Gati Shakti master plan: Transforming infra planning with holistic approach

When Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the creation of the PM Gati Shakti National Master Plan (NMP), there was little clarity on how it would work and how it intended to solve historic infrastructure planning issues, which were deep-rooted within the system. Today, the initiative has been used to evaluate over 100 projects worth trillions of rupees, and there is more to come. The Centre plans to develop Gati Shakti from a mere alignment planning portal to a holistic tool, which will be the principal convergence point to plan social welfare and economic development initiatives, say two key policymakers behind the portal.

 

In a panel discussion with Nivedita Mookerji at the Business Standard Gati-Shakti Connect event in New Delhi on August 28, Sumita Dawra, special secretary (Logistics), Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), and Amrit Lal Meena, secretary, Ministry of Coal, and former special secretary for logistics at DPIIT, shared their insights into how the platform is being used to overhaul the planning of highways, railways, ports, airports, and more.

From bringing nearly 75 administrative bodies together, using satellite technology and removing inefficiencies from the supply chain of thermal coal logistics to considering artificial intelligence for predictive planning, the conversation traverses Gati Shakti’s vast spectrum. Edited excerpts:

How would you describe Gati Shakti in one sentence that would capture its essence?

Dawra: It is a remarkable initiative, a transformational approach to planning next-generation infrastructure to bring about ease of doing business, ease of living and ease of logistics.
 

Meena: I, in the beginning, used to tell my team GATI means Growth Accelerating Trustworthy Infrastructure, through a systematic and holistic approach for transformation and innovations. These were our guiding principles.

What is your assessment of the seven pillars of Gati Shakti? Which of these have stood out?

D: It's a comprehensive approach, because it holistically looks at planning of infrastructure. It involves a whole-of-government approach. They (ministries and states) converge on this planning tool. Geospatial technology is leveraged and we are able to visualise it.

Therefore, we are able to plan better and prioritise projects, so that we take up those where the demand is more. It's a demand-driven approach. There is comprehensiveness, optimising of alignments, privatising the works and synchronising the infrastructure works of various ministries, so that there is no duplication of infrastructure and disruptions are minimised. If there is a forest area or a power line and a road intersection, the disruptions are minimised (since one would already be alerted to these at the planning stage). So, briefly, these are the pillars and I see them all activated.

M: Existing institutional arrangements have been incorporated under Gati Shakti through the Network Planning Group, where DPIIT is the coordinator. They (infrastructure ministries) look at projects of each and every ministry and see if there are any imperfections or issues that can be resolved together. This institutional framework under Gati Shakti has brought in that convergence and coordination.

Coupled with it is the National Master Plan, the digital platform. Information is available to all the decision-makers.

As the present and past core policymakers of Gati Shakti, what have been the challenges and hurdles that you faced?

D: First of all, the Gati Shakti concept needed to be demystified. The second was bringing all stakeholders on board. As of now, 39 ministries and departments have been onboarded as have 36 states and Union Territories with their complete data. There is a question of quality and authenticity of the data, and of developing tools to use that data. Then there’s the question of bringing outputs and outcomes.

So it's a constantly evolving scenario, where challenges keep shifting, but today, the variety and scale of Gati Shakti is helping us deal with these challenges with more ease than before.

M: Initially, it was a completely new concept. So, to take central ministries and states along was a herculean task. It took many rounds of capacity-building and orientation sessions to convince them. Initially, some of the states were apprehensive about resource allocation for the programme. There was a window of Rs 5,000 crore provided under the special central assistance component for PM Gati Shakti, which helped a lot.

Could you take us through the interactions that happen between the core policymakers and user ministries and departments using Gati Shakti? What has decision-making been like?

D: We've had 54 meetings of the Network Planning Group. These meetings are longer than the longest movie I have seen in recent days: <Oppenheimer> (laughs). It is a very important institutional mechanism to carry forward the vision of the Prime Minister. We have looked at close to 100 projects in the last one-and-a-half years, and the value of these projects is around Rs 6 trillion, because I'm not counting the energy corridor of the Railways (estimated at approximately Rs 5.5 trillion).

Secondly, the concept has evolved in this period from optimal alignment of a project to connectivity. The focus is on optimally connecting socio-economic nodes along the project area.

There is an amazing example from the Department of Telecommunications. They had planned their optic fibre cables and their telecom assets on the portal and they discovered that there were 30,000 villages where there was scope for 4G saturation. Now they are planning to take it all up using the road network, which they can visualise on the Gati Shakti portal as well.

(To Meena) You worked in Bihar in the past and handled rural development. How do you think Gati Shakti would have worked there?

M: Delays in implementation are primarily for three reasons – land acquisition, forest clearances, and clearances from other authorities and state governments. With NMP, land acquisition is smooth. Most of the states have now placed their digitised records and maps on the NMP portal. Had these tools and facilities been there earlier, several time and cost overruns could have been avoided.

How is the emergence of Gati Shakti impacting the employment scenario? Which ministries have been the best performers under the framework?

D: Laying of all-weather roads in Ladakh, planning of movement of labour from the villages to the Vadhvan Port (Maharashtra), development plans in Dholera (Ahmedabad), which will bring domestic and foreign investments, connectivity from Kolkata to Chittagong Port through the India-Bangladesh Protocol Route, which will entail dredging and movement through waterways, and the involvement of technology will all lead to creation of jobs.

There are direct and indirect benefits, and some of the ministries have done a lot better because they have started early – Railways, road transport and highways, telecom, MNRE (Ministry of New and Renewable Energy), power and shipping.

What is the role of technology in Gati Shakti and how do you plan on leveraging new concepts like AI?

D: We have our eyes and ears open to all new ideas. We started connecting with the IT industry and are having interactions with them. We already use geospatial technology. Even the Prime Minister mentioned while talking about Chandrayaan-3 that the contribution of Isro (Indian Space Research Organisation) in satellite enabling for PM Gati Shakti has been immense. Apart from existing satellite technology, the artificial intelligence edge will help us in predictive planning. We are exploring how technology can be used to make this a more demand-driven approach with projections for the next 20-30 years.

Allowing private players to access Gati Shakti data has been a matter of debate.

M: Coal mines are now being given on a commercial auction basis, and for any private investor to take a decision, there needs to be complete visibility. On PM Gati Shakti NMP, a coal block information portal has been prepared, which shows all required data layers like forest coverage, transmission lines, habitation. This information is available to investors to enable them to make an informed decision.

In this round of auctions, we have seen many investors using this data, which has come handy to them. We already allow private consultants working with our implementing agencies to use the database for planning purposes.

D: The Gati Shakti portal also houses data that can be sensitive. We are very clear on the data required by the private sector. We are also cognisant of the value that the private sector can bring. For instance, startups are finding solutions for us. At the B20 Summit, there was a conversation on how vehicle movement in the country can be integrated on the Gati Shakti portal. We are working within the existing framework to see how we can harness the intellectual capital and take it to a new level.

Is Gati Shakti a fully made-in-India application?

M: The Prime Minister, while he was the chief minister of Gujarat, had established BISAG-N (Bhaskaracharya Institute for Space Applications and Geoinformatics), which was working on large-scale geographical information systems (GIS). Many applications of GIS were being used by the Gujarat government. In that sense, it is fully an initiative of the Prime Minister.

D: Barring Germany, which has a limited geospatial application of such a system for its transport network, I have not come across anything like this, which has extensively onboarded the entire government at all levels. There is a lot of international interest in our approach and this system.

With international interest, would we be exporting Gati Shakti anytime soon?

D: We've already made a trip to Nepal where we had high-level meetings. We are also showcasing it to the South Asian region. There was a meeting at the Asian Development Bank headquarters in Manila, where we showcased it. There's another regional conference in Georgia, which will be attended by 35 countries, where we will be exhibiting Gati Shakti as an approach to regional connectivity. There is disillusionment with planning regional connectivity solely on a geographical basis, and there is interest in how spatial technology can be leveraged for it.