Examine the causes of time and cost overruns in infrastructure projects in India, with reference to land acquisition, environmental clearances, and inter-agency coordination.

MoSPI monitors all central-sector infrastructure projects costing ₹150 crore and above, and its Flash Report for July 2026 showed 1,775 ongoing projects across 17 ministries carrying a cumulative cost overrun of ₹3,40,504 crore — revised cost rising to ₹37.11 lakh crore against an original ₹33.70 lakh crore [1][2]. Such overruns are less a financing failure than a failure of pre-project preparation and coordination.

Land acquisition delays

• The RFCTLARR Act, 2013 mandates a Social Impact Assessment, consent of 80% of affected families for private projects, and rehabilitation before possession — procedurally sound but time-consuming [3].
• Compensation at four times market value in rural areas raises project cost mid-execution; litigation over awards further stalls right-of-way handover [3].
• Linear projects (highways, rail) need contiguous land across many landowners, so a single disputed stretch idles the whole contract.

Environmental and forest clearances

• Projects require separate Environment, Forest, Wildlife and CRZ clearances, historically pursued through disjointed processes; PARIVESH, launched in 2018, was created precisely to compress these into a single window [4].
• Sequential appraisal by expert committees, public hearings and compliance conditions extend gestation, while delayed starts push costs up through price escalation.

Weak inter-agency coordination

• Utility shifting, municipal permissions and state clearances involve agencies outside the implementing ministry, with no single accountable authority.
• PM Gati Shakti (2021) now integrates 44 central ministries and 36 States/UTs on a geospatial platform, with an Empowered Group of Secretaries and Network Planning Group to resolve inter-ministerial issues [5].
• MoSPI's own monitoring remains administrative and self-reported, without penalty for slippage [2].

Overruns thus arise from optimistic ex-ante estimation colliding with land, environmental and jurisdictional realities. The remedy lies in securing land and clearances before awarding contracts, strengthening Gati Shakti-based joint planning, and publishing project-wise accountability data — converting monitoring into genuine delivery, as India's capital-expenditure push demands.