India’s recent progress in infrastructure development is often described through numbers— kilometres of highways built, airports operationalised, or capital expenditure expanded. These indicators are important and impressive, but they only partially explain the transformation underway. Equally consequential has been a change in how large public projects are governed, coordinated and executed. Over the past decade, this shift has altered outcomes across sectors, particularly for projects long constrained by administrative fragmentation and delayed decisionmaking.
When the present government assumed office in 2014, the infrastructure sector was marked by significant stress. Projects worth nearly ₹8.8 lakh crore—about eight per cent of GDP—were stalled. Infrastructure-linked non-performing assets had crossed 11 per cent, and delays in land acquisition, environmental and forest clearances, and inter-agency coordination had become systemic. The policy challenge was therefore not limited to expanding investment; it required correcting institutional weaknesses that impeded execution.
It was in this context that PRAGATI (Pro-Active Governance and Timely Implementation) was introduced in March 2015. Conceived as a structured, whole-of-government review mechanism chaired by the Prime Minister, PRAGATI sought to address persistent bottlenecks through regular monitoring and coordinated resolution. Its purpose was straightforward: to ensure that large public projects did not remain stalled due to avoidable administrative delays.
The Prime Minister’s role in chairing these reviews lent authority and urgency to the process. More importantly, it signalled that execution and timelines mattered, and that unresolved coordination issues would not be allowed to drift indefinitely. At the same time, PRAGATI was designed to function through existing institutional channels, strengthening accountability across ministries, states, and district administrations rather than bypassing them.
The crucial distinction that set PRAGATI apart from other governance mechanisms was the singleminded focus of the Prime Minister, his grasp of sectoral detail, and the unwavering regularity of reviews. Three-hour sessions held every month, personally chaired by the Prime Minister, sent shockwaves through the administrative system. When the highest executive authority, armed with meticulous preparation, directly confronts inaction and blame-shifting, lethargy and red tape have no place to hide. These meetings combined firm rebukes, pointed exposure of inconsistencies, and data-driven challenges to recalcitrant officials, with appeals reminding them of their duty to the nation. The outcome has been a remarkable surge in infrastructure delivery over the past decade, a momentum that continues.
Supported by a digital project monitoring platform, PRAGATI enabled systematic tracking of issues and time-bound follow-up. Responsibilities were clearly assigned—from secretaries of central ministries and state chief secretaries to district collectors and field-level officers—reducing ambiguity in ownership, particularly where issues cut across jurisdictions.
The impact of this change is best understood not only through aggregated data, but also through individual project trajectories. One such example is the Bhadrachalam–Kovur railway line. The foundation stone was laid in 1999, when I was the District Magistrate there. For nearly eighteen years thereafter, the project saw little progress, with no meaningful allocation or sanction, despite its regional importance. Only after PRAGATI reviews began flagging such long-pending projects did momentum return. In 2022, a major portion of the line was finally inaugurated—an outcome reflecting not a change in technical feasibility, but in institutional attention and follow-through.
A similar shift was visible in the early months of PRAGATI itself. In 2015, while visiting the offices of MMRDA and CIDCO to study town planning schemes in the Mumbai metropolitan region, I was perplexed by the unusual urgency in the corridors. Officials were fielding tense enquiries ahead of a PRAGATI meeting scheduled for that afternoon. At issue was a clearance from the Ministry of Environment for the Navi Mumbai International Airport—pending for several years without resolution. Shortly before the meeting, the approval arrived by fax. The clearance itself was not the achievement; what had changed was the expectation that long-pending decisions would now be scrutinized and explained.
Over the past decade, PRAGATI has reviewed and facilitated progress on infrastructure projects worth over ₹85 lakh crore across transport, power and social sectors, resolving more than 3,000 issues across 382 projects. These figures reflect not only scale, but a move towards more predictable and coordinated execution.
The transport sector, particularly national highways, illustrates this clearly. Through PRAGATI, 325 projects of the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, valued at approximately ₹4.5 lakh crore, were taken up for focused intervention. Issues related to land acquisition, forest and wildlife clearances, and utility shifting were resolved with a success rate exceeding 95 per cent. The average time to address such constraints fell from over a year to less than three months.
These governance improvements translated into tangible outcomes. Projects such as the Delhi– Mumbai Expressway, Urban Extension Road-II in Delhi, and the Ambala–Kotputli High-Speed Corridor progressed steadily after prolonged delays. Over this period, the pace of highway construction rose from about 12 km per day in 2014 to around 35 km per day, reflecting both higher capacity and improved coordination.
PRAGATI also operated alongside a broader set of reforms strengthening the infrastructure lifecycle. Integrated planning under the PM GatiShakti National Master Plan reduced siloed decision-making. Digital platforms for land acquisition and environmental clearances shortened approval timelines, while reforms in contracting, dispute resolution and project-readiness norms improved risk allocation and private-sector confidence.
It also heralded a new phase in cooperative federalism. Setting aside political differences, several state governments used this forum to accelerate infrastructure development, translating the principle of Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikaas into administrative practice.
Taken together, these measures have supported a sustained increase in public capital expenditure and a more consistent delivery pipeline, with outcomes visible across highways, railways, airports and urban transport systems. The broader lesson is clear: infrastructure delivery depends as much on governance design as on financial commitment.
As India moves towards Vision 2047, the scale of planned infrastructure expansion will place increasing demands on institutional capacity. Sustaining progress will require embedding these governance practices more deeply across sectors and states. In this sense, PRAGATI is best understood not as a one-time intervention, but as part of a continuing effort to align ambition with execution in India’s infrastructure programme.
Courtesy PIB, Srinagar
(The author is Former Secretary of MoRTH.)
