A Road to Progress

From building highways that can land giant aircraft to developing nearly 50 KM of highway per day, road construction in India continues to make headlines. Alongside the department head Nitin Gadkari, we can thank several insightful initiatives, including PM Gati Shakti, the national master plan for multi modal connectivity to the fast tracking metro & smart city development. Gati Shakti is widely regarded as a panacea to solve the lack of coordination between different Departments, which caused a myriad of hindrances in infrastructure development.

For example, once a road was constructed, other agencies dug up the constructed road again for activities like laying underground cables, gas pipelines, etc. This not only caused great inconvenience but was also a wasteful expenditure. The government had put efforts in place to increase coordination and avoid silos so that all cables, pipelines, etc., could be laid simultaneously. On the other hand, smart cities should also mean better connectivity and, in turn, smarter road infrastructure to and from the city. Gadkari is concocting a silent revolution in Road development. According to the data divulged by the NHAI, the annual average construction of national highways has recorded an 83 percent spike compared to the pace of highway construction before Gadkari’s time. Construction of national highways reached its highest in February, when the Centre developed 42.03 kilometers of highways per day, according to Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) data. This is over 7 percent less than the same period last year. So what changed? The answer to this question lies in the government’s tech-savvy mindset that triggered a complete digital transformation of infrastructure projects. The technology advantage in engineering has also helped significantly.