A Comprehensive Approach Towards Transparency: Case Study on Highway Development Through Public Private Partnership (PPP) in India

Transparency has become a buzzword in contemporary literature of Planning. However, it is NOT a well-constrained concept. This term is defined differently from different fundamental positions (Sen 1999; Stiglitz 2003; Florini 2007). Public private partnerships in infrastructure development are popularly known for offering transparent planning process. This study argues that transparency is narrowly defined in infrastructure-PPP’s, especially in the literature of development process. There are two reasons for such an argument. Firstly, there is no comprehensive literature on the overall infrastructure development process through PPP; existing studies narrowly focus on certain phases. Secondly, transparency has different roles to play in different phases of development. There is hardly any study that identifies different roles of transparency for different actors in varying stages of development. This study develops a theoretical framework to investigate what are the key issues of infrastructure-PPP in India, especially in the highway sector and whether tools of transparency can successfully satisfy its expected roles from different fundamental positions throughout the development process. Empirical evidences are presented from three cases of highway project in Eastern India.