Private sector may get limited access to Gati Shakti Portal

                               The Gati Shakti portal which is now accessed by only state and central government ministries and departments for detail planning and implementation of infrastructure connectivity projects in a time bound manner, has now limited access to private sector. Based on a draft framework by the department for promotion of Industry and Internal Trade, a national master plan data of Gati Shakti will be shared  with the private sector. The private sectors will have viewing rights as well as access rights to social and economic infrastructure related data with a private entity. They should take special care that the wealth of data in the national master plan should not be misused. The national master plan now contains 1450 layers of information including information related to railway and port connectivity, gas pipelines, optic fibre across the country and land records. The 36 central ministries and departments have uploaded 585 data layers and the states and union territories have uploaded 872 data layers. The main aim behind providing access to private sectors is to help them in the execution of infrastructure projects. The government will have to consider the privacy concerns along with the national security concerns. 

                             The Gati Shakti national masterplan is a project by central government to revolutionise infrastructure in India. It is a 100 lakh- crore project announced by Prime minister Narendra Modi on the 75th Independence day,2021. The plan was launched on October 13 2021 and was approved on October 21 2021 by Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs. It is also known as the National Master Plan for multi modal connectivity. This provide competitive advantage for manufacturing India and thereby helps to enhance the Indian economic growth.  It's main objective was to bring together all relevant ministries  and departments of Government  of India  and promote an integrated planning of projects. There will be an interconnection with the ministries of Indian Roadways, Indian airways and Indian Waterways for easy movement of goods. They will provide a multimodal connectivity infrastructure to all economic zones of India . Also there will be transparency in monitoring current projects and provide information about upcoming connectivity projects. The main six pillars of this  are comprehensiveness, prioritization, optimization, synchronization, analytical and dynamic. All projects having an investment of above 500 crore are routed through the Network Planning Group( NPG). It addresses the critical infrastructure gaps for seamless movement of people and goods. The five key sectors under this Gati SHAKTI  are ports, steel, coal, fertilisers and food and public distribution. Once the data of primary level schools are mapped on the portal, they can check the areas that are underserved and take measures to address the gaps. Better connectivity and plan can be formulated by Gati shakti. The National Master Plan portal is already being used for pre feasibility assessment and detailed project by railways, road and telecom ministries.

                       As part of this plan, Indian Railway will develop 400 new Vande Bharat  Express in 3 years and will revamp 200 railway terminals within India with modern facilities and will build 300 new terminals in next five years. The main challenge is that while acquiescing land , it is extremely difficult to get  environmental clearance. There are also plans to bring various other infra projects in the country include industrial corridors, freight corridors, PM Mitra Parks and defence corridors under the Pm Gati shakti scheme for optimum utilization of resources. Thus coordination between the government and private sector is key to the success of Gati Shakti yojana. Also, the private sector companies must work together to understand the needs of the communities they are serving and to ensure that the infrastructure they build is sustainable and meet the needs of the people.