THE BIG-BANG PPP REVIVAL

BUDGET 2025-26 HAS SOUGHT TO REVIVE THE PUBLIC- PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP (PPP) MODEL OF INFRASTRUCTURE CREATION IN THE COUNTRY. WHAT WILL IT TAKE TO STOKE LIFE INTO PPP, WHICH HAS REMAINED DEAD FOR MORE THAN A DECADE NOW?

- ASHUTOSH KUMAR

INDIA'S INFRASTRUCTURE SECTOR has gone through some torrid times in the past two decades or so. The infrastructure push, which gathered momentum at the turn of the century during then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's rule, came to a grinding halt within 15 years or so. The terminal years of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government (2004-2014) saw land acquisition and funding snarls impacting projects, procedural delays in bidding, resultant litigations, and an all-encompassing policy inaction by the then government. This meant that a large number of mega projects, undertaken in alliance with the private sector, failed to see the light of the day.

With big projects failing to kick off (for instance the Delhi airport metro and the Shivpuri-Devas expressway, among others), curtains were drawn on the public-private partnership (PPP) model of infrastructure development in the country.

When the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government came to power in 2014, the infrastructure ministries, specifically highways, railways, and power, held marathon meetings, reviewing each stalled project, as with them not taking off, the economy ran the risk of the nonperforming assets (NPA) crisis only getting deeper.

Union road transport & highways minister Nitin Gadkari talks about the time when he used to hold late-night meetings with stakeholders of the highways sector—including developers and contractors—to keep projects on track. “We used to hold marathon meetings till 1 am... to infuse life into stalled highway projects. With the review and efforts towards revival, we saved banks from NPAs to the tune of ₹3 lakh crore in the highways sector alone,” he tells Fortune India.

Highway projects tendered on the build operate and transfer (BOT) Toll model during the UPA's tenure were in dire straits; the situation was no different at other departments such as power and railways, among others.