Loading…
Prime Minister Narendra Modi chaired the 53rd meeting of PRAGATI - the ICT-enabled, multi-modal platform for Pro-Active Governance and Timely Implementation - at Seva Teerth on 25 August 2026.
Six key infrastructure projects in the Railway, Road and Power sectors were reviewed, spanning nine states with a cumulative cost of more than Rs 30,000 crore, with emphasis on timelines, inter-agency coordination and resolution of pending issues.
The Prime Minister said infrastructure projects must be monitored as an integrated whole rather than as isolated sections, stretches or packages, and asked ministries and states to adopt an end-to-end approach so that individual package progress translates into commissioning of the full project.
He asked that common utility corridors be explored at the planning stage of major transport and infrastructure projects, subject to technical and economic feasibility, and said speed of execution must be matched by uncompromising quality.
Reviewing AgriStack under the Digital Agriculture Mission, he called for using the latest digital technologies including Artificial Intelligence across the agricultural value chain; on cyber fraud including 'digital arrest' incidents, he stressed training, targeted public awareness for senior citizens and youth, and regular capacity-building of personnel.
Monitor and review important central and state-flagged projects and programmes, and address citizens' grievances, through direct interaction between the Prime Minister, Union Secretaries and State Chief Secretaries.
Key: Launched on 25 March 2015 as a multi-purpose, multi-modal platform bundling digital data management, video conferencing and geospatial technology; meetings are held on a designated PRAGATI Day, with this being the 53rd edition.
Build a digital public infrastructure for agriculture so that crop-related information and benefits reach farmers reliably and can be targeted accurately.
Key: Approved by the Union Cabinet on 2 September 2024 with an outlay of Rs 2,817 crore (central share Rs 1,940 crore). AgriStack rests on three foundational registries built and maintained by states - the Farmers' Registry, Geo-referenced Village Maps and the Crop Sown Registry, the last populated through Digital Crop Surveys each season.
End siloed infrastructure planning by putting the assets and plans of all infrastructure ministries onto a single geospatial platform, so that alignments, utilities and connectivity are coordinated before tendering.
Key: Launched on 13 October 2021, covering multimodal connectivity across railways, roads, ports, waterways, airports, mass transport and logistics; it is the planning-stage counterpart to PRAGATI's implementation-stage monitoring.
Reduce logistics cost and improve efficiency across the movement of goods, complementing the physical infrastructure created under PM GatiShakti.
Key: Works alongside PM GatiShakti through instruments such as the Unified Logistics Interface Platform; India's rank on the World Bank's Logistics Performance Index improved to 38th in 2023 from 44th in 2018.
There is no such thing as a digital arrest in Indian law. No police force, court, customs authority or central agency can place a person under arrest over a video call, keep them under surveillance on their own camera, or demand payment to avoid arrest. The fraud works by impersonation and time pressure: the victim is contacted with a story that a parcel in their name contains contraband, or that their identity documents have been used in a money-laundering case; the caller appears in what looks like a police or agency setting, produces forged notices and warrant papers, and then places the victim under continuous video surveillance - the 'arrest' - forbidding them from consulting family or a lawyer while funds are transferred to 'verify' them. The design targets isolation and shame, which is why senior citizens are disproportionately affected and why the release stresses awareness campaigns for that group specifically. The lawful counter is simple and worth memorising: cut the call, and report to the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal or the 1930 helpline, both run by the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre. Speed matters because a fraudulent transfer can sometimes be frozen in transit through the banking layer before it is withdrawn from a mule account.
Simple Analogy: It is a confidence trick that borrows the uniform rather than the crowbar - the coercion is entirely theatrical, and it collapses the moment the victim ends the call and speaks to anyone else.
The Ministry of Home Affairs' central body for prevention, detection, investigation and prosecution of cybercrime, set up as a scheme in 2018 and made an attached office of MHA from 1 July 2024. It runs the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal and the 1930 helpline, and has seven components including the National Cyber Crime Threat Analytics Unit, the National Cyber Crime Training Centre and the National Cyber Crime Forensic Laboratory Ecosystem.
The ministry from which this release was issued; PRAGATI is convened by and chaired at the level of the Prime Minister, which is what gives its review meetings authority over both Union ministries and state administrations.
The nodal ministry for the Digital Agriculture Mission under which AgriStack is being built; the three foundational registries are, however, created and maintained by state governments and union territories, making it a cooperative federal exercise.
AgriStack follows the same design idea as Aadhaar and UPI - a set of shared, interoperable registries on which both government schemes and private services can be built, rather than a single application.
Both halves of this meeting depend on states: infrastructure projects stall on state-level land, forest and utility clearances, and AgriStack's registries are built and maintained by state governments.
Cyber financial fraud converts into loss only when money leaves the banking system, which is why detection efforts focus on mule accounts and on freezing transfers in transit through the 1930 helpline route.
The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation tracks central sector projects of Rs 150 crore and above for time and cost overruns - the statistical counterpart to PRAGATI's project-by-project intervention.
GS Paper 2 > Governance > E-Governance and Transparency; GS Paper 3 > Infrastructure and Cyber Security
General Awareness > Government Schemes and Platforms
General Awareness > Cyber Fraud, Digital Public Infrastructure
PRAGATI, PM GatiShakti and digital public infrastructure recur across UPSC GS-2 governance and general-awareness papers; cyber-fraud helplines and I4C are increasingly common in banking exams.
Pro-Active Governance and Timely Implementation - the Prime Minister's ICT-enabled platform for reviewing projects and grievances with Union Secretaries and State Chief Secretaries.
India's agricultural digital public infrastructure, built on the Farmers' Registry, Geo-referenced Village Maps and the Crop Sown Registry.
A fraud in which criminals impersonate law-enforcement officials and hold a victim under video surveillance while extorting money; no such procedure exists in Indian law.
A reserved shared alignment for water, power, gas and telecom services alongside a transport project, planned in advance to avoid repeated digging and utility-shifting delays.