India Development Projects, Big, Bold, and Powerful
The Indira Gandhi Canal is a large irrigation canal in India that was conceived in 1948 and completed in 2010. It runs for 650 km from the Harike Barrage in Punjab to the Thar Desert in western Rajasthan and irrigates approximately 29 lakh acres annually. The Bhakra Nangal Dam, located on the Sutlej River in Himachal Pradesh, is one of the oldest development projects for river valleys in India, with construction starting in 1953 and being completed in 1963. It provides water for irrigation and generates hydroelectric power for several states in India.
The Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC), formed in 1948, operates in the Damodar river area of West Bengal and Jharkhand and aims to control floods, provide irrigation, generate and transmit electricity, and facilitate year-round navigation. The Konkan Railway, completed in 1998, is a 756.25 km railway line that connects Maharashtra, Goa, and Karnataka. It features over 2,116 bridges and 92 tunnels and was the largest railway project of the century in Asia. The Mumbai-Pune Expressway, which was fully operationalized in 2002, is India’s first six-lane toll expressway, spanning a distance of 94.5 km and reducing travel time between the two cities by two hours. The National Highways Development Programme (NHDP), launched in 1998, aims to develop roads of international standards that facilitate the smooth flow of traffic in India. It is being implemented in seven phases, and as of 2021, more than 71,000 km of national highways have been constructed under the NHDP. The Golden Quadrilateral project, a part of the NHDP, is a 5,846 km long network of highways connecting the four major cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, and Kolkata. The Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY) is a rural road connectivity program that aims to provide all-weather road connectivity to unconnected habitations in the country. The program was launched in 2000, and as of 2021, more than 6.5 lakh km of rural roads have been constructed under the PMGSY. The Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) is a housing program launched in 2015 with the aim of providing affordable housing to the urban and rural poor in India. As of 2021, more than 57 million houses have been constructed under the PMAY
