AMAR SINGHA partnership that exists only on paper
I have spent a good part of my career in public procurement and project consultancy, and one question keeps coming back to me: does signing an agreement between a government department and a private company actually create a partnership?
Legally, it creates a contractual relationship. A real Public–Private Partnership (PPP) needs more than signatures, financial commitments and obligations on paper. It needs trust, a fair split of responsibilities, realistic risk allocation, capable institutions, and a shared commitment to delivering a public service.
The Report of the Committee on Revisiting and Revitalising the Public Private Partnership Model of Infrastructure, chaired by Dr. Vijay Kelkar and submitted in November 2015, took on exactly these problems. It is more than a decade old, yet I still find it a useful frame for how infrastructure partnerships should be designed and run. Its central message holds up well: PPPs have to move away from transaction-style thinking and towards working relationships and actual service delivery.
A PPP is not just another procurement contract
In ordinary public procurement, the government buys goods, works or services and pays for them as agreed. A PPP is usually a longer arrangement. The private partner takes on defined responsibilities for investing in, building, operating or delivering a service, with risks shared in an agreed way and returns linked to performance.
The difference matters. A department can't build a successful PPP simply by handing contractual responsibilities to the private sector. And private participation doesn't automatically bring financial efficiency or better services.
The Kelkar Committee warned against using PPPs as a convenient way to raise money without first asking whether the project suits that structure at all. To me, that is the first rule of PPP planning: choose the model because it improves delivery and value for money, not because it brings in private finance.
Risk should be allocated, not just pushed across
One of the Committee's strongest recommendations is about how project risks are divided. A common mistake in contract design is to assume that pushing as much risk as possible onto the private partner protects the government.
Take a highway concession where the developer builds and operates the road, but land acquisition and statutory approvals depend on government authorities. If the agreement puts every delay on the developer no matter who caused it, the risk allocation becomes commercially unworkable.
The Committee's answer was that each risk should sit with the party best able to manage it. That is a practical principle, not a favour to the private sector. The government should ordinarily carry the risks within its own institutional control, while the private partner takes on the appropriate construction, operational, technological and commercial risks for that project.
A contract that shifts risk unfairly doesn't make the risk disappear. It usually comes back as delays, disputes and financial stress.
One standard agreement can't fit every project
The Committee also pointed out the limits of applying Model Concession Agreements (MCAs) without paying attention to the specific project. Standard agreements bring consistency, lower transaction costs and familiar structures, and those are real benefits.
But a port, an urban transport system and a highway can't always run on identical commercial assumptions. Their revenue patterns, regulatory dependencies, investment needs, operating risks and stakeholders all differ.
I hold a firm view on this: a standard document should guide professional judgment, not replace it. Every significant clause needs to be tested against the actual project, its financial structure, its institutional setting and the problems likely to come up during implementation.
Long contracts need room to adjust
Infrastructure PPPs often run for decades. Over that time, economic conditions, interest rates, regulations, demand and technology can change a great deal, and no authority can predict all of it.
The Kelkar Committee accepted this and recommended structured approaches to renegotiation where the circumstances justify it. But flexibility can't become a cover for favouritism or for arbitrarily altering contracts that were won through competition. Any renegotiation should be transparent, backed by evidence, and judged on its long-term financial and public-interest impact.
The hard part is telling genuine project distress apart from commercial failure that could have been avoided. A contract that is too rigid may become impossible to carry out. One that is too loose weakens competition and accountability. Good PPP governance has to find a defensible middle.
No partnership survives weak institutions
Even the best concession agreement can't make up for poor institutional management. The Committee stressed strengthening governance, institutions and capacity across the whole PPP system. It called for specialised institutional support, professional training, better monitoring and stronger ways of handling distressed projects.
This raises a question I find hard to ignore. Why do we put so much effort into choosing the private partner, and so little into building the government's ability to manage the partnership afterwards?
A PPP needs continuous technical, financial, legal and operational oversight. Officials need to understand project finance, performance obligations, contractual risk and what changing economic conditions mean for the project. Without that, even a well-structured partnership can run into trouble.
Disputes should be resolved in a way that protects the project
Disputes are normal in infrastructure projects with large investments and long timelines. Left unresolved, though, they can freeze investment, disrupt operations and hold up public services.
The Committee proposed an Infrastructure PPP Project Review Committee (IPRC) and an Infrastructure PPP Adjudication Tribunal (IPAT) to deal with stressed projects and complex disagreements. These were recommendations in the report, and we shouldn't assume the institutions exist just because the report suggested them.
What matters is the principle behind them: disputes should go to credible, timely and technically informed mechanisms. A project shouldn't stay in distress for years only because its stakeholders have no effective way to settle a disagreement.
From transaction to relationship
The biggest lesson I take from the Kelkar Committee Report is that PPP reform isn't only about attracting more private investment. It is about how government and private partners approach public infrastructure in the first place.
A successful partnership needs fair risk allocation, capable institutions, realistic contracts, transparent decisions, financial sustainability and effective service delivery. The government has to protect the public interest without loading the partner with obligations it can't manage. The private partner has a right to a legitimate return, but must meet its contractual duties and agreed performance standards. Both have to accept that long projects play out in changing economic and regulatory conditions.
A PPP shouldn't be judged by the value of the concession agreement that was signed. It should be judged by the infrastructure built, the services kept running and the public value created.
That is why the Committee's message still deserves attention. The challenge was never to produce more PPP contracts. India needs partnerships that stay workable after signing, behave responsibly when things go wrong, and remain accountable for the life of the project.
In the end, a PPP succeeds not when the government and the private sector agree to work together, but when that cooperation leaves citizens better off for a long time.