Building national infrastructure through Digitisation and Spatial Intelligence

PM Gati Shakti National Mission : Building national infrastructure through Digitisation and Spatial Intelligence

Building Infrastructure to spur Indian economic growth

In 1933, when the American economy looked bleak, President Roosevelt in his famous fireside chat from Washington, announced “A New Deal for the American people”, a new plan to lift the country off it’s feet post the Great Depression. At the heart of this plan was the vision to completely overhaul and re-build the national infrastructure - to boost connectivity, businesses and job creation. Over the course of the next 8-years, the program employed approximately 8.5 million people and built nearly 600,000 miles of rural roads, 67,000 miles of urban streets, 122,000 bridges, 1,000 tunnels, 1,050 airfields, 4,000 airport buildings and 20,000 other state, county and local government buildings.

Infrastructure has often been the foundation upon which countries transform themselves. For instance, in the post World War II Japan, where transit oriented development was crucial. Or how between 1960-1990,?investment in infrastructure programs accounted for over 50% of South Korea’s total public expenditure, resulting in an average economic growth rate of 10% per annum. China too, between 1980-2010 invested over 50% of it’s infrastructure budget to developing highways, urban roads and bridges – fuelling their growth and dominance in the current era.?

Today, India however, is crippled with inadequate transportation infrastructure, lack of adequate inter-modal connectivity and unplanned transportation routes that severely effect the business output at a national level. India ranks 44th in logistics performance, with the cost of logistics being between 14%-15% while the global average stands at around 8%. With nearly 12 million Kirana stores, India also has a highly unfragmented retail sector, which results in convoluted supply chains and?hampers economies of scale from setting in.

While railways remains the more efficient means of transportation for logistics, 64% of the freight in India moves through roads. While roadways are over-burdened that eventually lead to delays and higher costs, waterways, rail, and sea networks continue to remain under-utilised. With port handling of maritime containers set to quadruple by 2030 and air freight set to triple within the next two decades, a more planned and connected infrastructure is imperative to achieving growth.

For India, investments in infrastructure development, including building robust multi-modal connectivity, will be the backbone to boosting manufacturing to 25% of GDP and achieving the vision of?a $5T economy by 2025. Beyond the direct impact of efficient supply chains and lowered logistics costs, this will have a ripple effect in spurring growth. Public investments such as in infrastructure have a 2.5x-3x multiplier effect on the Indian economy, much higher than any other form of public spending. Direct savings from better infrastructure has shown to significantly increase employment across industries. For every 10 % increase in savings due to improvement of roads, there is a direct uptick on employment — 1.9 % increase in agro-allied regions, 3.7 % in industrial and 5.6 % in services industries.

PM GatiShakti National Mission -?A roadmap for infrastructural change.

In October 2021, the government announced the launch of PM Gati Shakti National Mission, a 100 lakh crore project to carry out holistic infrastructure development across the country.

PM Gati Shakti is a digital platform, which has been tasked with breaking inter-departmental silos and heading infrastructure planning, implementation and monitoring. It will bring together 16 ministries for integrated planning and implementation of infrastructure connectivity projects.

The portal will combine more than 400 data layers, informing not just the existing and proposed infrastructure but also information about the forest land and available industrial estate. To execute on this scale and vision, the Bhaskaracharya National Institute for Space Applications and Geoinformatics has prepared a digital master planning tool. The platform combines over 200 Geographic Information System (GIS) layers, to incorporate the data of projects under each ministry in a single window for planning, reviewing and monitoring. Satellite imagery that is provided by ISRO will maintain real-time overview, with base maps being provided by the Survey of India. The portal will also provide open access to help developers digitally to identify the most optimal route by giving an accurate location of railway line crossings, highways, other under construction infrastructure projects and in identifying RoW (right of way) permits and consent needed.

PM Gati Shakti aims to create a robust tool for planning, execution and overview of national infrastructural capabilities, while minimising bureaucratic slowdowns in efficiency and time.

The National Mission program aims to provide multi-modal interconnectivity to key economic zones in the country, by parallel development of key infrastructural capabilities:

·??????Railways – Increase cargo load from 1,210 ?million tonnes to 1,600 million tonnes by 2024-25, building 2 dedicated freight corridors and decongestion of 51% of railway lines

·??????Roads - build National Highways of 2 lakh km, complete 4 or 6 lane National Highways of 5,590 km along coastal areas, and connect all state capitals in north-east

·??????Ports - increase the total cargo capacity from 1,281 metric tonnes per annum to 1,759 metric tonnes by 2024-25

·??????Aviation - double the existing footprint with a total of 220 Airports, Heliports and Water Aerodromes by 2025

·??????Double gas-pipeline connectivity to 34,500 km by 2024-25, connecting major industrial demand and supply centres

·??????Increase the renewable energy capacity from 87GW to 225GW

The program will also build 22 Greenfield expressways, 23 other major infrastructure and highway projects and 35 Multi-Modal Logistics Parks. With the PM Gati Shakthi Mission, the government is aiming to provide greater national connectivity at half the cost of logistics to provide a boost to manufacturing and exports.

At Kalaari Connect, I was joined by my esteemed, Additional Secretary of Highways Shri. Amit Ghosh, who spoke about the vision of the PM Gati Shakthi National Mission and highlighted the opportunity for GIS & remote-sensing based start-ups to capture large contracts and provide the intelligence needed to co-ordinate, plan and execute national programs.