Gujarat’s Dholera proves key to Gati Shakti masterplan

About 100 km southwest of Ahmedabad in Gujarat is the site for the planned industrial smart city of Dholera. When the planning for the city began, around 2012, bureaucrats noticed that the nearest railway station was 22 km away, at a small village called Bhimnath. They therefore reached out to the Railways. They (railways) were reluctant at first, citing poor economic viability. But a railway line is in the works now, along with other connectivity projects. Dholera Industrial City Development Ltd, a special purpose vehicle created to implement all the projects, has equity participation from both the Gujarat government and the central government, represented by the National Industrial Corridor Development Corporation (NICDC) Trust. Back then, the officials working with these organizations didn’t know that the maps they used would become the starting point of what is known as Gati Shakti today. The PM Gati Shakti National Master Plan launched a year ago is like the Google Maps of infrastructure planning and offers a dashboard with a bird’s eye view of bridges, roads, tunnels, pipelines, power transmission cables, forests, water bodies, and airports in any region of the country. As of now, Gati Shakti has over 2,000 layers of data, and it is growing every day as more and more state and central government agencies feed the platform with more data. The tool aims to solve a complex problem: delay in important projects that often leads to cost overruns. See also: Tamil Nadu seeks Rs 750 billion investments in aerospaceRevised design for underpass saves expenses to MMRDA