PM GatiShakti National Master Plan Make in India

The Ministry of Commerce and Industry, through its Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), spearheads two highly complementary initiatives: the PM GatiShakti National Master Plan and the Make in India program. While Make in India aims to transform the country into a global manufacturing hub, PM GatiShakti provides the critical multimodal logistics and infrastructure backbone required to make domestic manufacturing globally competitive. Together, they form a cohesive “whole-of-government” approach to reduce logistics costs, enhance supply chain efficiency, and propel India’s industrial growth.

PM GatiShakti National Master Plan

Launched on October 13, 2021, the PM GatiShakti National Master Plan (NMP) is a transformative, GIS-based digital platform designed for the integrated planning and coordinated implementation of infrastructure connectivity projects.

Core Objectives

• The primary objective is to break departmental silos and bring multiple ministries and state governments onto a single digital platform to ensure seamless, multi-modal connectivity for the movement of people, goods, and services.
• It aims to drastically reduce India’s logistics costs from the historical 13–14 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to global benchmarks of around 8 percent by 2030, directly enhancing the export competitiveness of “Make in India” products.
• The plan focuses on expediting project clearances, preventing the redundant destruction of newly built infrastructure for subsequent utility laying, and optimizing resource allocation.

The Six Pillars of GatiShakti

The National Master Plan relies on six foundational pillars to streamline infrastructure development across the country.

• Comprehensiveness: It integrates all existing and planned initiatives of various ministries (such as Bharatmala, Sagarmala, and UDAN) into a single centralized digital portal for complete visibility.
• Prioritization: Different departments can prioritize their projects through cross-sectoral interactions, ensuring that resources are allocated to high-impact economic corridors first.
• Optimization: The NMP assists ministries in identifying critical infrastructure gaps and planning the most cost-effective and time-efficient routes for goods movement.
• Synchronization: It ensures the synchronized development of infrastructure, avoiding inter-ministerial delays and preventing scenarios where roads are repeatedly dug up for laying pipelines or optical fibers.
• Analytics: The platform provides data-driven insights using GIS-based spatial planning with over 1,600 data layers, integrating ISRO satellite imagery and Survey of India basemaps.
• Dynamics: Satellite imagery and continuous digital reporting allow all ministries to visually track and monitor the on-ground progress of cross-sectoral projects in real time.

The Seven Engines of Growth

The PM GatiShakti framework accelerates project implementation across seven core engines of physical infrastructure.

• Railways: Focused on decongesting the railway network, creating High Traffic Density Corridors, and scaling up freight loading capacity.
• Roads: Expanding the national highway network and ensuring first and last-mile connectivity to industrial nodes and economic zones.
• Ports: Enhancing cargo handling capacities, reducing vessel turnaround time, and improving port-led industrialization.
• Waterways: Promoting inland waterways as a cost-effective and environmentally friendly alternative for bulk freight movement.
• Airports: Operationalizing new airports, heliports, and water aerodromes under the regional connectivity scheme to facilitate high-value cargo.
• Mass Transport: Expanding urban mass transit systems to improve the ease of living and workforce mobility in smart cities.
• Logistics Infrastructure: Developing multi-modal logistics parks, inland container depots, and dedicated freight corridors to support industrial clusters.

Institutional Mechanisms and Administrative Framework

The execution of PM GatiShakti relies on a robust, three-tiered institutional framework designed to ensure swift decision-making and cross-functional coordination.

• Empowered Group of Secretaries (EGoS): Headed by the Cabinet Secretary, the EGoS is the apex body responsible for reviewing and monitoring the implementation of the PM GatiShakti NMP, resolving inter-ministerial hurdles, and clearing structural bottlenecks.
• Network Planning Group (NPG): Comprising heads of the planning divisions of infrastructure ministries, the NPG ensures the integration of networks, examines all detailed project reports (DPRs), and guarantees that new projects adhere to the principles of multi-modal optimization.
• Technical Support Unit (TSU): Located within the DPIIT, the TSU provides subject matter expertise, advanced spatial analytics, and technical evaluation to support the NPG in assessing complex infrastructure proposals.

Boosting the Make in India Ecosystem

PM GatiShakti acts as a critical enabler for the Make in India initiative by addressing the logistical bottlenecks that historically hindered industrial scaling.

Supporting Industrial Corridors and Economic Zones

• The master plan maps out critical economic zones, including textile clusters, pharmaceutical parks, defence corridors, and electronic manufacturing hubs, ensuring they receive prioritized connectivity via roads, rail, and ports.
• By providing manufacturers with predictable and efficient transport networks, it lowers inventory holding costs and enables “just-in-time” manufacturing, a crucial requirement for sectors covered under the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) schemes.

Decentralized Planning and the District Master Plan

• To push manufacturing and social development to the grassroots, the PM GatiShakti District Master Plan is being progressively rolled out across all 112 Aspirational Districts.
• This localized approach allows district administrations to identify land for small and medium enterprises (SMEs), plan utility pipelines, and align local skill-development centers (like PM Shri Schools) with adjacent industrial clusters.

Key Achievements and Milestones

The integration of data and departments under PM GatiShakti has yielded quantifiable improvements in India’s macroeconomic landscape.

• The National Master Plan has successfully onboarded 44 Central Ministries and 36 States/Union Territories, bringing unprecedented transparency to public capital expenditure.
• The Ministry of Railways utilized the platform to evaluate and plan over 430 big-ticket infrastructure projects—including Energy, Mineral, and Cement Corridors—significantly accelerating the Final Location Surveys (FLS).
• Port container turnaround times have witnessed a marked reduction from 48.1 hours to approximately 30.4 hours, improving export agility.
• The telecom sector utilized the integrated Gati Shakti Sanchar Portal to expedite Right of Way (RoW) approvals, bringing the average clearance time down from several months to just 16–22 days, thereby accelerating the nationwide 5G and optical fiber rollout.

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