'Hasty execution, tick-box approach often affect quality of projects'

Planning India’s infrastructure cannot be reduced to a tick-box exercise of cost calculations and hasty execution, industry executives said on Thursday at the Business Standard Infrastructure Summit 2025.

 

Underscoring how a need for speed has often compromised quality, Jagan Shah, chief executive officer (CEO) of The Infravision Foundation, said: “We do feel that it’s also important to remind ourselves that while we need to build fast, we also need to build right. And that compromise will affect the future generations.”

 

 Rahul Mithal, chairman and managing director of public-sector infrastructure consultancy Rites, echoed the concern, warning that when timelines take precedence over technical due diligence, the result is infrastructure that may look complete on paper but fails to deliver on the ground.

 

While most of the cities in India had been fairly well planned, rapid growth, especially post-1991, has outpaced existing infrastructure systems, policies, and regulations, said Shah at a panel discussion called ‘Infra for Viksit Bharat: Planning, Funding, & Building’ moderated by Dhruvaksh Saha of Business Standard. 

 

The session saw industry executives emphasise that India does not lack projects or funding, but the pace of execution often comes at the cost of quality planning.

 

“Out of the three elements (planning, funding and execution) of infrastructure, planning is the core part of it,” said Mithal. He added that instead of awarding Detailed Project Report contracts on lowest-bidder basis—where the tender goes to the cheapest option—the industry should adopt the Quality and Cost-Based Selection (QCBS) method, which balances expertise with cost. About half of Indian institutions already rely on QCBS, Mithal noted.

 

Kuljit Singh, investment banking partner and leader of infrastructure at EY India, said, “The procurement challenge runs deeper than just fear of decision-making. Even when criteria exist, such as giving weightage to the quality of the team, officials often break it down to an excessively granular level. This reflects not only fear but also a lack of confidence. In reality, officers cannot escape the application of the mind. What we need is stronger industry–academia collaborations to provide validation and benchmarks, giving decision-makers the confidence to exercise judgement.”

 

To meet the ‘Viksit Bharat’ goal, Singh stressed the need for more agile procurement methods such as the Swiss Challenge, which the industry has yet to adopt. “The industry only has a decade to achieve ‘Viksit Bharat’s goal,” he pointed out, adding that the sector must undergo a 360-degree review to check if organisations, institutions, and government departments are fit for the purpose.

 

The panel also reflected on why public–private partnerships in urban infrastructure often struggle to take off, unlike large-ticket projects backed by sovereign guarantees. Shah said city-level projects remain unattractive to private firms as they are “entirely subservient to how the state and the urban local body actually functions financially,” making them riskier.