I am currently reading a book on Private Public Partnerships by Graeme Hodge and Carsten Greve titled "The Challenge of Public-Private Partnerships: Learning from International Experience" (Edward Elgar Publishers, 2005). The book makes a point that I had thought about for some time but had never articulated. Are most of todays "PPP" projects Public Private Partnerships or just Public Private Mixes (PPM's)? For a partnership, one needs to think about long-term stability, relationships based on trust and so on (very similar to the outcomes of the General counsels' Roundtable discussions hosted by CRGP). Do we see this in infrastructure projects these days? Looking around at the projects in India, there is very little evidence of partnerships - just a lot of examples of projects with a mix of private and public players who do not blend!

In soccer, for instance, when a defender misses a ball or is in trouble, a watchful and committed midfielder may fall back to help. That is a partnership. On the other hand, if the midfielder says "defending is your (defenders') job and I will sue you if you dont stop balls close to the goalline, and its not my job to help", then that is not a partnership. Most good sports teams are like the former - partnership oriented. Most infrasructure projects seem like the latter - they have private and public entities working together, but not in "partnership" in the true sense of the word.

I think PPP might well be the answer to the developing world's infrastructure proplems, but if and only if we have real PPP's and not these PPM's masquearding as PPP's.

How we move from the current PPM mode to true PPP then comes down to the outcomes of the General Counsels Roundtable discussions, Miller and Lessards "Project Shaping" concepts, bringing about institutional change and better conflict management and resolution processes and so on.

The primary aim of this post however was to recognize that while we talk about PPP in theory, reality might not reflect this.Understanding this discoradance may be a first step towards building infrastructure better

Posted by ashwin at December 17, 2006 10:48 PM