, roiling global markets. Also, continuing disruption of grain supplies from Ukraine has resulted in shortages and rising global cereal prices. Suppliers from Thailand, Vietnam, and Indonesia are also holding back.

The planned increase in FCI rice provision for ethanol is shown in the table (from Table 7.3 in NITI Aayog’s plan, converted at 450 litres of ethanol yield per million tonnes of rice). This is unsustainable, and warrants urgent review of planned rice supply and blend levels to set realistic goals.
If sustainable cellulosic ethanol production becomes a reality, avoiding the diversion of food crops, larger ethanol targets deserve consideration. Meanwhile, production at scale from non-food and non-sugarcane cellulosic feedstock has proved to be elusive for decades. It remains to be seen if commercial scale plants now operating in Italy and India, and being set up in America, can change that. 


As long as we are dependent on sugarcane and foodgrains for ethanol, there are compelling reasons to reduce targets. More land will need to be cultivated, requiring much more water, and extensive developments in logistics, like special materials for pipelines and tanks will be needed to deploy and use corrosive E20. The large stock of petrol vehicles will require engine modifications. To put it in perspective, the United States, which produces the most ethanol in the world (15,400 billion gallons) mostly uses E10, and has only about 3,300 E20 filling stations out of 145,000 countrywide (about 2 per cent).


Challenges


 * The government’s plan recognises feedstock availability as the first challenge for ethanol blended fuel. However, while the plan mentions the desirability of second generation feedstock from non-food sources such as cellulose, the period was shortened by five years, to 2025. 


* The second challenge mentioned was building extensive infrastructure to deal with logistics: Storage, transportation, and distribution of ethanol from the three states that produce it, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Karnataka, to the rest of the country. 


 * The third challenge is modifying existing petrol engines to use E20. The estimated petrol vehicles stock in India is 212.7 million as of March 31, 2023, of which two-wheelers comprised 176.2 million, three-wheelers 21.8 million, and four-wheelers 14.7 million. The modifications mean significant costs, and would need many skilled technicians. It will probably take years, creating considerable disruption in the economy. 


 * Although not mentioned, higher ethanol production means more effluents that need mitigation.  Vinasse is an organic waste of which 12 to 20 units are produced for each unit of ethanol from sugarcane.  Grain produces half as much. Its treatment before disposal or use continues to be a complex struggle.


Pros & Cons


The gains, according to some experts, are offset by the costs, such as low net benefits from reduction in greenhouse gases, the potential of damage to the environment, and costs to consumers.  Some scholars point out that greenhouse gases will be reduced only by 5 per cent by 2025 if targets are achieved, while emissions, such as aldehydes and ozone, will increase. Others suggest that land used for solar powered batteries would be much more efficient than growing crops for conversion to ethanol.2 A more technically sound assessment is needed.


While there is considerable momentum for corn-based ethanol in the US, and sugarcane-based ethanol in Brazil, these examples do not lend themselves to generalisation as universal solutions, because of the specific factors that enable their feasibility in their specific circumstances. 



Screenshot

There have been a number of compelling reasons put forward over the course of the last few years for targeting ethanol blending at 10 per cent and no more, and despite the attention, no OECD country uses E20 widely. The burden for less prosperous countries would be unimaginable, besides being impractical. 


The issue is whether on 

balance, the purpose of environmental and economic benefits is served.  From this perspective, ethanol blending over 10 per cent may be unjustifiable, because the environmental and economic impacts are mixed, including costs to consumers. Policymakers need to review the facts vis-à-vis assumptions and projections, to redefine objectives if required.  


Shyam Ponappa at gmail dot com

Thursday, July 6, 2023

Leveraging Our Economic Momentum


With opportunities growing, addressing deficiencies becomes crucial.


Shyam Ponappa  July 6, 2023


While circumstances are not optimal, we have the momentum of a complex economy that grows despite our limitations and restrictions in ourselves, our facilities and processes, and our leaders. Try visualising what needs to be done to get many Indians to reasonable living standards, and you may well see a long, steep road.


However, with reasonable growth and immense opportunities like fab plants, drones, jet engines, there are possibilities. This is not to downplay the negatives, especially for the many facing deprivation, lack of opportunity, and limited access to necessities, including learning, skilling, and productive work. Obviously, much more needs to be done. This piece considers how to get there, and what is required for contributors to function more effectively, while building capacity for many more.


Our strength is a great upwelling of our combined efforts in economic growth despite all our constraints. This momentum itself creates possibilities for additional growth, provided we can enable more people intensively as well as more inclusively. This must occur at many levels, because of the layers of people and enterprises in terms of skills, activities, and organisation.  While our broad service requirements are similar—  energy, water, sanitation, communication, transport, healthcare, learning and skilling — there are varying needs that reach high levels for more sophisticated activities, such as intensive care units or operating theatres and their staff in hospitals, high-end manufacturing in machinery or electronics, logistics, or research.


We have the momentum, so what do we lack? Take a seemingly trivial example in manufacturing: Ill-fitting electrical plugs and sockets.1  Anecdotally, our electrical plugs are notoriously ill-fitting in sockets meant for them. The poor fit makes for difficult handling, and can lead to fire hazards from loose connections.  Similar deficiencies across the board require a steep improvement in various areas, such as education and skilling, process discipline, and adherence to standards for quality and time. We may pride ourselves on our ability to cut corners or improvise with jugaad, but good products require minimal if not zero tolerance in manufacturing, whether it is plugs or jet engines.


Such steep improvement needs leadership with a driving vision for an organised and purposeful approach, with considerably higher funding for more rapid improvement in education and training, for large numbers to be employable, better disciplined, and able to perform to standards and quality at all levels, in all areas.  This needs vast expansion of countrywide access to education and learning aids, with structured content promoting quality performance in many areas, to deliver quality products/services on time at a different plane of functional efficiency. It is not just at high professional levels that we need discipline and a desire for mastery and excellence. Very simply, things have to work, be done right, and on time, and this needs to be instilled from an early stage and continued throughout. Our policymakers have to venture far beyond “managing country assets” to creating pathways enabling employment and growth, with the criteria being sustainable benefits to people, not necessarily the biggest or best.


This transformation is feasible at scale only with reliable broadband available to people everywhere, combined with appropriate curricula, content (much of it yet to be developed), and a dedicated core of teaching faculty that can be leveraged by many others in different fields. Highly skilled people can be leveraged by providing online access to others to be able to learn from them.  Similar developments are required for production and maintenance in manufacturing and services, agriculture and so on.
For the requisite communications, the issue is not so much the raising of funds by companies, but rather the government reversing its approach to restructure the charges payable by telcos, ensuring their funds are available for investment to start with. The objectives should be higher investment in networks, education, and training through funding from whatever sources.  It means our administrators must get past self-erected barriers, for instance, to formulate laws and regulations proactively to enable access to spectrum resources on terms that favour development and capacity-building across the country, instead of wasting spectrum by not using it, and strangulating access to usable spectrum through exorbitant charges. How can it make sense for India to have the most expensive spectrum in the world?


Such steps are essential to realise our potential, combining our momentum with the opportunities coming our way such as the India-US partnership. We will need rapid improvements in logistics, especially rail and road infrastructure, and much greater emphasis and resources on improving manufacturing and research & development capabilities to achieve expectations.2


Our tendency to count contracts awarded as achievements has to be replaced with roads that are built and maintained to last better, delivering higher average speeds,3 and railways that provide safe, high-speed passenger and freight services.


All this needs much more funding.  Take the example of Indian Railways. Its high budgetary support does not meet the backlog of asset replacement and upgradation needs of track, signalling, and safety. While skilled manpower is another constraint, we require far more than what is planned (for details see, “Shortage of funds for essential provisions”4). Without massive transformation through track renewal and upgradation, the Vande Bharat train sets will be just showboating, and could even be a drag, because they are not integrated with the rest. 


The government needs to explore creative funding strategies, such as private placements with select sovereign funds and others who invest in India, offering attractive debt returns, with an upside element in later years. These sources could be funds from Singapore, Norway, and Abu Dhabi, and pension funds from Canada, the US, Australia, and the Netherlands. While weak enterprises seeking risk finance typically offer “equity kickers”, India is a strong economy with proven credentials that can handle long-term financing commitments.


In each case, with executive decisions and longer-term changes in social expectations and institutions, we have to pull out all the stops.


Shyam (no space) Ponappa at gmail dot com


1: Department of Consumer Affairs – Plugs and Sockets (South India) 2012-13  


Others such as The Bureau of Indian Standards Report No. IS 1353-2017 could not be traced.




Friday, June 2, 2023

The Train 18 / Vande Bharat Model

 


Add good passenger handling, and this is the model for replication.

Shyam Ponappa  June 1 2023


Vande Bharat trains get deservedly good coverage nowadays. They provide the model for goal-oriented team achievement that is possible in infrastructure. This process requires extension to aspects of user experience to complete the end-to-end system. It needs the complement of passenger handling for total service delivery, comparable to orderly boarding and disembarkation for airlines, or the system for voting booths.

A former member of the Railway Board describes the project as conceived, planned and executed in record time by a team of inspired, talented, and committed Railway professionals of the Integral Coach Factory (ICF) in Chennai.1 Apart from the sanction by the then chairman of the Railway Board, A K Mittal, of two train sets budgeted at Rs 100 crore each, there was apparently little official support. These were completed on time, within budget.

 
Yet, just four years ago, after successful trials, the project was stalled by vigilance investigations that proved to be unwarranted against the leaders of the pioneering team of the “Train 18” project, later renamed “Vande Bharat”. The investigations found nothing, but the collateral damage was devastating for exceptional performers despite their being cleared of false charges.
 
Why “Train 18”? Because its champion, ICF General Manager Sudhanshu Mani, had 18 months left in service. His dream was to catch up on decades of established global practice at the ICF before retiring. The aim was to change the design of separate locomotives and coaches to a modern, single-unit train set capable of 180 km an hour without locomotives, with all power and service provision built into the undercarriage under the floor (for details see his book My Train 18 Story).

The ICF team rose to the challenge with good leadership, consultants, and vendor-partners, achieving what takes twice as long globally at half the cost. Successful trials at 180 km an hour of a train set with 80 per cent local manufacturing caught the Prime Minister’s attention, and two train sets began operation in 2019. The programme stopped abruptly because of vigilance action against the top team.2
 
The charges proved to be unfounded, and, after nearly three years, it seems as though the PM’s interest resulted in restarting the programme. Now, 18 train sets are operating as of May 25, 2023, with hundreds more planned. The performance of the trains occasionally elicits back-handed comments, such as being relatively slow (average speeds are more than 80 km/hour), that energy consumption is high, or that this would be nothing special in Germany, Japan, or China (the Financial Times)3, which is actually a compliment. The Vande Bharat is reportedly more energy-efficient than trains abroad, with average speeds on 14 routes published on April 20 ranging from 66 km an hour to 96 km an hour, with the median around 80 km an hour. By comparison, speeds on intercity routes under 300 km an hour in Europe in 2016 were as in the chart, with the median also at about 80 km an hour.



Reading Mr Mani’s book or watching his TEDx talk4 gives a sense of the degree of professionalism and teamwork that went into these outcomes. This is the achievement in terms of “hardware”. What of the passengers for whom it was made?

 
The design and manufacture of Train 18/Vande Bharat is exemplary for systems thinking and design, starting with the objective of a 180 km-an-hour train set with certain safety, quality, and comfort norms. The present emphasis on ramping up is promising. Yet more needs doing as always: Upgrading tracks to enable 200 km an hour at least, equipped with modern signalling, train sets with sleepers for longer distances, and barriers to prevent access to tracks. The scope and scale are monumental, and even more is needed beyond Vande Bharat for upgrading local passenger and intercity trains with better facilities.
 
Passengers who use these services do not have the benefit of an equivalent systems approach in their handling. The Railways have to take this step of setting the objective of convenience for passengers arriving at the station, embarking on these (or any other) trains, disembarking, and leaving the platform, to upgrade the customer experience hugely.
 
The process of embarking/disembarking on Vande Bharat trains is not organised. As the train is at the platform for a limited time, anxious passengers and porters rush to exit or enter helter-skelter. There appears to be no attempt to establish or maintain order. As for manufacturing, there need to be systems for passenger handling. Passengers arriving to embark on the train need a process, such as no well-wishers crowding the train, and queues instituted according to their coach number and seating order, half at the head end and half at the tail end of where each coach is expected to stop. Disembarkation needs to be managed first at both ends of carriages, with a clear passage to exit platforms. Embarkation needs to be arranged for each coach, such as having passengers from Seat No. 1 to the halfway number at the nearest doorway, and the other half at the farther doorway. With such procedures, passengers would have a much better experience with end-to-end services.
 
A systems approach in addressing train services for passengers is a paradigm worth applying with appropriate changes to other infrastructure and government services. The driving criterion needs to be clearly defined user-centric service experience, as against simply building more rail, or roads, or fibre networks. Processes need to be goal-oriented and require an end-to-end design of the hard and soft systems aspects as well their elements, followed by execution to standards, on firm timelines.

This template of goal-directed collaborative achievement deserves extension and replication in infrastructure and governance, using the talent and experience of such exemplars in providing leadership and guidance. There is then no need for overstatement, since the results will speak for themselves, as in the case of Train 18.
 


Shyam (no space) Ponappa at gmail dot com

1. “Not by ‘Vande Bharat’ alone”.
https://www.thehindu.­com­/opinion/lead/not-by-vande-bharat-alone/article66786278.ece

2. “Controversies, vigilance probe bring Vande Bharat Express to a standstill” 

https://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/vande-bharat-express-yet-to-leave-station-as-controversies-hit-project-119091601507_1.html

3. “India’s new railways project picks up speed.”
https://www.ft.com/content/77b1db06-4f 8c-4866-8f4a-4f489dce44cd 

4. https://www.ted.com/talks/%C2%ADsudhanshu_mani_the_j%20ourney_of_train_18