New Delhi: From identifying locations for schools and colleges in unserved areas of Uttar Pradesh, to carrying out area development planning around the Bichom dam in Arunachal Pradesh, to identifying water bodies for irrigation in Gujarat’s Dahod — states are now routinely using the Centre’s Gati Shakti master plan to digitally map assets and plan social and physical infrastructure.
The PM Gati Shakti National Master Plan (NMP) is a digital platform where central ministries have mapped details of all infrastructure and logistical facilities in the country on a geographic information system (GIS) map, including data of the forests/habitations/other assets they are passing through.
Launched in October 2021, the plan gives a bird’s eye view of these facilities/assets and helps central ministries/states plan their projects better. For instance, at just the click of a mouse, ministries can visualise a proposed project vis-à-vis other assets passing through the same route and also check against any obstacles at the planning stage.
With the benefits of Gati Shakti NMP becoming apparent, states are now replicating the idea to map essential data, which is relevant for planning their physical and social infrastructure.
Uttar Pradesh is utilising its state master plan portal — called Pahunch (reach) — to identify locations for building new high schools and intermediate colleges in unserved areas.
“Through Gati Shakti, one can see the data of different ministries. You don’t need to knock at their doors, you don’t need to wait for data. Visualisation of data is better, which helps in planning,” Sumita Dawra, special secretary, logistics, Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), told ThePrint.
Dawra said UP’s Pahunch portal was helping the state get insight on how it could use Gati Shakti NMP for identifying locations for new schools.
“If the state plans to put up 100 new high schools, they can use Gati Shakti NMP to see how far away from habitations the schools would be, and also check other data layers such as road connectivity to the schools, distance of primary health centre, whether there are playgrounds around, etc. Pahunch is a classic case of convergence,” she said.
Similarly, in Dahod, when officials saw the data layers of the district on the Gati Shakti NMP portal, they discovered the presence of water bodies that they were not aware of as these were under the railway ministry.
“Now, the district collector has started making plans to utilise that water through drip irrigation to irrigate the land in the vicinity. The district official became aware of the presence of water bodies through visualisation. That is the strength which Gati Shakti brings,” Dawra said.
Planning the 300 km Gujarat coastal corridor using the NMP has similarly reduced from 28 to 13 the number of no-objection certificates required for clearance (such as from the forest, coastal regulation zone, mining departments, etc), Dawra said.
The corridor will provide connectivity to four districts — Bharuch, Surat, Navsari and Valsad — covering tourist destinations such as Dandi, Ubhrat and Tithal.
In the Northeast, the Arunachal Pradesh administration noticed on the Gati Shakti portal that there was a large tract of vacant land around the Bichom dam that was lying unutilised.
“They have now undertaken area development planning around the dam. They have identified the area where tourism can be developed and horticulture clusters can be given better connectivity,” a DPIIT official who did not want to be named told ThePrint.
As of now, all 36 states and Union territories have onboarded the Gati Shakti NMP and completed data mapping. At the central level, 39 ministries have onboarded, of which 22 are social sector ministries.
“Now, our area of ongoing work is quality of data. We started work in December on the quality of data of central ministries — to ensure standardisation of data, symbology, etc. In these ministries, the usage of data is well established. In the social sector, in the school education, women and child development, skill usage is very good,” the official quoted earlier said.
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How social sector ministries are benefitting
Dawra said that so far, 22 social ministries/departments have been onboarded on Gati Shakti NMP portal, and over 200 data layers have been mapped, such as primary healthcare facilities, post offices, hostels, colleges, particularly vulnerable tribal groups, etc.
The Ministry of Women and Child Development, for instance, is using Gati Shakti for effective planning of locations for anganwadi (childcare) centres. More than 10 lakh anganwadi centres have been mapped on the NMP.
Similarly, the school education department has mapped PM Shri schools and is now looking at mapping relevant layers of care facilities — primary health centres and anganwadis.
“They are seeing that PM Shri schools have anganwadi and health centres in their vicinity so that there is convergence of services for student health and development. The anganwadi could be relevant because the mother could have a younger child there or the mother is pregnant or the child is transitioning to a primary school,” a second DPIIT official said.
According to Dawra, central ministries have mastered the use of Gati Shakti by now.
The digital master plan of infra assets is not only allowing ministries to align better but also modify projects before implementation, if required. It is also helping in synchronised planning.
Giving an example, Dawra said the Pune-Bengaluru Expressway was in the making and the project developers could see in the NMP that there was forest coverage in between.
“They want to minimise the road through the forest by bypassing the area or changing road alignment. Using Gati Shakti NMP, the highways ministry was able to save 19 percent of the forest,” Dawra explained.
The highways ministry has used Gati Shakti NMP for ground surveys, land records, and highway alignment, saving time and costs in projects, and reducing the time taken for finalisation of alignment.
The railway ministry has sanctioned location surveys eight times faster through usage of Gati Shakti NMP compared to previous times — 447 final location surveys were identified and sanctioned in financial year 2022 compared to 57 in financial year 2021, according to the DPIIT official quoted earlier.
The Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas used to take six to nine months to prepare 46 reports manually for the detailed route survey (DRS) for pipeline projects. But now, using NMP, an electronic DRS is generated within a day, the official said.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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