"Money is not the problem, governance is"

“I was brave enough to take a motorcycle taxi around Kathmandu yesterday, I probably died five times during that journey,” says Alok Jain, an international expert on public transport operations and management. “The Kathmandu of my memory from 30 years ago is all gone, I don’t like what it is now.”

Jain was in Kathmandu this week for a symposium on public transport organised by Sajha Yatayat. Originally from Rajbiraj he remembers a time when there were no buses, everyone bicycled or walked. 

After getting a degree in engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Jain worked for the irrigation department in Nepal. He got fed up with chronic corruption. “I wanted no part in it, so I left,” he recalls. “I was fresh out of college and idealistic, and wanted to change the world.”

Jain then got a scholarship to pursue a master's at the Asian Institute of Technology in Bangkok and as a gold medallist, he was offered international jobs but he returned to Nepal to give his country one more try.

“I told my father that if I stayed in Nepal I would remember to only calculate the percentage at this rate,” recalls Jain, now 57. 

For the next 15 years Jain worked in Hong Kong’s public transport system, and shifted his career from engineering to strategy and planning, to finance and then to operations and marketing. “I was restless at this point, I wanted to learn new things as well as take on challenges, I was still young,” he says.

After Hong Kong, Jain worked as a freelancer and during this time he commissioned a number of metro projects including Delhi Airport Express, Dubai Metro, Hyderabad Metro Rail, Chennai Metro and Mumbai Metro.

Then in 2011, the Singapore government hired him to revamp contract modelling to move from net cost contract to gross cost contract. The government would buy back all public transport assets and create a centralised body to retain all revenue collected while operators are paid a fixed sum.

Then he went back to Hong Kong where he was hired to turn around the Kowloon Motor Bus (KMB). Till this point he had not worked with buses, but managed to put the loss-making bus system into profit.

KMB is the world’s largest private bus operator with 4,000 buses, 11,000 drivers on 400 routes. It was not easy because of the management culture and rival driver unions. So he became a driver himself, started talking with other drivers to understand the business from the bottom up.

“We didn't do anything big but tried to improve things gradually and organically such as saving fuel on every trip, we used a lot of data to improve efficiency and focus on quality, not quantity because running too many buses is not the solution but running them where they are needed,” explains Jain.

A big part of Jain’s campaign was to add dignity to driving, and “make buses sexy”. He organised Thank the Drivers Day, named them captains instead of drivers, and held Driver of the Year competitions. His drivers went on to become celebrities with Instagram and YouTube fan clubs.

Jain has some pointers for Nepal where public transport is run by the private sector with little government engagement and investment. Sajha Yatayat is the only semi-government cooperative. The regulation of public transport is nearly absent but the government still fixes fares, even as it doesn’t subsidise the sector, leading to affordable but low-quality service.

“If the government doesn’t want to pay, it is perfectly okay but let the market decide, they must understand that private operators need to make money to survive, otherwise if the government is stealing from you, you steal from the government,” says Jain.

“Next, we need uniformity of rules and a good example of this is the honking ban in Kathmandu which was successful because there was a clear rule and it applied to everyone,” he adds. 

But in a country where it has become a modus operandi to slip in a few thousand while renewing a vehicle permit or getting a green sticker and drivers’ license, anything goes, or nothing at all. 

Multiple government agencies are working on transport and roads in all three levels of the government but there is no clarity regarding their jurisdiction. There is mismanagement, building roads without proper engineering, adding to the congestion and accidents. 

“Money isn’t the problem, governance is,” says Jain, “The government could very well take over public transport and pay for it because it is the ultimate beneficiary. A good transport system will improve salaries, access to jobs, and sales from retail, it will recapture taxation and other benefits, including political dividends.”

CEO and Managing Director of Trans-Consult Ltd In Hong Kong, Jain also teaches at the University of Hong Kong, and is in the Council for Decarbonising Asia as well as Hong Kong’s Transport Policy Committee.

From Kathmandu he is going to Kolkata, where the government is trying to do away with its British-era tram system. Citizen groups have opposed the decision and the case is now in the courts. Jain is making a case for keeping the tram.

The world is an oyster for Jain, who travels 200 days a year. The idea of returning to Nepal he finds rather restrictive: “I’m a serendipitous guy, don’t like barriers, I don’t want to be boxed into anything.”