How GatiShakti Public could rewire India's infrastructure playbook

The launch of PM GatiShakti Public marks an important milestone in India’s journey towards transparent, data-driven infrastructure planning. Four years after the platform brought together information from 57 ministries on a single, digital interface, this query-based web platform allows users to access 230 approved datasets covering physical- and social-infrastructure assets. It aims to make infrastructure and geospatial data a shared national resource rather than a government silo, enabling a better project design, inter-agency coordination, and private-sector participation. For decades, India’s infrastructure bottlenecks have stemmed not only from financing gaps but also from fragmented planning. Ministries and departments have often worked in isolation, leading to a duplication of projects, delays, and cost overruns. 

The GatiShakti framework, launched in 2021, sought to correct this by integrating geospatial data across the transport, energy, logistics, and urban sectors. Now, by extending access beyond government users, GatiShakti Public represents a logical and progressive evolution, one that could unlock economic value through collaboration. The Union Road Transport and Highways Minister recently highlighted that India’s logistics cost stood at 14-16 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP), compared to 8 per cent in China, 12 per cent in the United States, and 12 per cent in Europe. The platform’s open-data architecture could help identify last-mile gaps. Also, stakeholders, private and academic, can leverage advanced analytics to facilitate more informed investment and policy decisions. As the Reserve Bank of India’s September 2025 Bulletin highlighted, for each rupee spent on creating infrastructure, growth in GDP is ₹2.5-3.5. The productivity gains from better-coordinated planning could thus be substantial. 

The government has rightly restricted access to certain sensitive layers but a broader governance framework is essential to ensure data integrity, accountability, and security. The success of GatiShakti Public will depend on maintaining the accuracy of its datasets, updating them regularly and ensuring that public users interpret them correctly. Open-data platforms must also balance transparency with safeguards against misuse, especially in an era of growing cyber vulnerabilities. Given these basic issues are in place, opening up the platform to the private sector can significantly enhance the efficiency of private capital in infrastructure and related areas. For instance, it would be much easier for the private sector to plan investment if there is clear data on the government’s ongoing infrastructure projects. The private sector, for example, can build a logistics hub at the right place if the data on highway construction is readily available. It might also reduce the cost of capital for such investment. The platform would be useful for firms building physical assets in large cities or even in a new township for that matter. At a broader policy level, PM GatiShakti Public can be seen as a step towards shared knowledge and collaborative development. It should be expected to improve private investment in infrastructure and related areas, which will help boost growth and generate jobs.