INDIA’S GATI SHAKTI MASTER PLAN

Recently, the government of India has launched the ambitions Gati Shakti Scheme or National plan for multi-modal connectivity, with the aim of coordinated planning and execution of infrastructure projects to bring down logistics costs. Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 13th Oct 2021, Wednesday launched a ₹100 lakh-crore PM Gati Shakti National Plan for Multi-Modal connectivity in the country. Lauding Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the launch of the Pradhan Mantri Gati Shakti Masterplan, TV Narendran, President of Confederation of Indian Industry, stated that “The launch of PM Gati Shakti National Master Plan will be a gamechanger for industry and would harness the potential of the industry in line with the PM’s vision of scale and speed. The plan is laser-like in its makeover of India’s infrastructure and is expected to impart significant impetus to national development”. Narendran added, “Coming close on the heels of the National Infrastructure Pipeline and the National Monetization plan, the Gati Shakti vision would underscore the primacy of place accorded by the Prime Minister to develop world-class infrastructure facilities which are crucial in improving business sentiment and speed up the country’s vision to emerge as a US$ 5 trillion economy in near future”.

SIGNIFICANCE OF GATI SHAKTI MASTER PLAN

PM Modi pegged the project as a source of employment opportunities for youth in the future. PM Modi said that the Gati Shakti plan will help raise the global profile of local manufacturers and help them compete with their counterparts worldwide. It also raises the possibility of a new future economic zone. Gati Shakti will help cut logistic costs, increase cargo handling capacity at ports, and reduce the turnaround time, Modi said here, addressing a gathering after inaugurating a new exhibition complex at Pragati Maidan. The idea is to lend more power and speed to projects by connecting all concerned departments on one platform he said. India’s projects were earlier a victim of interministerial delays, multiple stakeholders, and a culture to work in silos. This led to cost overruns and hampered decision-making in turn, delaying the projects and development for good. This plan would cut down such loopholes and consolidate the infrastructure projects in some specific corridors without getting into various long-timed approved processes. There would also be a Geographic Information System (GIS) enabled digital platform under Gati Sakti that would be useful for gathering relevant information on any region’s topography, satellite images, and physical features. This would help the ministries to save funds and approve projects timely as well. By building these across different parts of the country, India could achieve the dream of becoming the world’s business capital. Modi said “Those who are our private players do not know whether the road is going to pass through here, or a canal is going to be built there, or a power station will come up somewhere. The solution to all these problems lies in Gati Shakti”. He said that nothing that taxpayers’ money was wasted in the past by way of delayed projects and lack of inter-departmental coordination, the government is now nurturing work of completing projects in time and ahead of time by bringing departments together.

HOW WILL THE GATI SAHKTI PLATFORM WORK? 

The Prime Minister stressed that the people of India, Indian industry, Indian businesses, Indian manufacturers, and farmers are at the center of this great campaign of Gati Shakti. It will give new energy to the present and future generations of India to build India of the 21st  Century and will remove the obstacles in the path. PM Gati Shakti- National Master Plan, a digital platform that will bring 16 ministers and departments together for multi-modal connectivity to economic Zones. It will incorporate the infrastructure schemes of various Union Ministers and state governments- Bharatmala, Sagarmala, UDAN, Inland waterways, dry/land ports, etc. Economic Zones such as textile, Pharmaceutical, and fishing clusters, electronic parks defense and Industrial corridors, and agriculture zones will be covered to improve connectivity. Technology including spatial planning tools with ISRO imagery developed by the Shankaracharya National Institute for Space Application and Geoinformatics (BISAG-N) will be leveraged. BISAG-N functions under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY).

CHALLENGES IN GATI SHAKTI         

The cooperation between central and state governments is a big challenge since both have to work together in land acquisition for the projects. Selecting land for projects without negatively impacting the environment and the people living in the areas is also a big challenge. PM Modi had stressed the wide gap between macro planning and micro implementation, problems of lack of coordination, lack of advanced information, and how to think and work in a silo were leading to hampered construction and wastage of budget. Construction of large projects results in the uprooting of thousands of trees which causes natural calamities and environmental hazards also.

TARGETS UNDER GATI SHAKTI NATIONAL MISSION

A total of 11 Industrial Corridors with a defense turnover potential of ₹170,000 crores as well as electronics clusters and 109 pharma clusters will be fast-tracked by 2024-25. In Civil Aviation, the target is to double the existing aviation footprint to have to total of 220 airports, heliports, and water aerodromes by 2025 which would mean building an additional 109 such facilities by then. In shipping, the national master plan says the target by 2024-25 to have a total cargo capacity to the handled at the ports at 1,759 MMTPA from 1,282 MMTPA in 2020. The National Networking group will consist of experts or officials from all the stakeholder departments. The Department of Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade will be the modal agency. The group will be responsible for sharing their specific action plan for 2020-21 to 2024-25 with each other for facilitating the integration of networks, enhancing optimization through modification/ expansion/ new network creation to avoid duplication of works for the holistic development of any region as well as reducing to gastric costs through micro-plan detailing.

CONCLUSION 

• The Gati Shakti will boost economic growth, attract foreign investments and enhance the country’s global competitiveness thereby enabling the smooth transportation of goods people, and services and creating employment opportunities. Thus, PM Gati Shakti will help India to realize its dream of becoming the “business capital” of the world. But all the challenges must be addressed on priority for the project to be a success.