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Towards the end of 90s, mounting losses forced Madhya Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation (MPSRTC), the sole provider of public transport in Madhya Pradesh, to suspend their urban services. As a consequence, organized public transport services ceased to exist in Indore, the largest metropolitan city of the state of Madhya Pradesh. This void was filled by Intermediate Public Transport (IPT) consisting of minibuses, tempos and auto rickshaws. As of January 2004, 300 private minibuses, 150 tempos, and 10,000 auto rickshaws were plying as IPT, but with poor service levels. Lack of public transport was a catalyst for rapid increase in personalized vehicles, and high level of pollution and accidents. Worried over the rapid growth of personalized vehicles, and high levels of pollution and accidents in Indore, policy makers and administrators had made several attempts of reviving the public transport system in the city. In 2005, the Collector and District Magistrate of Indore decided to make another attempt of reviving the public transport. The two cases, Indore City Bus Transport Service (A) and Indore City Bus Transport Service (B) discuss the complexity involved in the planning, rolling out, and running of public transport services in Indore on a sustainable basis. Case (A) details the prevalent socio-economic condition, travel characteristics, and positions taken by various stakeholders on provisioning of public transport service in Indore as of November 2005. Case (B) discusses the challenges during the growth and operation of the services as of June 2008. Unprecedented rise in crude oil prices along with (i) increase in maintenance cost of buses, price of new buses, and bank interest and (ii) decrease/marginal increase in the fare box revenue (more people were shifting to passes) and advertisement revenue depleted the margin of the operators. The fares had not been increased since the launch of services in February 2006. It was clear that Indore City Transport Service Limited (ICTSL), the SPV created to run the transport system, would survive only if operators were able to survive. The readers have to take the position of the board of ICTSL and consider various options available to them for running the services on a sustainable basis.

The case looks at the Sethusamudram Shipping Canal Project from its inception in the year 1860 to 2012 when the Pachauri Committee was about to submit a report on the latest canal alignment (4A) as suggested by the Supreme Court. It takes the reader through a series of developments starting from the initial proposals and alignments to formation of Sethusamudram Corporation Limited and highlights the impact of National Environmental Engineering Research Institute Report, Tsunami Detailed Project Report, and Subramaniam Swamy Report on various issues including environmental, political, religious, security and legal. The case brings out multi-dimensional aspects involved in an Indian infrastructure project and gives both students and the faculty an opportunity to explore the complexities faced by the Indian decision makers in today's context.

Hindustan Gum is an agro-processor in Jodhpur, Rajasthan. It is primarily in the business of processing guar gum. The market volatility in demand and prices have shot up due to the need of guar gum in the new and growing shale gas fracking, primarily in the US. Hindustan Gum has been trying to respond to this by considering options like expansion in processing, and contract farming for guar seed sourcing.

It was December 13, 2010. The Government of Uttar Pradesh announced their plan to urbanize the entire area along the Yamuna Expressway (YE) in order to prevent haphazard growth of urban sprawls on the flanks of the YE. The YE was conceived in 1997 as a dream project of Ms Mayawati, the then Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, with the idea of reducing the travel time between Delhi (and the larger National Capital Region) and Agra. It was a 165 km long expressway and was proposed to run from Greater Noida to Agra via Mathura. Amidst issues concerning land acquisition, and various protests and litigations, the deadline for completion of the project had extended beyond its original completion date of February 8, 2010 to April 2013. Meanwhile, the project cost had escalated from Rs 2500 crore (cr) in the year 2000 to about Rs 10,000 cr as of December 2010. By then, about 80% work on the expressway had been completed. The project was finally expected to be completed around April 2011. This was, however, subject to the pending court judgements and mitigation of risks as perceived by Jaypee Infratech, the concessionaire of the project.

Delhi Metro Airport Express Line (AEL) from New Delhi Metro Station to Dwarka Sector 21 linked the Indira Gandhi International Airport. The line was operated by the Delhi Airport Metro Express Pvt Limited (DAMEPL), a subsidiary of Reliance Infrastructure (RInfra), the concessionaire of the line. The AEL was opened on February 23, 2011. Due to defects with the civil structure on the elevated section of the line, it was temporarily shut down on July 8, 2012. DAMEPL had been unable to run the AEL profitably ever since it started operations due to poor ridership and high operating costs. After three months in October, 2012 with the repairs nearly completed, RInfra had to take a call on the way forward.

Kolkata Port (KoPT) had achieved a turnaround from having made a loss of Rs 7.5 crores (cr) in the year 2000–01 to a net surplus of Rs 465.1 cr in the year 2006–07. A variety of initiatives had been taken during the intervening years with a focus on tariff rationalization, revenues from alternate sources, infrastructure development and productivity improvements. While these had yielded results, there was a fundamental issue of operational complexity and inability to compete due to the locational disadvantage. KoPT was a riverine port with two locations, 232 kms and 115 kms upstream on the Hooghly with draft limitations.

Two significant studies having implications for future strategies of KoPT had recently been submitted in March and November 2007. The top management of the port, including the Chairman who was responsible for driving many of the initiatives, was concerned that it may not be possible to achieve long term sustainable growth continuing with the strategies used so far. A well thought out future roadmap, breaking away from the present thinking, was essential sustained growth.

In May 2005, the Committee on Infrastructure took a decision that the Ministry of Railways, in consultation with Planning Commission, would prepare a policy for permitting private and public sector operators to run container trains through the Indian Railways (IR) network. CONCOR, a listed subsidiary of IR, was the only container train operator at that time. RITES, another subsidiary of IR, was awarded a study to prepare a scheme towards this. RITES submitted its final report in September 2005. The recommendations of the report included entry requirements, classification of routes into various categories based on existing and anticipated traffic volume, regulating entry for each route and minimum traffic commitment by the operators. The representatives of the Planning Commission, Ministry of Railways, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, and Ministry of Shipping were to meet in October 2005 to discuss the RITES recommendations to work towards framing a policy document for running container trains by private and public sector operators on the IR network. This case provides a background for this meeting.

GMR Infrastructure Limited (GMRIL) had to make a decision on its continued role in the 555.48 km Kishangarh Udaipur Ahmedabad (KUA) Expressway Project, India's then longest road public-private partnership (PPP) project. GMR had terminated the contract citing NHAI's failure in fulfilling Conditions Precedent (CP) of providing (i) environment clearance (EC), (ii) revised toll free notification and (iii) 80% of required land. The case intends to educate the reader on the concessionaire-authority dynamics in typical Indian infrastructure PPPs. Taking into account its internal strategy, the extant unfavourable investment climate, the Central Government's steps to revive private interest in the highways sector and NHAI's quick turnaround in fulfilling CP, GMR had to decide how to respond.

IFCI Limited-a non-banking financial corporation in India was struggling with issues of negative Capital Adequacy Ratio and high non-performing assets till 2007. The company had not done any business for a decade until 2007. July, 2007 was the time when Atul Rai joined the company as the CEO. This case revolves around the various strategic initiatives taken by Rai and his team to help the firm turnaround. The main focus of the case is on the implementation of some of the key strategic decisions. The case gives opportunity to review IFCI's strategy and make recommendations for future expansion.

Karaikal Port Private Limited (KPPL) was a special purpose vehicle created by MARG Group on February 18, 2006 to develop Karaikal port. According to the concession agreement signed for a period of 30 years, KPPL was given rights to Karaikal port on a Build, Operate and Transfer (BOT) basis. It was to phase the building of the port based on short term, midterm and long term demand. By August 22, 2011, Phase I of construction had been completed, and Phase IIA was nearing completion. Though the project had not faced any major problems in its development, there were issues such as restrictions on the availability of land for any future expansion, limited scope of hinterland businesses, small scale environmental issues and others that needed to be addressed for the future development of the port.