Interim Budget 2019: Many infra beginnings for BJP, finish line still far

In his maiden budget, then Finance Minister Arun Jaitley committed 8,500 km of highways during 2014-15 with a cumulative investment of Rs 37,880 crore in both national highways and state roads

Shreya Jai Shine Jacob Megha Manchanda New Delhi

Last Updated : Jan 30 2019 | 1:41 PM IST

In 2014, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) rode to power with the promise of “ensuring a basic level of infrastructure to all — home, electricity, water and toilets” in its manifesto. Infrastructure, including roads, rural electrification, urban power reforms, increased air connectivity, and operational turnaround of railways have been the key focus areas of the Union budgets presented since then.

From Rs 55,415 crore in 2014-15 for infrastructure creation in roads, shipping, new airports, inland navigation and renewable energy, the BJP government increased the estimated budgetary and extra budgetary expenditure on infrastructure during 2018-19 to Rs 5.97 trillion.

In his maiden budget, then Finance Minister Arun Jaitley committed 8,500 km of highways during 2014-15 with a cumulative investment of Rs 37,880 crore in both national highways and state roads. This allocation was doubled the next fiscal.

During the same time, the government announced two mega power access schemes — Deen Dayal Upadhaya Gram Jyoti Yojana (DDUGJY) and Integrated Power Development Scheme (IPDS) — for rural and urban electrification, respectively. DDUGJY received a budgetary support of Rs 33,453 crore over the entire implementation period. India met its target of electrifying all villages in September 2018.

The progress has been slow in IPDS, which received a budgetary grant of Rs 27,146 crore. Of the approved grant from the Centre, which is 60 per cent of the project cost, Rs 7,575 crore has been released so far. The three major reform plans under IPDS — smart metering, system strengthening and information technology (IT) enablement have been sanctioned Rs 293.6 billion for four years, to be borne by the Centre, discoms and institutional finance. However, less than a third of Centre’s commitment — or Rs 52.6 billion — was fulfilled as on March 2018. Under IPDS, all the states have to meet the 100 per cent compliance target of all the above schemes by 2019.

In 2016-17, the Union government announced investments to the tune of Rs 2.21 trillion for the infrastructure sector. This included an ambitious new scheme for speeding up household electrification – Sahaj Bijli har Ghar Yojna (Saubhagya). The Centre provided funds to states to subsidise electricity connections for rural and urban households. Barring three states, households in all states are slated to be declared electrified and connected to the grid by January 26, 2019.

Of the 210 million identified households in the country, the BJP government started connecting 3.89 crore unelectrified households, of which 100,000 are left as of now.

One of the major initiatives of the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways — Bharatmala – got the maximum allocation in terms of funds during 2017-18. The programme aimed at optimising efficiency of road traffic movement across the country by bridging critical infrastructure gaps. Against 34,800 km of national highways to be constructed under the Phase-I of Bharatmala from 2017-18 to 2021-22, 6,407 km road has been awarded till October 31, 2018. The total project outlay is of Rs 5.35 trillion.

The Union Budget 2017-18 of this government set a record when it broke a 92-year-old tradition of presenting a separate railway budget. That year’s budget also allocated a record Rs 3.96 trillion to the infrastructure sector as a whole, of which Rs 2.41 trillion went to transport, including railways, road and shipping. About 5,759 km of highways have been constructed till November 30, 2018 as against 4,942 km during the corresponding period a year before.

The capital expenditure of Railways increased three-fold to Rs 1.46 trillion in 2018-19. It was on average Rs 24,307 crore every year during 2004-09 and Rs 45,979 crore during 2009-14.

Interestingly, of the Rs 8.5 trillion plan lined up for five years by this government, Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) had promised a financing of Rs 1.5 trillion. Of this, railways so far secured only Rs 16,200 crore till 2017-18 and is likely to get another Rs 1,600 crore during the current financial year.

Two key areas that the railways focused include increasing the pace of infrastructure development, cleanliness and completion of existing projects like dedicated freight corridors. In terms of key indicators like doubling, new lines and gauge conversion, against an average 4.16 kilo meter per day rate between 2009 and 2014, it increased to 7.82 km per day in 2016-17 and further declined to 5.1 km per day in 2017-18.

It also increased the pace of electrification of tracks. Between 2014 and 2018, around 8,411 route kilometers (rkm) was commissioned, compared to 3,038 rkm from 2009-14. Another key achievement was completion of rail links to Northeastern states such as Meghalaya, Tripura and Manipur.