Infrastructure Development in the Tech-ade

India is on a roll with infrastructure development in the country, thanks to 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. Addressing the issues like the time taking approval process, multiplicity of regulatory clearances, etc., has also been a priority.It all starts from conceiving the fact that aesthetics is a predominant aspect of creating smart cities.

On the other hand, smart cities should also mean better connectivity and, in turn, smarter road infrastructure to and from the city. Nitin Gadkari, Minister of Road Transport and Highways of India, 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. While the pace of national highway(NH) construction in the country had touched a record 37 km per day in 2020-21, it had slowed to 28.64 km a day in 2021-22, due to COVID-19 pandemic related disruptions and a longer than usual monsoon in some parts of the country.

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.