Economy & Market

A for Accountability…

Published

6 years ago

January 4, 2020

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I had once visited Anand Bhawan in Allahabad, which is like a museum today. The Annexe Building, which houses the Nehru Family memorabilia, was closed for renovations, but the notice did not say anything about when it was to reopen. This in India is not an isolated example, and every now and then, we do encounter such flagrant lack of public accountability, and a propensity to avoid making promises, so much so that we as citizens of the country have by now accepted this state of affairs, and consider this quite normal to announce the start date of a project, and be silent about the promised end date! "Until further notice" is an obnoxious expression, which not only displays our apathy but also our lack of respect for our own roles as project leaders! I am labouring this point because, the starting point of project management is accountability – accountability to complete the project in time, within cost budgets, and to ultimately deliver the complete project as promised, to its stakeholders.

In continuity of our discussion in the last issue, when we talked about project management in nation building, we collected some data from the website of the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation. According to this body (which is tasked with tracking large projects in the central sector) 227 projects above Rs 150 crore in value, are delayed by a (simple, not weighted!) average of 31 months each. The interest cost of this delay alone, is a staggering Rs 1 lakh crore already, not to talk about the opportunity cost of such delayed projects – this could be even larger. If we were to add the impact of projects delayed in State and private sectors, the loss will easily top 5 lakh crore of Rupees, and one can well imagine how much value we can add to the GDP of our nation if we were to just do our projects right.

And, what are the reasons for the delay of these government projects? According to this website, the reasons are:

Delay in regulatory approvals

Delay in land acquisitions

Financing issues and non-availability of funds

Contractual disputes

Law and order problems

Delay in decision making, etc.

Do you see "lack of accountability (and commensurate authority) "as a reason for delay? Funnily, you don’t! Goes to show that we are either ignorant of the real root cause of project delays, or we know, but we do not want to talk about it. The real reason why all the above-cited "apparent" reasons were allowed to cause delays in the projects, is the total absence of ownership and accountability in these projects. We need to reflect on why, as a nation, we have developed this aversion to accountability. It was not always so; the epitome of an accountable person, in our mind, will always be someone like Lal Bahadur Shastri, who resigned as Railway Minister taking moral responsibility of a major accident. But sadly, gone are those days. Could it be, that today we believe more in witch-hunting and shooting the messenger, to find the easy way out of failures, without bothering to determine the real reasons for such failures, and that, this has resulted in everyone trying to pass the buck around and successfully avoid being accountable.

During the recent event, an eminent colleague on the dais pointed out that, when it comes to fixing responsibility at lower levels, we immediately suspend or transfer or even sack people, while we start talking about enquiries and process improvements when the muck hits the higher echelons. Nothing can be more tellingly closer to the reality. We must bring back the culture of ownership and accountability, and for this to happen, we must be objective in determining the "real" root causes of delays, and take corrective actions. This can only happen over time, and with collective efforts of the project management fraternity across government and private sectors alike.

Bottom line is, there has to be a project owner for every project, and s/he has to be fully accountable for delivering the project – the buck must stop with her/him. This owner has to be empowered to do her job well, principally by two means; firstly, by giving her the appropriate authority of decision making, and secondly, by giving her the knowledge to do her job well. Hope we contribute to this, in some small measure, through this column.

– Sumit Banerjee

Economy & Market

TSR Will Define Which Cement Companies Win India’s Net-Zero Race

Published

3 days ago

April 27, 2026

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Jignesh Kundaria, Director and CEO, Fornnax Technology

India is simultaneously grappling with two crises: a mounting waste emergency and an urgent need to decarbonise its most carbon-intensive industries. The cement sector, the second-largest in the world and the backbone of the nation’s infrastructure ambitions, sits at the centre of both. It consumes enormous quantities of fossil fuel, and it has the technical capacity to consume something else entirely: the waste our cities cannot get rid of.

According to CPCB and NITI Aayog projections, India generates approximately 62.4 million tonnes of municipal solid waste annually, with that figure expected to reach 165 million tonnes by 2030. Much of this waste is energy-rich and non-recyclable. At the same time, cement kilns operate at material temperatures of approximately 1,450 degrees Celsius, with gas temperatures reaching 2,000 degrees. This high-temperature environment is ideal for co-processing, ensuring the complete thermal destruction of organic compounds without generating toxic residues. The physics are in our favour. The infrastructure is not.

Pre-processing is not the support act for co-processing. It is the main event. Get the particle size wrong, get the moisture wrong, get the calorific value wrong and your kiln thermal stability will suffer the consequences.

The Regulatory Push Is Real

The Solid Waste Management (SWM) Rules 2026 mandate that cement plants progressively replace solid fossil fuels with Refuse-Derived Fuel (RDF), starting at a 5 per cent baseline and scaling to 15 per cent within six years. NITI Aayog’s 2026 Roadmap for Cement Sector Decarbonisation targets 20 to 25 per cent Thermal Substitution Rate (TSR) by 2030. Beyond compliance, every tonne of coal replaced by RDF generates measurable carbon reductions which is monetisable under India’s emerging Carbon Credit Trading Scheme (CCTS). TSR is no longer a sustainability metric. It is a financial lever.

Yet our own field assessments across multiple Indian cement plants reveal a sobering reality: the primary barrier to scaling AFR adoption is not waste availability. It is the fragmented and under-engineered pre-processing ecosystem that sits between the waste and the kiln.

Why Indian Waste Is a Different Engineering Problem

Indian municipal solid waste is not the material that imported shredding equipment was designed for. Our waste streams frequently exceed 40 per cent to 50 per cent moisture content, particularly during monsoon cycles, saturated with abrasive inerts including sand, glass, and stone. Plants relying on imported OEM equipment face months of downtime awaiting proprietary spare parts. Machines built for segregated, low-moisture waste fail quickly and disrupt the entire pre-processing operation in Indian conditions.

The two most common failures we observe are what I call the biting teeth problem and the chewing teeth problem. Plants relying solely on a primary shredder reduce bulk waste to large fractions, but the output remains too coarse for stable kiln combustion. Others attempt to use a secondary shredder as a standalone unit without a primary stage to pre-size the feed, leading to catastrophic mechanical failure. When both stages are present but mismatched in throughput capacity, the system becomes a bottleneck. Achieving the 40 to 70 tonnes per hour required for meaningful coal displacement demands a precisely coordinated two-stage process.

Engineering a Made-in-India Answer

At Fornnax, our response to these challenges is grounded in one principle: Indian waste demands Indian engineering. Our systems are built around feedstock homogeneity, the holy grail of kiln stability. Consistent particle size and predictable calorific value are the foundation of stable kiln combustion. Without them, no TSR target is achievable at scale.

Our SR-MAX2500 Dual Shaft Primary Shredder (Hydraulic Drive) processes raw, baled, or loosely mixed MSW, C&I waste, bulky waste, and plastics, reducing them to approximately 150 mm fractions at throughputs of up to 40 tonnes per hour. The R-MAX 3300 Single Shaft Secondary Shredder (Hydraulic Drive), introduced in 2025, takes that primary output and produces RDF fractions in the 30 to 80 mm range at up to 30 tonnes per hour, specifically optimised for consistent kiln feeding. We have also introduced electric drive configurations under the SR-100 HD series, with capacities between 5 and 40 tonnes per hour, already operational at a leading Indian waste-processing facility.

Looking ahead, Fornnax is expanding its portfolio with the upcoming SR-MAX3600 Hydraulic Drive primary shredder at up to 70 tonnes per hour and the R-MAX2100 Hydraulic drive secondary shredder at up to 20 tonnes per hour, designed specifically for the large-scale throughput that higher TSR ambitions require.

The Investment Case Is Now

The 2070 Net-Zero target is not a distant goal for India’s cement sector. It starts today, with decisions being made on the plant floor.

The SWM Rules 2026 are already in effect, requiring cement plants to replace coal with RDF. Carbon credit markets are opening up, and coal prices are not going to get cheaper. Every tonne of coal a cement plant replaces with waste-derived fuel saves money on one side and generates carbon credit revenue on the other. Pre-processing infrastructure is no longer just a compliance requirement. It is a business investment with a measurable return.

The good news is that nothing is missing. The technology works. The waste is available in every Indian city. The government has provided the policy direction. The only thing standing between where the industry is today and where it needs to be is the commitment to build the right infrastructure.

The cement companies that move now will not just meet the regulations. They will be ahead of every competitor that waits.

About The Author

Jignesh Kundaria is the Director and CEO of Fornnax Technology. Over an experience spanning more than two decades in the recycling industry, he has established himself as one of India’s foremost voices on waste-to-fuel technology and alternative fuel infrastructure.

Concrete

WCA Welcomes SiloConnect as associate corporate member

Published

2 weeks ago

April 13, 2026

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The World Cement Association (WCA) has announced SiloConnect as its newest associate corporate member, expanding its network of technology providers supporting digitalisation in the cement industry. SiloConnect offers smart sensor technology that provides real-time visibility of cement inventory levels at customer silos, enabling producers to monitor stock remotely and plan deliveries more efficiently. The solution helps companies move from reactive to proactive logistics, improving delivery planning, operational efficiency and safety by reducing manual inspections. The technology is already used by major cement producers such as Holcim, Cemex and Heidelberg Materials and is deployed across more than 30 countries worldwide.

Concrete

TotalEnergies and Holcim Launch Floating Solar Plant in Belgium

Published

2 weeks ago

April 13, 2026

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TotalEnergies and Holcim have commissioned a floating solar power plant in Obourg, Belgium, built on a rehabilitated former chalk quarry that has been converted into a lake. The project has a generation capacity of 31 MW and produces around 30 GWh of renewable electricity annually, which will be used to power Holcim’s nearby industrial operations. The project is currently the largest floating solar installation in Europe dedicated entirely to industrial self-consumption. To ensure minimal impact on the surrounding landscape, more than 700 metres of horizontal directional drilling were used to connect the solar installation to the electrical substation. The project reflects ongoing collaboration between the two companies to support industrial decarbonisation through renewable energy solutions and innovative infrastructure development.