From Projects to People: Modi's Infrastructure Reform, Says Gauba
New Delhi, October 26: In an article reflecting on 25 years of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's public life, NITI Aayog member and former Cabinet Secretary Rajiv Gauba has said that the way India conceives and executes infrastructure has changed substantially.
The Prime Minister's Office shared the article on Monday. It said that under Prime Minister Modi's leadership, infrastructure is now seen through the lens of citizens' needs and the economy's overall productivity, not as a set of disconnected projects.
Gauba described significant progress in railways, roads, ports and urban transport. Dedicated freight corridors, electrified rail routes, Vande Bharat services and modernised stations have, in his view, given the railway network a new identity.
At the same time, rapid growth in national highways, the opening of new expressways, the development of ports and the extension of metro networks have improved the country's connectivity, he wrote.
The more important change, Gauba argued, lies in how the state now looks at infrastructure. In the past, different departments and ministries developed infrastructure separately. But people use a road, a railway line, a port or a power supply as part of one system. A weakness in any single link can limit the gains from every other investment.
This is why Prime Minister Modi has treated infrastructure not only as physical assets but as a means of simplifying citizens' daily lives and boosting economic activity, he said.
Gauba also underlined that good implementation is as vital as good planning. Delays often arise from land acquisition, approvals, shifting of utilities, law and order matters and coordination between the Centre and the states. The PRAGATI platform was started to address these issues by bringing departments and authorities together to review projects and clear roadblocks.
He pointed out that PM Gati Shakti and PRAGATI are two notable examples of Prime Minister Modi's administrative thinking. Gati Shakti provides an integrated approach to the full infrastructure framework, while PRAGATI helps remove specific constraints in project execution.
According to Gauba, the approach shows that the government can keep sight of large goals while giving equal attention to problems on the ground.
In his conclusion, he said the most important achievement of the Prime Minister's 25 years in public life is not just the construction of roads, rail lines or other physical assets. It is the transformation of the state's thinking, which has established infrastructure as an integrated, citizen-centric and results-oriented system. He said this is helping deliver better services to citizens while raising the country's economic productivity.