Thank God for ERP!

On my first ever visit to India, blessed with good fortune; I was able to take a day trip to visit the Taj Mahal – one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

The Taj Mahal is located in Agra and since I was putting up in New Delhi, that meant a gruelling eight hour journey to-and-fro with ample time to observe the traffic conditions of roads in India, which would very much affects the logistics and supply chain of companies operating in India.

It must have been the third or fourth time I had to stop, queue and pay toll fees on the 203 km journey when I started comparing the Indian Toll-fees system to Singapore’s ERP (Electronic Road Pricing). This must be the first time I must say, with a little bit of embarrassment that I actually welcomed the “beep” of passing through an ERP gantry and be off on my journey, without the need to stop, queue and pay. The ERP for me represented a new dimension of efficiency.

As I engaged in more time consuming stopovers to pay toll, the situation turned dire. Instead of being confronted by yet another toll booth, at some stopovers, paying toll was done at a 1.5m x 1m desk in the middle of nowhere and my driver had to literary get down from the car and walk towards these desks.

In this time consuming and rather comical toll paying practice, I cannot help but notice the huge number of trucks and goods vehicles which were queuing up back to back at these “toll-desks” I came across and like my drivers, the drivers of these vehicles had to unbuckle their seat belts, leave their vehicles and crowd around to pay toll at these desks.

In fact, this ritual was proving such a deal, that street performers find it lucrative enough to bring along their monkeys to earn an extra buck (see picture on the left).

Although stopping at toll booths were time consuming, having your driver get out of the car and pay toll at a desk was all very unprofessional and a complete waste of time.

This would no doubt affect the efficiency of companies dealing with end to end supplying and I thought was a problem that could be eradicated with a bit of planning and restructuring.

I am not suggesting that roads in India go high tech and start erecting gantries, as I am sure drivers in India would soon be heard cursing and swearing every time they hear the “beep” like drivers on “the little red dot”. But surely, they could build more toll booths and employ very efficient toll collectors like the one in the (picture on the right) to speed up the whole process.

I do wish that some higher-ups in New Delhi or Agra reads this little comment I’ve made and for all you know, transporting of goods and end to end supply could be much less time consuming and all these truck drivers could spend more time resting on their beds rather than queuing and waiting into the wee hours of the night (see picture below) just to get their shipment to their destination.