Through PRAGATI, a platform that has significantly changed the culture of public project delivery and scheme monitoring, India has adopted a transformative approach.
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In public discourse, launch of new schemes or enhanced budgetary allocations are often used as indicators of governance reforms. However, the change in a country’s decision-making process though less obvious is much more significant. At the 50th Meeting of Pro-Active Governance and Timely Implementation (PRAGATI), the Prime Minister captured the spirit of the next phase of governance in three words: ‘Reform, Perform and Transform’. Reform must simplify systems; performance must be judged by delivery on the ground and transformation must be measured by the real impact on people’s lives. It captures the deeper shift that India’s governance has undergone over the last decade. Through PRAGATI, a platform that has significantly changed the culture of public project delivery and scheme monitoring, India has adopted a transformative approach.
In government, every delay has a human cost. A stalled bridge is not just a line on a project chart; it is a student who travels longer hours to reach college or a patient forced to travel extra for specialised care because a hospital sanctioned remains under construction. For decades, many public projects in India remained in files and footnotes, victims of coordination failures rather than lack of intent.
Under the visionary leadership and personalised monitoring of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, PRAGATI was initiated in 2015 with the understanding that India had for long struggled with delays, silos and lack of accountability in project implementation rather than lacking plans or ambition. Bridges remained half-built, airports languished in planning and power plants stalled in litigation and coordination issues between the Centre and States remained unresolved for years, all of which resulted in projects worth lakhs of crores of rupees being trapped in procedural loops.
The remarkable achievements of PRAGATI over 10 years are self-evident. Projects worth over INR 85 lakh crore have so far been taken up under its structured monitoring framework. Of the 3,187 major issues identified across 382 projects, more than 2,958 (93%) have been resolved. These represent bridges completed, power plants commissioned, hospitals operationalised, highways started and rail links connected, often after decades of stagnation.
What makes PRAGATI distinct is its design philosophy, that it integrates digital data management, geo-spatial technology and video conferencing into a single decision-support system. This allows the Prime Minister to directly review projects with Secretaries to the Government of India and Chief Secretaries of the States, on a common platform on a monthly basis and also offer his guidance and solutions to Team India. As Soumitra Dutta, Professor of Oxford has observed, PRAGATI underlines a lesson that many nations are still grappling with; that infrastructure-led growth requires more than capital investment. It requires top leadership to actively use technology to enable cross-institutional collaboration and to enforce regular, outcome-focused accountability.
PRAGATI's contribution in strengthening cooperative federalism is equally significant. Union Secretaries and Chief Secretaries participate, collaborate and are held accountable at a single platform. I have had the rare privilege of having participated in these meetings from both sides, as Secretary to Government of India and also as Chief Secretary of a State. The platform has helped dissolve inter-ministerial and Centre-State silos and is a shining example of the ‘whole-of-government approach’ with collaborative problem solving and shared ownership of outcomes.
The impact is visible across sectors. In infrastructure, PRAGATI has helped unlock long-pending projects such as the Rajasthan Atomic Power Project in Banswara, Bogibeel rail-cum-road bridge in Assam, conceived in 1997 and completed after focused intervention; the Navi Mumbai International Airport, delayed for nearly 25 years and inaugurated in 2025, and the Jammu–Udhampur–Srinagar–Baramulla rail link, just to site a few. The coordinated action of all stakeholders helped overcome terrain, security, land acquisition and clearance challenges.
The platform has become a prime example not only for States within India that are replicating the monitoring mechanism, but also for countries facing challenges with timely delivery of services. The lesson is simple, continuous monitoring can expedite project implementation to bring returns that go beyond just economic terms.
In addition to physical infrastructure, every PRAGATI meeting also reviews the implementation of flagship programmes and welfare schemes across health, education, water and sanitation, housing, social welfare and others. It reinforces the idea that service delivery in a time-bound manner in social sectors is equally significant as it is for infrastructure projects.
PRAGATI’s contribution must also be understood in economic, social and environmental terms. Economically, timely completion optimises costs and maximises returns. Socially, faster completion means communities gain earlier access to safety nets, roads, hospitals, power and connectivity. Environmentally, PRAGATI works in tandem with platforms like PM Gati Shakti and PARIVESH to integrate ecological aspects through GIS-based planning, reducing avoidable emissions and resource wastage.
In an era where citizens’ aspirations are not limited to just promises but performance, PRAGATI demonstrates that governance reform need not always be loud to be transformative. It is a prime example that the national development agenda reflected in the Prime Minister’s vision of ‘Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas, Sabka Vishwas and Sabka Prayaas’ is not limited to ideas alone, but is translated into lived realities to achieve the larger goal of Viksit Bharat at 2047. Sometimes, the most powerful change lies in creating systems that ensure that decisions taken are decisions delivered.
Sudhansh Pant
(The author is Secretary, Department of Social Justice & Empowerment, Government of India. Views expressed are personal)