Budget 2022: Gati Shakti to take states on board, says DPIIT Secretary

'Through Gati Shakti, land-related problems can be resolved to a great extent', said Anurag Jain

Land acquisition-related challenges can be resolved to a great extent through the PM Gati Shakti, Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) Secretary Anurag Jain tells Shreya Nandi in an interview. He also says the kirana stores will benefit the most from the government’s Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC). Edited excerpts: 

The Budget has mentioned Gati Shakti as one of the top priorities. Apart from the target for the next few years mentioned in the Budget under various ministries, what are the key deliverables for the next one year?

PM Gati Shakti is a concept, a way of working, breaking-of-the-silos approach of the government. Government departments, which were taking the projects, will continue to do the same. According to the administrative structure, we already have an EGoS (empowered group of secretaries) steered by the cabinet secretary, a network planning group (with officials from various infra ministries) that has been constituted. Officers have been trained to use the geographic information system (GIS) platform. There is also a technical support unit. With the GIS platform, you (departments) have the additional advantage of expeditious planning of projects.

PM Gati will not have a separate allocation, but people will be able to work through this tool.

Another aspect (of Gati Shakti) is taking states on board. All state governments are on board and they are also laying their data on the platform. They have started creating their own structures, equivalent to EGoS. Right now, we do not have the visibility of this platform to the private sector, but at some point of time we will consider that as well. We are pushing all state governments to put their data and it should happen by March. We should be able to use this tool in a comprehensive manner from the next financial year. In addition to that, whatever data is available, people can start using it right away.

From next year, we expect all Gover­nment of India projects above a certain limit — known as PM Gati Shakti projects — to be included on this tool and hopefully the state governments will make good use of it.

Since land has been a contentious issue for most infrastructure projects, what role can Gati Shakti play to iron out this challenge?

Technology provides you tools and how you use it depends on the people concerned. In addition to Gati Shakti, we also have an Integrated Land Information Management system that gives information about the land parcels that are available. Thirteen states have already come on board. Further expansion will have more states coming on the same tool and will ensure these facilities are available across the country.

We are creating a system to make decision-making and planning more efficient, and making execution of projects faster. But that tool cannot force (a state) to make a decision. Through Gati Shakti, land-related problems can be resolved to a great extent.

Now that ONDC has been incorp­orated as a company, when can we see its launch? Did you do a round of consultation with e-commerce companies and seek their views about ONDC?

Open network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) is a work in pipeline. I cannot give you a definite timeline, but I can say this is going to be a game changer. Small kirana owners will benefit the most.

What UPI did to the payment ecosystem, ONDC has a capability to do something similar. There are certain things to be smoothened before we go public. ONDC is an open network architecture, when it comes out it will have utility even for closed loop architectures to convert to this. We have had consultation and we had brainstorming sessions at government-level and certain questions were also raised. We are searching for answers to those questions. After that we will take other people on board.

What are the key concerns flagged by other ministries during the inter-ministerial consultation of the proposed e-commerce policy?

There are questions that need to be answered and need further deliberations.