Bridging the infrastructure gap by promoting public private partnerships has become the preferred mode for the execution of public projects. The government needs to develop the necessary capability to handle the large number of PPP projects that are to be taken up during the Eleventh Plan.

Indian policymakers are fascinated by Shanghai and they seek to develop Mumbai into another Shanghai. This vision is based entirely on the fascination with the Shanghai/Pudong skyline, without any substantive understanding of or facts about the growth in the Chinese city. True, there has been rapid growth in Shanghai, but most of this growth has been to the benefit of corporations (public sector and foreign controlled), little has gone to the city's households. Since the late 1990s, the poor of Shanghai have in fact seen a relative decline in incomes vis-

The paper examines the basic reasons and feasible remedies for organisational weakness in India's public transport systems and the possible contribution of ownership, industry and management structure, leadership, social norms, and institutional incentives to alleviating the weaknesses. The arguments are illustrated with reference to the public rail and air services and help to understand why some public sector transport undertakings have performed better than others. The most effective changes are those that create incentives, broadly defined, for individuals to improve productivity.