Editorial

The construction industry faced extraordinary problems in 2020 due to the pandemic, the associated lockdown and the migration of labour back into the rural hinterland. The first calendar quarter (January-March 2020) was poor and the […]

 The pandemic and the associated lockdowns have severely impacted the infrastructure sector, along with the rest of the economy. Kick-starting infrastructure activity will require an enormous corpus of funding. Policymakers must find ways to attract […]

The aviation sector has been the hardest hit by the pandemic and the associated lockdowns. The one saving grace might be lower fuel costs but that hardly compensates for the catastrophic drop in passenger and […]

The road sector was badly impacted by the pandemic and the associated lockdowns. There will be lingering after-effects even though recovery has now started. On the positive side, NHAI and most state road authorities have […]

The pandemic and lockdown have dealt a body blow to urban transport systems. India’s metros were shut down from late March to early September this year, leading to huge revenue losses. Even now, safety and […]

This issue marks our twenty-second anniversary. In our past special anniversary issues, we used to review trends and developments in the previous 12 months, examine key issues and discuss the future outlook. This anniversary issue […]

There has been a steady increase in the demand for tunnel construction across the infrastructure space due to the needs of diverse sectors such as railways, metro systems, roads, hydropower, and water supply and sewerage. […]

The pandemic and its economic impact has led to a dramatic crash in global fuel demand and prices have fallen as well. India’s demand too has fallen in sync with the national lockdown. But this […]

The pandemic has had a very negative impact on trade. At the same time, it has emphasised the need for accelerating the digitalisation of all processes at India’s ports. As it stood, the Sagarmalaprogramme did […]

As of now, as is the case in so many other sectors, IR is intent on surviving the pandemic and lockdown without suffering more than the inevitable losses. However, once the lockdown ends, IR will […]

India’s mining sector has never performed to its innate potential because it has been hobbled by many negative factors. While the country possesses substantial natural resources, mining has always been a low-tech undertaking. There are […]

The construction industry is the highest employment generator outside of agriculture and also the largest consumer of steel, cement, bitumen, geosynthetics and other materials. It is, however, highly dependent on infrastructure development for activity – […]

There have been some green shoots of hope for infrastructure financing in the past year, despite the downbeat sentiment due to a decelerating economy. However, new problems have also surfaced. On the plus side of […]

The experience across the UMT sector in India can at best be described as patchy. There has been rapid uptake of metro rail systems. Metros will be operational across 25 cities within the next few […]

Both positive and negative trends are visible in the road sector. Project awards dropped sharply in 2018-19 as the economic slowdown impacted the sector. However, actual construction continued to see a rising trend. In the […]

The past year has seen a lot of activity in the aviation sector. Though there’s been a slowdown in traffic in the past six months, breakneck growth through the past six years has led to […]

Asharp deterioration in the GDP growth rate has led to concerns about the state of the economy. There are differences of opinion about the cause of decline: is it structural or cyclical? However, there is […]

Managing India’s growing energy demand will be a major challenge through till 2030. The country imports over 80 per cent of its crude and over 30 per cent of its gas, and demand is slated […]

The maritime transport sector is heavily dependent on the global trade cycle and that, unfortunately, looks as though it is going into a decline. This means less cargo activity and lower shipping rates for a […]

The reform momentum has slowed down across the power sector in the past year. AT&C losses rose after a couple of years of substantial reductions. The gap between the average cost of supply and the […]