PM Modi’s real-time monitoring of big infra projects speeded up work in last 10 years: UK Professor

New Delhi, Dec 4 It is the real-time monitoring by Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself that has expedited the completion of large-scale infrastructure projects in India and spurred economic growth in the country over the last 10 years, according to Professor Soumitra Dutta of Saïd Business School, University of Oxford.

In an exclusive interview with IANS, the Dean and Professor said, “Because of the PRAGATI ecosystem, there's much more real-time monitoring of what is actually happening on the ground. And in fact, there's quite impressive drone technologies and real-time sensors that are used in the program and meetings to actually give data to the Prime Minister himself.”

“So he's actually able to relate to data and identify problems in real-time, often in the meetings. And he's able to, in fact, create the sense of, let's come together and work for the good of India. And I think that is very important. That's a role model sort of behaviour change, which is extremely important,” he said.

He pointed out that typically, large infrastructure projects have traditionally had problems in terms of time overruns, budget overruns and other kinds of issues hampering the successful execution. The PRAGAT ecosystem has successfully helped unblock some of the major projects which were lying blocked for a long time.

“For example, the Brahmaputra River in Assam has long been considered one of the unbridgeable rivers. And the project to build a bridge with a road and rail link was first approved in 2002, but even a decade later, almost nothing actually happened in the project.”

Dutta is a co-author of a just-released study titled, “From Gridlock to Growth - How Leadership Enables India’s PRAGATI Ecosystem to power progress.”

Explaining the rationale behind the study, he said, “The goal always has been to study how India's progress in building out the national digital infrastructure has impacted the development of the nation.”

He pointed out that PRAGATI essentially built a whole digital ecosystem of tools, including the Privilege and Project monitoring group, to bring information agencies together to share the information, sharing it to a higher level. But that alone is not enough. What you see happening in the PRAGATI ecosystem is the direct involvement of the Prime Minister focused attention on the minds of several key bureaucrats in the central government and relevant states to try to address some of the conflicts and try to solve them.

And you often found that people came together and tried to address it even before the review because no one liked being called up in front of the Prime Minister and being asked to explain and know why some action hadn't been taken or why some coordination was not being done successfully, he explained.

“So I think the fact that the Prime Minister's presence and his direct involvement itself put some pressure on the system to be able to solve the problems which were difficult earlier,” he remarked.

“And certainly what we have seen the jam trinity of Jan Dhan-Aadhaar-Mobile has been very instrumental in building a good platform for India,” he added

Dutta said because infrastructure was going to be a major part of the government spending, PM Modi really tried to use digital tools to help monitor, in real time the progress of various infrastructure projects that were having trouble. He tried to, in fact, pull together the key leaders in the central government and the state governments and tried to bring them together in one meeting on a monthly basis to try and address some of the complex issues that were blocking the execution of the projects.

“General studies show that for every rupee that is spent successfully in building infrastructure, the GDP sees an improvement of about two and a half to Rs 3. So this 2 to 3 times improvement in GDP, essentially translates into development as a nation. India hopes and aspires to be a fully developed nation by 2047, which is 100 years after Independence,” he explained

To achieve those goals, India needs to actually ramp up its infrastructure projects significantly, not just about roads and highways and power plants but also increasingly about social projects. For example, such as providing water, sanitation and electricity to various villages in the frontier parts of the country, he said.

“So what you see is that you need a way to manage these large projects that span different aspects of society, that span different boundaries across the country. So large-scale systemic change is very important for India to be able to achieve as it develops national goals by 2047. So the PRAGATI system really what it does at the heart of it is a mechanism for the country to successfully speed up and successfully leverage the resources of the country for executing large system-wide changes,” he added.