12 Most Impactful Infrastructure Projects In India Since Independence — Infravisioning

Vinayak Chatterjee's Infravisioning video series analyses and explains developments in India’s infrastructure sector to the BQ Prime audience.

Edited excerpts of the video:

Here we list out and discuss the 12 most impactful infrastructure projects in India since independence.

At the top of the list, or number one, are the two big multipurpose hydroelectric projects—Bhakra Nangal and Damodar Valley Corp. Completed in 1963, it was actually initiated in 1948.

The Bhakra Nangal project on the Sutlej river in Himachal Pradesh is one of the oldest development projects for river valleys established after independence. Its construction, which started in 1953, was completed in 1963 at a cost of Rs 245 crore, which seems rather small today. 

The then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru dedicated the dam to the nation, calling such projects executed by the public sector then, as the temples of modern India. 

The dam provides water for irrigation in Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and Gujarat, in addition to generating hydroelectric power for these states.

The Damodar Valley Corp.—DVC—which operates in the Damodar river area of West Bengal and Jharkhand came into existence on July 7,1948. It was the first multi-purpose river valley project of independent India, formed with the central government and the governments of Bihar, later Jharkhand and West Bengal, participating in it.

Number two, the Indira Gandhi Canal—formally called the Rajasthan Canal—was conceived in 1948. The 650-kilometre Indira Gandhi Canal is the longest canal in India. It starts at the Harike Barrage in Punjab and ends in the irrigation facilities in the Thar Desert of western Rajasthan.

Conceived in 1948, with an aim to green the semi-arid and arid areas of Rajasthan, that canal irrigates 29 lakh acres annually. The project's construction commenced in 1952, and the last portion was completed in 2010.

The main 445-kilometre-long Rajasthan Canal starts after a feeder canal stretching 167 kilometres through Punjab and Haryana and another 37 kilometres in Rajasthan.

Number three on the list, the Telecom Revolution. Sam Pitroda led C-DOT—Centre for Development of Telematics—and the STD booths that we were all familiar with, to the current penetration of mobile phones.

India has seen a giant leap in telecommunication across the last four decades. Thanks also to government policies that allowed market entry of private players in a sector dominated by lumbering PSUs.

Coming to number four, it's the Railways—the Konkan Railway. The first train ran in 1998. The Konkan coast of India did not have a railway link for most of the modern era. The Konkan Railway, one of the 19 railway zones in India, was conceived to bridge this gap. The 756-kilometre-long railway line connects Maharashtra, Goa and Karnataka. The first train on the completed track ran on Jan. 26, 1998. The project was one of the most challenging in the history of Indian Railways, and the man at the helm, E Sreedharan is famed for having completed it in record time.

Number five, the Mumbai-Pune Expressway.  This was fully operationalised in 2002. The Mumbai-Pune Expressway, officially Yashwantrao Chavan Expressway, is India's first six-lane wide, concrete, access control toll expressway, spanning a distance of 94.5 kilometres.

It has reduced travel time by two hours in comparison to the old highway. The expressway, which was fully operationalised in 2002, introduced new levels of speed and safety in automobile transportation to Indian roads and remains one of India’s busiest roads currently.

We now reach number six on our list of the most impressive and impactful infrastructure projects since independence and what could be better than the National Highways Development Programme.

The National Highways Development Programme was launched in 1998 with the objective of developing roads of international standards that facilitate the smooth flow of traffic. It envisaged the creation of roads with enhanced safety features, better riding surface, grid separators and other salient features. National Highways constitute only 2% of the total road length in the country, but today it carries 40% of the total traffic. The entire programme is being implemented by the National Highways Authority of India in seven phases. It is the largest unified and managed roads programme in the world.

Number seven, the Delhi Metro. The first corridor opened in 2002. The Delhi Metro was built and operated by the Delhi Metro Rail Corp. of the mass rapid transit system serving Delhi and its satellite cities of Ghaziabad, Faridabad, Gurugram, Noida, Bahadurgarh, Ballabgarh in the National Capital region.

The network consists of 10 colour-coded lines serving 255 stations with a total length of 348 kilometres. It is by far the largest and busiest metro rail system in India and the second oldest after the Kolkata Metro. Delhi Metro showed the way to many other cities and today, with its example, India has 23 metro rail projects.

Number eight on our list is the National Power Grid. Very few are aware of this very powerful infrastructure development in our country. It was completed in 2013. The National Grid is a high-voltage electricity transmission network built over the years, connecting power stations and major substations and ensuring that electricity generated anywhere in India can be used to satisfy demand anywhere else. 

Owned and maintained by the state-owned Power Grid Corp. of India and operated by the state-owned Power System Operation Corp. Ltd. or POSOCO, it is one of the largest operational synchronous grids in the world, with 371 GW of power transmission capacity as on June 30, 2020. It is believed that India's national power transmission grid creates a unified power market that is bigger and more efficient than Europe’s.

Moving on now, in the aviation sector, number nine on our list is the privatisation of airports. The idea of modernising Delhi and Mumbai airports was first considered by the Airport Authority of India in 1996. In September 2003, the central government approved a long-term lease by joint venture route with 74% equity through a private consortium and 26% with the AAI.

In 2020, the government had conducted an auction to privatise six more airports. In the second round of auctions, the government decided to privatise 13 airports.

Recently, the centre has unveiled its plans to privatise 25 airports in the next five years under the National Monetisation plan. The first such privatised airports were, of course, Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Kochi, managed under this PPP framework.

We now come to number 10 in our list of the most impactful infrastructure projects since independence, and it is the Zojila Tunnel in Jammu and Kashmir. The last phase is set to be completed in 2025. This 14.15-kilometre-long tunnel is the first of its kind tunnel project in the Himalayas, given the challenging geographical conditions.

It will be the highest tunnel at an altitude of 11,578 feet. It is also set to become the longest road tunnel in India, and the longest bi-directional tunnel in Asia, providing connectivity between Srinagar and Leh via Drass and Kargil on the National Highway-1.

The last phase of the construction work is expected to be completed in September 2025, ahead of its deadline of November 2026. Once the final tube of the project is completed, the 32-kilometre distance from Sonmarg to Minamarg will be covered in less than 40 minutes, instead of the current four hours.

Number 11, something that benefits Indians across the length and breadth of the country is the electricity connection for all. Launched in 2017, the Pradhan Mantri Sahaj Bijli Har Ghar Yojana, or SAUBHAGYA, launched in September 2017 aims to provide electricity access to all households, in rural as well as urban areas.

There are about 40 million unelectrified households estimated in the country, of which about 10 million below poverty-line households in rural areas are already covered under sanctioned projects of Deen Dayal Upadhaya Gram Jyoti Yojana. Thus, 30 million households are expected to be covered under the SAUBHAGYA Scheme at a cost of Rs 16,000 crore and then India will have electricity for all.

Number 12 and the last one on our list today is the port privatisation programme which was flagged off in India in 1997 at Nhava Sheva International container terminal at Jawaharlal Nehru Port. The JNP Port in Maharashtra was the first terminal that was developed on a PPP basis.

Subsequently, many standalone ports and terminals were built with private capital, leading up to Mundra owned by the Adani Group in the Kutch area of Gujarat becoming in 2021 the largest container port in India.

So, here is our list of 12 most impactful infrastructure projects for India since independence.

Vinayak Chatterjee is founder and managing trustee, The Infravision Foundation; and chairman, CII Mission On Infra, Trade & Investment.

The views expressed here are those of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views of BQ Prime or its editorial team.