About PM Gati Shakti
- Prime Minister launched PM Gati Shakti - National Master Plan for Multi-modal Connectivity, essentially a digital platform to bring 16 Ministries including Railways and Roadways together for integrated planning and coordinated implementation of infrastructure connectivity projects.
- The Multi-modal connectivity will provide integrated and seamless connectivity for the movement of people, goods and services from one mode of transport to another.
- It will facilitate the last-mile connectivity of infrastructure and also reduce travel time for people.
The vision of PM Gati Shakti
- PM Gati Shakti will incorporate the infrastructure schemes of various Ministries and State Governments like Bharatmala, Sagarmala, inland waterways, dry/land ports, UDAN etc.
- Economic Zones like textile clusters, pharmaceutical clusters, defence corridors, electronic parks, industrial corridors, fishing clusters, and agri zones will be covered to improve connectivity & make Indian businesses more competitive.
- It will also leverage technology extensively including spatial planning tools with ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) imagery developed by BiSAG-N (Bhaskaracharya National Institute for Space Applications and Geoinformatics).
Six Pillars of PM Gati Shakti
- Comprehensiveness: It will include all the existing and planned initiatives of various Ministries and Departments with one centralized portal. Each and every Department will now have visibility of each other's activities providing critical data while planning & executing projects in a comprehensive manner.
- Prioritization: Through this, different Departments will be able to prioritize their projects through cross-sectoral interactions.
- Optimization: The National Master Plan will assist different ministries in planning for projects after the identification of critical gaps. For the transportation of goods from one place to another, the plan will help in selecting the most optimum route in terms of time and cost.
- Synchronization: Individual Ministries and Departments often work in silos. There is a lack of coordination in the project's planning and implementation, resulting in delays. PM Gati Shakti will help in synchronizing the activities of each department, as well as of different layers of governance, in a holistic manner by ensuring coordination of work between them.
- Analytical: The plan will provide the entire data in one place with GIS-based spatial planning and analytical tools having 200+ layers, enabling better visibility to the executing agency.
- Dynamic: All Ministries and Departments will now be able to visualize, review and monitor the progress of cross-sectoral projects, through the GIS platform, as the satellite imagery will give on-ground progress periodically and the progress of the projects will be updated on a regular basis on the portal. It will help in identifying the vital interventions for enhancing and updating the master plan.
The Progress of PM GatiShakti
- In terms of improving the data quality of the NMP, standardizing data layers and establishing Quality Improvement Plan (QIP) mechanism for better planning.
- To encourage the usage of NMP for social sector planning, five new Ministries are proposed to be on-boarded by PM GatiShakti, in addition to fourteen social sector Departments/Ministries already on board, to augment the socioeconomic development in the country.
- In addition to improving the domestic logistics ecosystem, DPIIT is progressively working towards improving EXIM logistics.
- An EXIM Logistics Group has been formed with other concerned Departments/Ministries.
- An action plan for improving the country's performance on each of the Logistics Performance Index (LPI) parameters of the World Bank report will be formulated and executed soon.
- Efforts are also being made to ensure end-to-end multi-modal tracking of cargo by integrating the Unified Logistics Interface Platform (ULIP) with GSTN data.
- In order to impart wider understanding and adoption, capacity building of officials at States level is also planned through training modules on PM GatiShakti at Central Training Institutes.
The increasing scope of PM Gatishakti Beyond the infrastructure sector
- PM GatiShakti can be effectively leveraged with Area Development Approach to extend benefits to the nation beyond the infrastructure sector in the following manner:
- The agriculture sector can be supported by setting up common facilities on agricultural lands by cooperatives and start-ups using the integrated framework of PM GatiShakti and data from the National Master Plan (NMP)
- Area Development Approach under PM GatiShakti can be used for engaging with aspirational districts of NITI Aayog.