Sreedharan agreed to take on the Delhi metro on one condition: no political interference. He hired a small, motivated staff, solely on merit, paid them well, and sent them overseas to study how the world's best metros worked. He insisted on developing expertise within the organisation, rather than relying on consultants.

Elattuvalapil Sreedharan was already 63 and a folk hero to the urban middle class when he was asked to build the Delhi metro. He had just built the Konkan railway connecting Mumbai to Goa with similar efficiency, a formidable assignment with 150 bridges and 93 tunnels through landslide-prone hills. Originally from Kerala, India's best-educated and least corrupt state, he had spent decades in the Indian railways, winning fame by restoring a cyclone-damaged bridge to Rameswaram, between India and Sri Lanka, in just 46 days when six months was allowed for the job.

I dislike the ''great men'' approach to history, but in this case, it's indisputable. Infrastructure projects in India are usually characterised by political interference, corruption, delays, cost overruns and inefficiency. The Delhi metro broke the mould because they appointed a quietly brilliant, incorruptible, inspiring team leader as director, and gave him freedom to run it as he chose.

How did Delhi do it? And what can Australia learn from this model of world's best practice?

As a rule, nothing in India's public sector works as intended. But the Delhi metro works: 99.97 per cent of trains arrive within one minute of schedule. They are clean, cool and safe. At peak hour, they come every 2½ minutes. It runs at a profit. Every stage has been completed on time, within budget. In India, in the modern world, that is a miracle.

Deadlines and budgets had to be realistic and achievable; but once set, they were not to be altered, save in compelling circumstances. Once a decision was made, it was final. If anything went wrong, there was no hunt for scapegoats, only for solutions. A colleague told Forbes magazine that in 30 years of working together, he never heard Sreedharan shout at anyone.

There was no mercy, however, if the issue was corruption, so rife in India. Anyone caught was out immediately. Sreedharan ignored the rule book on competitive tenders to award tenders to firms he trusted - but if they failed to deliver on time, quality and budget, they, too, were out. Politicians used to pulling strings to get jobs or contracts for their allies found their strings were cut.

His emphasis was on speed and efficiency: on getting it right first time, then delivering on time, on budget, and with the required quality. Tenders were broken into smaller contracts rather than big ones, so the organisation never lost control. Contractors were paid most of their claim within 24 hours, and the rest a week later, the cash flow giving them an incentive to deliver. As Forbes noted: ''It is based on trust, and the penalty for breaching it is high.''

So far the metro has cost just $2.5 billion; Indian construction workers are cheap. Most of the finance came as low-interest loans from Japan's aid agency. The national government and Delhi's state government each paid 15 per cent of the bill, and 10 per cent came from redeveloping areas around the new stations.

One might note that the one failure was the privately run line: the Airport Rail Link, run by billionaire Anil Ambani's Reliance Infrastructure. Last year, it had to shut for six months after safety concerns. Reliance also proved unreliable in Mumbai, where it is three years behind schedule building the first line of the Mumbai metro. Private ownership is no guarantee of competence.