PM Gati Shakti
National Master Plan (NMP) for Multimodal Connectivity
Introduction – The Idea behind Gati Shakti
India has often faced a challenge in infrastructure building: different departments working in silos.
- For example, Railways may build a line, but the connecting road project gets delayed.
- Ports may be modernized, but the supporting highways aren’t ready.
This leads to time and cost overruns, inefficiency, and waste of public money.
To solve this, the government launched PM Gati Shakti – National Master Plan (NMP) in 2021.
👉 Its purpose: To integrate infrastructure planning and execution across ministries so that projects are faster, cheaper, and more effective.
Purpose and Objective
- Purpose: Improve industrial productivity and create employment opportunities through better connectivity.
- Objective: Provide multimodal connectivity—that is, ensuring smooth movement of goods and people by linking railways, roads, ports, airports, waterways, and mass transport systems in a coordinated way.
Driving Engines of Gati Shakti
The plan rests on 7 key infrastructure engines:
- Railways
- Roads
- Ports
- Waterways
- Airports
- Mass Transport
- Logistics Infrastructure
Together, they form the backbone of India’s economic zones and industrial hubs.
Salient Features
(a) Background and Scale
- Launched in 2021, with a huge outlay of ₹100 lakh crore.
- Aimed at transforming India’s infrastructural landscape with a sustainable, holistic, and coordinated approach.
(b) Digital Platform
- Gati Shakti is not just a policy—it is a digital platform that integrates all ministries.
- It allows coordinated planning and execution of projects, avoiding duplication.
- This reflects the “Whole of the Government Approach”—different ministries working together on one platform.
(c) Geo-Mapping
- A central feature of Gati Shakti is dynamic geo-mapping of infrastructure projects.
- This is done by BiSAG-N (Bhaskaracharya National Institute for Space Applications and Geoinformatics).
- Hosted on the Government of India’s cloud platform MEGHRAJ, using open-source technology.
- The map updates projects in real-time—so everyone can see progress and bottlenecks.
(d) Data Updation
- Each ministry has its own login ID to update data periodically.
- The Logistics Division of the Ministry of Commerce & Industry (MoCI) assists all stakeholders in maintaining their databases.
(e) Intersectoral Convergence
- So far, 14 Social Sector Ministries/Departments have been onboarded.
- This ensures inter-ministerial convergence so that social as well as physical infrastructure projects are aligned.
Scope
- Unlike earlier programmes, Gati Shakti is not limited to physical infrastructure (like roads and railways).
- It also covers social infrastructure projects—such as schools, hospitals, and community development facilities—where connectivity is equally important.
Benefits
- Breaks departmental silos → Ministries no longer work in isolation.
- Reduces delays → Projects can be coordinated, avoiding mismatches.
- Saves cost → Eliminates duplication of work.
- Boosts economy → Better logistics and transport improve industrial productivity and create jobs.
✅ In summary:
PM Gati Shakti NMP, launched in 2021 with ₹100 lakh crore, is a digital, integrated, and coordinated infrastructure master plan. By bringing railways, roads, ports, airports, waterways, and logistics onto one platform with real-time geo-mapping, it seeks to provide multimodal connectivity to economic zones, improve industrial productivity, generate employment, and reduce delays and costs in project implementation.