Time and cost overruns remain a persistent challenge in India's infrastructure projects. Examine the institutional mechanisms in place to monitor and mitigate such overruns.

Central Sector infrastructure projects costing ₹150 crore and above are placed under mandatory statistical monitoring precisely because delays in land acquisition, clearances, funding and contract management routinely inflate their cost. As of December 2025, 1,392 projects worth about ₹29.68 lakh crore across 17 Ministries/Departments were under such monitoring [1] — a scale that makes institutional oversight, not ad hoc review, the only workable remedy.

Statistical monitoring: MoSPI

• The Infrastructure Projects Monitoring Division (IPMD) of MoSPI compiles a monthly Flash Report and a Quarterly Project Implementation Status Report, capturing original vs. revised cost, expenditure and physical progress [1][3].
• Projects are classified as mega (₹1,000 crore and above) and major (₹150 crore–₹1,000 crore), allowing scarce supervisory attention to be prioritised [2].

Digital monitoring: PAIMANA

• MoSPI has operationalised PAIMANA (Project Assessment, Infrastructure Monitoring & Analytics for Nation-building), replacing the legacy OCMS-2006, to enable near real-time, analytics-driven tracking of these projects [2].

Preventive mechanisms: planning before execution

• The PM GatiShakti National Master Plan, through the Network Planning Group at DPIIT, appraises rail, metro, road and airport proposals for multimodal alignment before sanction, reducing route conflicts and rework [4].
• PRAGATI, chaired by the Prime Minister with Central Secretaries and State Chief Secretaries, resolves stalled projects by settling inter-agency and Centre–State bottlenecks on a single platform [5].

Persisting gaps

• Data is largely self-reported by implementing agencies, so reporting quality varies [3].
• Monitoring detects slippage but cannot substitute for faster land acquisition, timely clearances and stronger contract enforcement.

India has therefore moved from passive record-keeping to a layered architecture — GatiShakti for pre-sanction planning, PAIMANA for continuous tracking, PRAGATI for escalation. Linking these dashboards to accountability of implementing agencies, and mandating independent verification of reported progress, would convert visibility into delivery, making public capital expenditure a genuine multiplier for growth and equitable development.