A road is finished; another agency arrives to dig it up for a pipeline. The government’s announcement of PM Gati Shakti used this familiar coordination failure to explain the problem it wanted to solve. Departments could each complete their allotted work and still leave the public paying for avoidable disruption. [1]
Launched in October 2021, the National Master Plan proposed a common view of infrastructure before construction began. Roads, railways, ports, industrial areas and utilities would be visible together, allowing planners to identify missing connections and conflicting schedules. The aim was to make departments see the same geography before committing to separate projects. [1] [3]
A shared map, separate responsibilities
The platform developed by BISAG-N uses a geographic information system: layers of information showing administrative boundaries, economic zones, infrastructure and utilities. In its December 2021 explanation to Parliament, the roads ministry described a tool for planning, review and monitoring across central and state organisations. [2]
That is a practical administrative change. A transport connection can be examined in relation to the industrial area it serves and the other networks it must join. The usefulness comes from the relationships between the layers, not simply from putting a proposed road on a screen. This is how the framework is intended to work; the platform’s existence alone does not demonstrate that every conflict has been resolved. [1] [2]
Nor did the master plan merge the financing of all those works into a single construction budget. The December reply said the responsible ministries would seek project funding through their respective schemes and procedures. A common planning framework still depended on the agencies responsible for approvals, budgets and execution. [2]
Reading the project ledger
By 10 February 2026, the Network Planning Group had evaluated 352 projects with a combined estimated cost of ₹16.10 lakh crore. Of those, 201 had been sanctioned and 167 were under implementation, according to the commerce ministry’s parliamentary reply. The distinctions matter: evaluation is a planning milestone, sanction an approval, and implementation work in progress. The ₹16.10 lakh crore figure was neither expenditure already incurred nor the value of completed assets. [3]
The broader logistics bill requires a separate measurement. NCAER’s dashboard estimates India’s logistics costs at ₹24.01 lakh crore, or 7.97% of GDP, for 2023–24. That national estimate covers a wider economy than the projects reviewed under Gati Shakti. It cannot, on its own, show how much the planning reform saved; attributing a saving requires evidence about what would have happened without it. [4]
There was also a specific route from planning to state investment. The February 2026 reply listed 178 state projects approved under the Gati Shakti component of the 2022–23 capital-assistance scheme, covering ₹4,764.53 crore in approved capital expenditure. Its state-by-state annexure is a more concrete financial record than the master plan’s headline project value, while still recording approvals rather than completed construction. [3]