Relevance: GS-2: Government policies and interventions for development in various sectors and issues arising out of their design and implementation.

Relevance: GS-3: Infrastructure: Energy, Ports, Roads, Airports, Railways, etc.

Key Phrases: $5 trillion economy, Ease of Living and Doing Business, National Infrastructure, National Monetisation Pipeline, Coordination and Integration of Data Systems, Data Collection Plan, Timely Monitoring and Progress, Quality of Data

Context:

• India’s march towards a $5 trillion economy hinges on infrastructure.
• The ease of living and doing business depends critically on the infrastructure available in our economy.

Key Highlights:

• The discussions regarding infrastructure are centred around two big questions:
  1. Is India investing adequately in infrastructure?
     • This question has no conclusive answers, given the dynamic relationship between economic growth and demand for infrastructure.
  2. Do our investments result in timely completion of infra projects?
     • For efficient use of the available capital, the timely completion of infra projects requires regular monitoring and time-to-time course corrections.
     • Such monitoring requires regular collection of data on specified indicators of the extent of progress.
     • This is a demanding task that has been rather neglected in the past, as traditional ‘implementation monitoring’ is primarily concerned with activities, inputs, and immediate outputs.

ROLE OF DATA IN INFRA-PROJECTS:

Role of Timely data on Project Status:

• With the multiplicity of implementing agencies the importance of timely data rises.
• Broadly, we can classify big infrastructure projects as implemented by the Centre, States, private agencies, both Centre and States with varying levels of accountability for completion, across sectors.
• Considering this, improved data quality would lead to better decision-making across governments, decrease risk, and help improve India’s record of timely completion.

Relevance of Progress Data from Credible Data Source:

• High-quality data on the progress of the project from a dedicated credible source will reduce the need for additional agencies for data collection.
• It will also provide greater depth, as such agencies would be able to collect information on a regular basis, while evaluators typically only collect data at set points.

Attributes of the data collected on the State of Infrastructure projects:

1. Accuracy:
   • There is a dire need for accuracy, in terms of how well the data describe the real state of progress as inaccurate data creates leads to incorrect conclusions thereby stalling the announcement of new projects.
2. Holistic:
   • There should be completeness in the data collected; that is, everything that is supposed to be collected should be available as incomplete data do not yield usable insights, leading to time and cost overruns.
3. Timeliness:
   • Data becomes less useful and less accurate as time goes on.
   • Stale data can lead to actions taken that do not reflect the current reality.

What are the challenges associated with collecting High Quality Data?

1. Coordination and Integration of Data systems:
   • The agencies involved require better coordination and integration of data systems across various Departments or Ministries which may also require proper tools or processes put in place.
2. Data Collection Plan:
   • Given that much of the monitoring takes place at the Centre’s level and the bulk of data generation takes place in States, there exists a need for a concerted effort to coordinate data collection and reporting and improve data quality.
   • This requires a data collection plan, roles of all personnel involved in collecting the data with clarity on methods of communication between different agencies involved.
3. Data integration and distribution across the Stakeholders:
   • The challenge lies in data integration and distribution across various tiers of Governments, Ministries, and Departments, as data quality issues may emerge in this process, especially if software platforms differ.

Way Forward:

1. Timely Monitoring and Progress:
   • Given the gestation periods of mega projects, timely monitoring and progress rectifications are imperative.
   • Private entities have their own mechanisms to ensure timely project completion, the good practices of which could be adopted by the Government.
   • Considering the extent of debt financing in infra projects and cost inflation, the direct costs of project delays mount over time, and if we account for indirect costs too, then the accumulated depletion of economic benefits is huge.
   • Monitoring is an attempt to plug these leakages and all stakeholders will need to work in tandem for its success.
2. Timely Availability of Data:
   • A prerequisite for successful monitoring is the timely availability of high-quality data.
   • As data on project progress and budgets undergo revisions, a set of guidelines for data correction should be evolved;
   • Conventions and uniform practices for data correction are needed.
   • These must define who is responsible for correcting and refining data and the methods they should use to fix it.
   • It is equally important for States to report data on time.
   • The opportunity cost of capital for projects vulnerable to time and cost over-runs must be emphasised to nudge States on that score.
3. Robust data System:
   • A robust data system would ensure that targets of the National Infrastructure Pipeline are achieved.
   • Setting data quality standards should also be an integral part of the data collection plan. This requires clarity on what data to keep, what to get rid of, and what to correct for the sake of consistency across Ministries and Departments.

Conclusion:

• Infrastructure projects act as the lifeline for the economic development of country with strong forward and backward linkages proving a multiplier effect to the growth of different sectors.
• Therefore, robustness and resilience of key infrastructure projects are of utmost importance.
• Thus, we need reliable reports on the factors hampering the progress of big projects.
• An inventory of these factors would help decision-makers to delineate patterns and account for these, right from the project planning stage.

Recent Initiatives related to Infrastructure Development

PM Gati Shakti Scheme

• The Gati Shakti is a national master plan aimed at the coordinated planning and execution of infrastructure projects in India to reduce logistics costs.
• This digital platform will bring 16 ministries and departments of the Government of India together including Railways and the Roadways.
• It is a project for developing of ‘holistic infrastructure’ in the country with an estimated cost of Rs.100 lakh-crore.
• The existing infrastructure schemes under various Ministries will be incorporated into this plan, including Sagarmala, Bharatmala, UDAN scheme, inland waterways, etc.
• The master plan will also cover economic zones such as pharmaceutical clusters, textile clusters, defence corridors, industrial corridors, electronic parks, fishing clusters, and agri zones.
• It will also leverage technology extensively including spatial planning tools with ISRO imagery developed by BiSAG-N.
• It will provide the public and business community information regarding the upcoming connectivity projects, other business hubs, industrial areas and the surrounding environment.
• The program has been launched as an umbrella integrator of ₹111-lakh crore worth of projects under the National Infrastructure Pipeline (NIP) for 2020-25.

National Infrastructure Pipeline (NIP)

• National Infrastructure Pipeline (NIP) was launched with a projected infrastructure investment of around 111 lakh crore (US$ 1.5 Trillion) during 2020-2025 to provide world-class infrastructure across the country. Its task force was headed by Atanu Chakraborty.
• Launched with 6,835 projects, it has expanded to over 9,000 projects covering 34 infrastructure sub-sectors.
• During the fiscals 2020 to 2025, sectors such as Energy (24%), Roads (19%), Urban (16%), and Railways (13%) amount to around 70% of the projected capital expenditure in infrastructure in India
• The Centre, States and the private sector will share the capital expenditure in a 39:39:22 formula.

National Monetization Pipeline (NMP)

• NITI Aayog has developed the pipeline, in consultation with infrastructure line Ministries, based on the mandate for 'Asset Monetisation' under Union Budget 2021-22. NMP estimates aggregate monetisation potential of Rs 6.0 lakh crores through core assets of the Central Government, over a four-year period, from FY 2022 to FY 2025.
• Asset monetisation, based on the philosophy of Creation through Monetisation, is aimed at tapping private sector investment for new infrastructure creation.This is necessary for creating employment opportunities, thereby enabling high economic growth and seamlessly integrating the rural and semi-urban areas for overall public welfare.

What is a Brownfield Project?

• Projects where the site is already partly developed with the required infrastructure. Any New development starts over whatever is available. Oil & Gas, new expansion projects, revamp projects, yield improvement projects, etc. comes under brownfield projects.

What is a Greenfield Project?

• A greenfield project starts afresh from scratch. For oil and gas, completely new projects on undeveloped places, like a new refinery construction, setting up of a chemical or petrochemical plant, etc. falls under greenfield project.

Source: Live-Mint

Mains Question:

Q. Timely completion of infra projects in India is a big challenge, which can be resolved with the help of high-quality real time data, from credible source. Discuss (250 words).