ZOOMING AHEAD
The Modi government pulled the infrastructure sector out of the morass it was in. This is reflected in the eyepopping numbers and rise in global rankings
SOON AFTER ASSUM ING OFFICE IN 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi made it clear that his government’s vision for infrastructure, especially in roads, railways, ports and shipping, involved breaking the cycle of under-investment that had plagued these critical sectors for years. A decade on, India now has a 2,500km Dedicated Freight Corridor (DFC) on which goods move with double the speed of a conventional rail network. Meanwhile, the Vande Bharat trains offer better comfort and faster travel to passengers.
The railways saw annual average capital expenditure of Rs 1.3 lakh crore in the last decade, three times what it was in the 2009-14 period. Total capex in the railways has seen some Rs 15 lakh crore in investments, including Rs 2.4 lakh crore this fiscal. Some 26,000 km of new tracks have been laid since 2014, at a rate of 7.8 km per day. Around 60,814 km of track, or over 90 per cent of the broad gauge routes, is now electrified (over 37,000 km in the last decade).
The highways sector, headed by Union minister Nitin Gadkari since 2014, continues to make headlines for the pace of construction, which stands at 30 km a day now. In the past decade, the country’s national highways network has gone up from 91,287 km to 1.46 lakh km and the government’s investment is up almost 10-fold to Rs 2.78 lakh crore (2024-25). Some of the flagship highway corridors include the Delhi-Mumbai Expressway, Delhi-Meerut Expressway, the Atal tunnel in Himachal Pradesh and the renamed S.P. Mookerjee tunnel linking Jammu and Kashmir—all providing all-weather connectivity around the year.
A similar story played out in ports and shipping. The ambitious Sagarmala project has seen ‘port-led’ development involving modernisation of existing ports and building of last-mile connectivity. The result: annual volume of cargo handled has increased by 43 per cent from 2013 levels to cross 800 million metric tonnes (MMT) now. Annual capacity doubled to 1,617 MMT in the same period.
The number of operational inland waterways is also up, from eight in 2013 to 24 now and, as a result, the annual volume of cargo handled on them too has risen, from 6.9 to 126.2 MMT—a massive 1,731 per cent. India now ranks 22nd in the International Shipment category, as against 44th in 2014.
Meanwhile, the National Infrastructure Pipeline (NIP)—the comprehensive plan for investing in various core-sector projects like roads, railways, energy and urban development—to upgrade the country’s infrastructure has seen around Rs 100 lakh crore pumped in between 2019 and 2025. Launched in 2019, the NIP now has 9,288 projects under way with an outlay of Rs 109 lakh crore. ■