A Faster Track To Growth

Context: The PM Gati Shakti Scheme will transform Indian infrastructure and logistics.

Issues in Indian logistics sector

• Colonial legacy: The British colonial domination had developed the transport infrastructure mainly to mine out wealth from India and ship it to England. 
• Negligence in post-independence policy: The fractionated style of policy-making and execution held back economic development of India, leading to unequal distribution of wealth and opportunities. 
• Cost of Indian logistics remains high: The cost of Indian logistics remains high at 13-14% of GDP compared to developed nations at 8-10%.
• Modal mix is heavily skewed towards roads with 60-65% of transport happening via road compared to 25-30% in developed countries, prompting higher costs. 
• Excessive development on coal: As rail freight business are still coal based.
• Domestic waterways face numerous challenges due to high first- and last-mile costs, unavailability of return load in most cases, high voyage costs for specialised vessels and high repositioning costs of domestic containers, among others.

Significance of Gati Shakti Plan

• Synergise infrastructure development projects from multiple ministries under one master plan. 
• Optimisation of different modes of logistics to reduce freight costs and increase competitiveness, drive investment and create millions of jobs. 
• Leveraging technology and geospatial mapping to create an online dashboard departments and PSUs and private players have a bird’s eye view of each other’s planned development throughout the country.
• Increase India’s highway network to 2 lakh km and provision utility corridors for laying adjoining power and optical fibre cables, which will be a life-saver in times of natural disasters.
• Development of urban infrastructure by streamlining planning and approvals, and integrating civic amenities.
• Integration of additional gas pipelines: The PM Gati Shakti Plan will integrate an additional 15,000 km of gas pipelines.