Nitin Gadkari, Minister for Road Transport & Highways
Gadkari says his goal is to reduce logistics costs for India and establish multimodal transport hubs that will help cost-competitive transport of goods
Highways
- 200,000 km of national highways by 2025
- Focus on using municipal waste for road building
- 35 multimodal logistic parks worth Rs 2 lakh crore are being implemented
- Landowners are being compensated appropriately for acquisition during road projects
- 10,000 km of green highways being built; land acquisition not an issue
Sagarmala & Bharatmala
- Half of Rs 16 lakh crore Sagarmala Scheme to develop coastline completed
- Rs 11 lakh crore, 34,800 km Bharatmala project–90% of work will be completed in a year
- Second leg of Bharatmala sent for cabinet approval
Financing
- Massive Rs 2.7 lakh crore budgetary push
- Appetite in capital market for NHAI’s bonds
- Immense potential to monetise road projects
“We are making 10,000 km of greenfield highways, we are spending Rs 7 lakh crore on that. The length under construction is 7,000 km,” says Gadkari. “Multimodal logistics parks will be very important to reduce the overall logistic costs. Work is already going on in Chennai, Bengaluru, Pune, Nagpur, Ennore and Vishakhapatnam,” he adds.
Ashwini Vaishnaw, Minister for Railways, Communications, Electronics & Information Technology
In a comprehensive presentation, Bricks and Clicks, Vaishnaw elaborated on the transformation of the railways and how 5G will reshape digital India.Telecom
- India set to become a major player in telecom technology exports with the development of 4G and 5G stack
- Around 9-10 countries have shown interest in the India-made technology stack
- Technology stack has been tested to handle 10 million calls simultaneously and will soon be deployed in the country
- India has seen the world’s fastest 5G deployment with coverage provided in over 200 cities since October 2022 launch
Semiconductors
- India’s semiconductor ambitions may become a reality soon with an announcement likely in the coming weeks
Railways
- India is laying 4,500 km of network every year
- Laying 12 km of new railway track per day
- In next three years, railways will have 35% freight market share, up from 28% this year
- 1,275 stations undergoing makeover
- Focus on creating new urban spaces in railway stations
- Passenger comfort in new trains is a priority
- Bullet train project is progressing at healthy pace
Macro situation
- India now has high growth with moderate inflation
- Job creation is healthy with 1.5 million new jobs every month
- Factory utilisation has increased to 75-80%
“Just like payment platforms, like healthcare, like home, like identity, each of these individual items are powerful in themselves, but combined together, they can help solve any major problem in the world. This is the power of the India Stack and today, the whole world wants to try out some of the pieces of it,” says Vaishnaw.
“Stay tuned. You will see some good news (on semiconductors) in the coming weeks,” he adds.
Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Minister of state for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, and Electronics and Information Technology
India will be among the group of nations that will shape the future of technology, shape the future of products, devices and platforms, Chandrashekhar said.
Tech view
- India to be among nations that shape future of tech, services
- Govt finalising regulations for ‘internet-plus economy’ framework
- Regulations for accountability of AI, scrutiny on how cos use the tech
- Govt to soon launch India Open Compute initiative to focus on quantum computing
- Digital India and India open stack model to be scaled for products in healthcare, other sectors
- The (draft of Personal Data Protection) bill ready, process to bring it to Parliament on
“There are many segments of the digital economy in the digital space that are uncomfortably dominated by one, two or three big companies. We certainly don’t want the digital economy to be throttled,” Vaishnaw says.