In October 1963, while inaugurating the Bhakra dam on the Sutlej river in Himachal Pradesh, then prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru used the evocative phrase “temples of modern India” to describe the infrastructural milestones in the formative years of India’s post-Independence economic rebuilding. The dam, which took nearly 15 years to build, was seen as part of the attempts to modernise the economy with physical enablers like electricity generation and roadways as well as social enablers like education.
In the seven decades since Independence (a reasonable timeframe for evaluation), infrastructural challenges have formed a long arc in India’s national economy, extending from the Nehruvian era to the first few years of the third decade of the 21st century. In the intervening period, the challenges of developing and maintaining a wide range of infrastructure have grown manifold, often intersecting with the political economy of development. But that hasn’t, by any means, shifted focus from the pivotal role envisaged by different regimes for infrastructure in powering India’s development story.
