This book comprises ten chapters covering various aspects of infrastructure development in India in the last decade. Broadly, for the scope of the book, the infrastructure sector is divided into five major sub-sectors for comprehensive yet structured comparisons, namely: Roadways and Highways, Railways, Real Estate, Airports, and Ports. Within these chapters, each sub-sector is further explored in terms of the Past Performance of the Sector, Current Market Trends of the Sector, Challenges for Accelerating Growth in the Sub-Sector, and Recommendations for Improving the Sub-Sector Performance.
The methodology established for the comparisons is bifocal. The book's first part covers six chapters where we share qualitative insights from examining the infrastructure sector from published secondary literature by the respective government ministries, PMO press releases, and other databases (international bodies such as UNCTAD, IATA World Bank, and RBI). More than 200 published journal articles have been referenced to supplement the findings. The first chapter covers trends common to all the five sub-sectors. The following five chapters each cover the corresponding sub-sectors in detail – Roadways and Highways, Railways, Real Estate, Airports, and Ports.
The second part of the book comprises four chapters, where data-driven insights have been shared to cover the performance of the infrastructure sector in India in the last decade, 2012-2023. The seventh chapter is used to benchmark the various key features of the Indian infrastructure with the rest of the world in metrics such as railroad density, airport connectivity, liner shipping connectivity, etc. A detailed study of these global rankings on “infrastructure quality” showed the apparent disparity in the perception-based and data-based metrics that are used to generate such global rankings.
The eighth chapter in the series covers the quality of India's infrastructure sector in global indices like the Global Competitiveness Index, World Governance Indicators, and the Ease of Doing Business. A deep dive into these indices showed apparent challenges in quantifying the role of infrastructure and, hence, quantifying its secondary benefits on economic benefits for the trade and commerce industry as well as its cumulative effects of enabling good governance practices.
The ninth chapter covers a detailed analysis of 1,115 private and public companies as well as public-funded and government-owned institutions in the infrastructure sector based on the 13 financial parameters from the S&P Capital IQ Pro database. We study the trends for 20 sub-sectors within 13 parameters by creating trendlines using regression models, confidence intervals, and moving averages. These sub-sectors cover the various dimensions of real estate in India, such as construction and engineering, diversified real estate, real estate development, real estate operations and management, and real estate services. The overall performance of the national infrastructure sector performance is summarized as this extensively covers gas, water, and electric utilities. The scope also covers energy sub-sectors like coal and consumable fuels, Independent Power Producers, Energy Traders, and Renewable Electricity.
The tenth chapter summarizes both the quantitative and qualitative research findings. Our insights show that India has significantly improved its rankings across the various sub-sectors in terms of Global Competitiveness and the World Governance Indicators. The financial parameters highlight that specific sub-sectors in the infrastructure sector have an upward growth trend while some have a downward trend and others have a stagnated growth with a varied degree of volatility across the 13 years of the time period in the scope of the study.
The findings from the analyses depict the correlation among various factors like regulatory landscape, industry competition, investment opportunities, and technological innovations that have evolved more in the last decade than in any previous one. A transition from perception-based assumptions of the international performance of the industry to a data-driven factual representation has demystified many notions regarding the performance of India’s infrastructure quality in the last decade. This is commensurate with the results shown by the latest studies by the Reserve Bank of India and the National Institute for Public Finance and Policy, which estimate that for every rupee spent on infrastructure, there is a 2.5 to 3.5 rupee gain in GDP. Infrastructure is one of the key enablers that will drive the economy in the coming years of Amrit Kaal Vision 2047.
Chandan Chowdhury is a Professor of Operations Management and Information Systems (Practice) at the Indian School of Business (ISB). He is also the Executive Director of the Munjal Institute for Global Manufacturing and the Punj-Lloyd Institute of Infrastructure Management at ISB.
Additionally, Professor Chowdhury serves as a Member of the Board of Governors at IIM Sambalpur and Lamrin Tech Skills University.
Before joining ISB, Professor Chowdhury worked in the corporate sector and was associated with three major multinational companies, where he held positions such as Managing Director and Country Manager. He served Dassault Systèmes for over five years, initially as Managing Director, India Geo, and subsequently as Vice President, Global Affairs.
During his last academic appointment, he was Professor, Dean (Academy), and Chairman of the Board of Research at IIM Mumbai (formerly known as NITIE- National Institute of Industrial Engineering, established as a joint initiative between the United Nations and the Government of India in 1963).
He is passionate about leveraging technology to make the world a better place. He served as an expert panel member at NITI Aayog (National Institution for Transforming India, Government of India), helping to develop the Manufacturing India@2035 roadmap. He is also Chairman of the Technical Committee (Management and Productivity) at the Bureau of Indian Standards.
Professor Chowdhury is currently leading several research projects of national importance, such as ‘A Decade of Infrastructure Development in India: trends and Insights’, ‘Challenges and Opportunities for accelerating MSME’s growth’, ‘Making India a Skill Capital of the World,’ ‘India’s readiness for the 4th and the 5th Industrial revolution,’ and ‘Future of Jobs’.
He holds an MS in Mechanical Engineering from the Budapest University of Technology and Economics, and a PhD from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and Budapest University of Technology and Economics.
He holds an MS in Mechanical Engineering from the Budapest University of Technology and Economics, and a PhD from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and Budapest University of Technology and Economics.
