Economy · Sub-pillar 4.6
Infrastructure
Transport, power, logistics, digital connectivity and digital inclusion across the whole country.
What is infrastructure?
Infrastructure is sub-pillar 4.6 of the 47 BH framework for a developed Bharat by 2047, the sixth of nine sub-pillars under the Economy pillar. It asks whether India has the transport, power, logistics and digital connectivity a developed economy needs, across the whole country, and whether everyone can actually use the digital services built on it.
Why it matters for 2047
Infrastructure is the economy's circulatory system. A road that halves the time to market raises every farmer's income along it; a reliable power supply lets a workshop take an order it would otherwise refuse; a broadband connection turns a village school or clinic into a node on a national network.
India has built at a scale and pace in the past decade that few countries have matched, in highways, railway electrification, airports, power capacity and digital networks. The questions for 2047 are about depth and reach: whether the power stays on all day everywhere, whether goods move cheaply, and whether the digital network includes the people least likely to be on it.
47 BH adds digital inclusion deliberately. A country can have a billion internet connections and still leave its older, poorer and rural citizens unable to use the services that now assume one.
Where India stands
- 22.6 hrs
of electricity a day reached rural India on average in 2024-25, up from 12.5 hours in 2013-14; urban areas received 23.4 hours. Installed capacity reached 520.51 GW in January 2026 and the energy shortage was 0.03%.[1]
- 1,46,572 km
of national highways existed in March 2026, up about 61% from 91,287 km in 2014; 99.6% of the railway network was electrified by July 2026 and the country had 165 operational airports.[2]
- 106.6 crore
broadband subscribers were connected at the end of March 2026, almost all wireless; but rural teledensity was 60.5% against 151.5% in urban areas, according to TRAI.[3]
- 38th
of 139 countries was India's rank in the World Bank's Logistics Performance Index 2023, with a score of 3.4 out of 5, up from 44th in 2018.[4]
The build-out is real. Highways have grown by three-fifths and four-lane roads have more than doubled since 2014; railways are almost fully electrified; airports have more than doubled in number; power supply in villages has gone from half a day to nearly all day, with the national energy shortage close to zero and per capita consumption up by half. [1][2]
Reach is the remaining gap. Rural teledensity at 60% against 150% in cities shows how far digital inclusion still has to travel, and the average wireless user consumes 26.7 GB a month while many households have no connection at all. [3] On logistics, India has climbed into the top 40 but still trails the trading economies it competes with, and the cost of moving goods remains high. [4]
A note on the numbers: hours of supply are averages reported by distribution companies, and the experience in a given village can differ; highway and airport counts are administrative; the Logistics Performance Index is a World Bank survey of freight professionals published every few years, last in 2023.
On the 47 BH report card
Every 15 August, 47 BH reports how far India has come on each sub-pillar. For this sub-pillar, the headline indicators are:
- Average hours of electricity supply in rural and urban areas (Ministry of Power).
- Logistics Performance Index score and rank (World Bank).
- Broadband subscribers per 100 people, and rural versus urban teledensity (TRAI).
Two lenses on infrastructure
City and village
47 BH asks whether a village gets the same hours of power and the same quality of road and signal as a city suburb, and whether the metros' new expressways and airports are matched by last-mile roads and reliable buses where most people live. The headline numbers are national; the lived experience of infrastructure is local.
Learn, avoid, protect
- Learn
- What can India learn from countries that cut logistics costs through rail freight, multimodal hubs and paperless customs, that made broadband a universal service, and that maintained what they built as carefully as they built it?
- Avoid
- Which mistakes should it avoid, such as counting kilometres laid rather than journeys made cheaper, building for cars where most people walk and take buses, or leaving the digital network's newest users without the skills and trust to use it?
- Protect
- What of its own should it protect, such as the public digital infrastructure that runs on these networks, the railway system that moves more people than almost any in the world, and the engineering institutions that delivered this decade's build-out?
What this sub-pillar does not cover
Each topic has one home in the framework. These related topics sit elsewhere:
- Planning of cities and the services villages need to be liveable: Economy: Cities, towns and villages
- Protection of grids and networks from attack: Governance: National and cyber security
- Clean energy and the emissions that come with growth: Nature: Energy
- Digital rights, fraud and online safety: Governance: Digital rights and safety
- Government delivery through digital public infrastructure: Governance: State capacity
Questions about infrastructure
How many hours of electricity do Indian villages get?
An average of 22.6 hours a day in 2024-25, up from 12.5 hours in 2013-14; urban areas averaged 23.4 hours, according to the Ministry of Power. [1]
How long is India's national highway network?
1,46,572 km in March 2026, up from 91,287 km in 2014, of which 45,516 km is four-lane or wider, according to the Press Information Bureau. [2]
How many Indians have broadband?
1,065.88 million broadband subscribers at the end of March 2026, out of 1,092.79 million internet subscribers, almost all wireless, according to TRAI. Rural teledensity was 60.46% and urban 151.47%. [3]
How does India rank on logistics?
38th of 139 countries with a score of 3.4 in the World Bank's Logistics Performance Index 2023, up from 44th in 2018. [4]
Why is digital inclusion part of infrastructure?
Because a network only counts for the people who can use it. The second-edition framework added digital inclusion to this sub-pillar so that the report card asks who is connected, not only how many connections exist.
Sources
- Press Information Bureau, "India's Power Sector: Progress, Reform, and the Road Ahead", backgrounder, 18 March 2026. https://static.pib.gov.in/WriteReadData/specificdocs/documents/2026/mar/doc2026318829301.pdf
- Press Information Bureau, "India's Infrastructure Transformation: From Connectivity to Capacity", backgrounder, 12 August 2026. https://static.pib.gov.in/WriteReadData/specificdocs/documents/2026/aug/doc2026812952701.pdf
- Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, "The Indian Telecom Services Performance Indicators, January-March 2026", Press Release No. 76/2026, 22 June 2026. https://trai.gov.in/sites/default/files/2026-06/PR_No.76of2026.pdf
- World Bank, "Connecting to Compete 2023: Logistics Performance Index", 2023. https://lpi.worldbank.org/international/global
47 BH cites every figure so that it can be checked. If you find an error, it will be corrected openly and the date below will change.