Plugging the infra gaps

The Gati Shakti Mission carries promise, but can it deliver?

Ever since it was announced by the prime minister in October last year, the Gati Shakti mission has been billed as one of the most transformational projects in the country. Successfully planning and executing large scale infrastructure projects in India have always been a nightmare, leading to significant cost and time overruns. Gati Shakti is a much needed step in offering an integrated solution, say its advocates.

 Simply put, Gati Shakti uses geospatial technology, based on data sourced from different ministries and agencies, to map the entire terrain—and provide a “one view” to the planning and execution agencies. It also offers an opportunity to bridge the coordination gap between ministries and plug bottlenecks. In the first six months since Gati Shakti was announced, “infrastructure gaps” had been identified in 131 critical projects and flagged off to various ministries to be addressed, claimed a recent news report.

However, not everyone believes the Gati Shakti mission is a radical solution. Naysayers reckon that the Big Data project might at best make a peripheral contribution to the challenges of infrastructure development. They fear that the bureaucracy will hold back data sharing —and scuttle the attempt to build transparency and break silos. Also, the portal has generated considerable interest among industry folks, particularly in the logistics and infrastructure space. Last month, the prime minister made a pitch to the private sector to leverage the value of the information that the Gati Shakti platform offers. But it remains to be seen whether the private sector will step up and be inspired to participate in infrastructure projects, and thereby allow the government to unlock value from its massive investment through the public private partnership (PPP) route. So will Gati Shakti deliver on its promise? Or will it end up as yet another well-intentioned project that fails to deliver results?

It may take a while before this becomes clear. The benefits though are pretty obvious. Instead of taking six months just to decide on the route—alignment in technical parlance — for a high speed expressway, the Gati Shakti project will allow for a more integrated solution, keeping in mind wildlife corridors and also the need to integrate other modes of transport, in a matter of weeks. That way, the transportation of goods can be speeded up, leading to more efficiency and productivity in the real economy.

The Dedicated Freight Corridor on the western line, stretching from the JNPT port in Mumbai to Dadri in UP, is a prime example. Back then, the railways had an e-Drishti portal for all major railway projects. And that has now metamorphosed into Gati Shakti. Yet the implementation challenges have continued. Concor, the listed entity owned by the Railways, built assets along this corridor. But much of it is unutilised becau­se there are no proper transportation linkages with the regional economic hubs like Kandla, denting Concor’s return on equity. The Gati Shakti portal might now offer the dedicated freight corridor project some alternative routes to bypass wildlife corridors or mining hubs in the eastern stretch, instead of the shortest route picked earlier.

The fact is that there are multiple agencies and ministries involved in the planning process, each with their own processes and ways of working. So for instance, a new port is often built without adequate focus on rail or road linkages.

Gati Shakti attempts to fix this lack of interconnections by bringing all the different ministries on a co­mmon platform, identifying these gaps and fixing accountability for each ministry for delivery and outcomes.

On paper, all of this may be urgent and necessary. However, it poses an enormous challenge to the government’s existing ways of working — and its ability to use data for decision-making. This was the case even with the goods and services tax project. For the longest time, the government was unable to smartly use the enormous data that the system had thrown up — and thereby plug the leakages in the system and drive better tax compliance.

There are at least 18 ministries — including steel, railways, ports, renewable energy—involved in infrastructure projects. By breaking down the silos, the hope is that it will improve the coordination among these various ministries, at least for the most critical infra projects. The cabinet secretary himself chairs the meeting of the empowered group of secretaries from the key ministries to review the progress. What’s more, the Prime Minister’s office (PMO) also has visibility to the progress.

However, in reality, whether ministries can be persuaded to upload information on all these critical projects, especially the ones that are lagging behind, on the platform, remains to be seen. On its part, the finance ministry has insisted that all major projects have to be routed through the Gati Shakti platform before it earmarks funds for it.

Once the coordination committee identifies the bottlenecks, the prerogative lies with the ministry to act on it. Whether Gati Shakti evolves into a proper digital project monitoring system, instead of yet another government scheme, could well decide its future.

The writer is co-founder at Founding Fuel