“Infrastructure development will play a significant role in fulfilling our vision to make India a superpower economy and developed nation in the near future”, said Nitin Gadkari, Union Minister of the Ministry of Road Transport & Highways (MoRTH).

The National Infrastructure Pipeline and the PM Gati Shakti Master Plan are playing a key role in this planning, he said while delivering the inaugural address virtually at the newly introduced IIM Kozhikode Management Development Programme on ‘Infrastructure Development’ for senior and mid-level government officials.

“Innovation, research and technology will shape the future of infrastructure sector and help India become a superpower economy,” he said, and urged the management professionals “to develop, innovate revenue generation as well as financing models to bring economic viability, efficiency and investment in infrastructure sector.”

Logistics cost

The government, according to the Minister, is working with a top priority to markedly bring down the logistics costs to single digit from current 13-14 per cent. It has conceptualised Bharatmala Pariyojana, a flagship programme for 65,000 km of highway development across the country. Under the Bharatmala Phase-1, road network of 34,800 km with a capital cost of ₹10.64 lakh crore is underway through projects such as economic corridors, expressways, national corridors, inter-corridor routes and feeder routes.

“In a globalised world, we learn from one another; but learning cannot be a one-way system in a globalised world and there is a lot to learn from Indian management of infrastructure”, Gadkari said while responding to IIMK Director, Debashis Chatterjee, who highlighted the strengths of Indian management system as distinct from the Japanese and western management systems.

Gadkari also congratulated IIM Kozhikode for breaking into the Top-3 B-Schools of the country in the latest NIRF Rankings. He appreciated IIMK for taking this initiative to forge together an academic and industrial collaboration to respond to capacity building challenges through such customised Management Development Programmes. 

According to Debashis Chatterjee, the revolution of roadways brought in by MoRTH by giving the country Gati Shakti has put India on the path to become world’s largest economy. Several sustainable infrastructure initiatives like green highway, supporting alternative fuels like ethanol, methanol, green hydrogen, EV charging infrastructure will help globalise Indian thought.

He shared IIM Kozhikode’s commitment of “Being best not just in the world, but best for the world” and play a pivotal role by partnering government “in knowledge and human capital creation for India to achieve its Vision 2047 that of a developed and leading economy of the world.”