Covid pandemic an opportunity for India to create efficient and multifunctional infrastructure: KPMG

Mumbai: Even as Covid pandemic caused disruption across the board, it could provide an opportunity for India to create infrastructure that’s not just more efficient but also cheaper, a KPMG report said.
India has been upbeat about investing in infrastructure and is looking to invest billions in next few years.
The scale of India’s infrastructure financing requirements (estimated at USD4.5 trillion till 2040, nearly two times the country’s GDP) reflects the exigencies of modernising infrastructure across domains such as energy, transport, water, and sanitation. This has emerged as a national priority, not just to improve the quality of lives, but also to absorb the 12 million young people who enter the workforce every year, the report said.

“The advent of technologies like 5G, Internet of Things (IoT), and Machine Learning (ML), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and hybrid cloud will shape the future of infrastructure. It has yielded possibilities for building infrastructure that is leaner - created just-for-purpose and not over-designed; cheaper to use, capable of dynamic preventive maintenance and of multi-functionality, and also more responsive to varying user-requirements,” report by Elias George, Partner and Head, Infrastructure, Government and Healthcare, KPMG said.

Indian government has been pushing the infrastructure through several projects. However some of the earlier announced projects such as smart cities may have been put on the back burner say industry trackers. This is mainly due to the amount of investments that could go into these projects. Also, several infrastructure projects also received a jolt due to the disruption caused by the Covid pandemic.

Many real estate and infrastructure companies have been complaining about the shortage of labour as well since the Covid pandemic intensified around April this year. A large part of India’s infrastructure is still labour intensive.
“Although infrastructure creation in India is still overwhelmingly the preserve of government and public agencies, hopefully one of the few beneficial after-effects of the pandemic would be to accelerate measures to create intelligent infrastructure through the wise deployment of cutting-edge technology,” the KPMG report said.