For decades I've been hearing about India's need to modernize its infrastructure. Infrastructure is crucial for manufacturing, since various inputs need to travel quickly and reliably between and within cities in order to create stable supply chains. Manufacturing, in turn, is central to development — it moves people from farms to cities, where they become more productive, and it helps local companies absorb advanced technology from the rest of the world.
Although manufacturing is declining in importance in the global economy, there is still a chance that India can hop on the manufacturing-based development bus. At a minimum, it's definitely worth a shot. And to do so, India needs much better infrastructure — roads, railways, airports and power grids. Economic research even supports this hypothesis — India's Golden Quadrilateral highway project, started in 2001, has helped Indian companies and boosted productivity.
Yet India needs to do a lot more in the infrastructure department. A 2013 report by PricewaterhouseCoopers puts it thus: