Ranked the No. 1 state in ease of doing business, Telangana is driving growth for a new India, as CW discovers.

In an exclusive interview with CW, Jayesh Ranjan, Secretary, Department of IT, Electronics and Communication, Government of Telangana, talks to RAHUL KAMAT about how T-Hub, optic fibre network, Phase-2 of the metro and new sectors like aerospace and defence are attracting investments in the state.

Stakeholders harp on the government's infrastructure push and expect construction orders of Rs.18 trillion in the next six years. This order inflow volume should support 12 to 15 per cent of industry-level execution of compound annual growth rate (CAGR).

If you look at the current state of power generation projects in India, we have around 40-45 GW of stranded capacity. Of this, around 10-15 GW of capacity is operational, but unable to generate any power due to lack of Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs).

In what should have been a major story that was buried under other headlines, India achieved a significant milestone in its Digital India programme when 100,000-gram panchayats, or village councils, across the country were connected through a high-speed optical fibre network called BharatNet.

Policy actions to revive stalled projects, expedite approvals, introduce hybrid annuity and toll-operate-transfer (TOT) models in highways, and sustain rapid growth in renewable capacity augur well for the infrastructure financing landscape.

Considerable investments are planned through private sector participation in addition to investments through internal resources of VPT for port modernisation in the major thrust areas of deepening of channels and berths, development of new berths, modernisation and mechanisation of existing berths and improvements in connectivity and other logistics such as multi-model logistic parks, said MT Krishna Babu, Chairman, Port of Visakhapatnam.

Hitachi and its subsidiary company, Ansaldo, are engaged with the Indian Railways on many platforms. We will be introducing state-of-the-art technology in signalling and telecommunications on the Dedicated Freight Corridor (DFC) from Delhi to Mumbai.

Road traffic fatalities are the tenth leading cause of death globally. The World Health Organisation (WHO) predicts that if city authorities or government don't take necessary precautions in the next 13 years, it will become the 7th leading cause of death.