India is one of the fast growing economies of the World. Inspite of global slowdown/recession, India’s GDP growth is projected to be over 7% during 2009. Large number of projects in the Highways, Hydropower, Water Resources, Railways, Metro Rail, Coal, Mining, Petroleum & Natural Gas sectors, involving extensive use of rock engineering are planned with an estimated investments of over USD 1000 Billion, on current price level, during the next 20-25 years, as per the information available so far.

India has wide spread network of technical education centres. It has more than 110 universities and 2500 engineering colleges, including 15 IITs, imparting technical education in the various disciplines of engineering (graduation & above), including Rock Engineering.

• India has about 3.3 million kilometres road network, which is the second largest in the world. The Government of India has launched major initiatives to upgrade and strengthen the existing National Highways and develop additional highways through various phases of National Highways Development Project. The estimated cost for these major initiatives for implementation by 2021 is over USD 130 Billion. The Rohtang Tunnel Project, aimed to provide all-weather alternative route to Leh-Ladakh region, besides Himachal Pradesh’s snow-bound tribal district of Lahaul and Spiti, alone is going to cost over USD 350 million.



• Ministry of Power of the Government of India has planned addition of hydro potential of 114,000 MW by March 2027, with an investment of USD 114 Billion.



• Keeping in view the availability and uneven distribution of India’s water resources, the Ministry of Water Resources, Government of India formulated a National Perspective Plan for Water Resources Development, which interalia included Inter-state river interlinking projects. These interlinking projects are planned in Himalayan and Peninsular regions. There are 14 links in the first category and 16 in the latter. The entire concept of interlinking is based on the principle of transfer of surplus water to deficit areas in order to help even-out regional and seasonal variations and break the vicious cycle of droughts and floods. The cost involvement of these thirty projects combining the two parts, namely, Himalayan and Peninsular at the time of inception, as on March 2003 was USD 112 Billion, which with cost escalation has already increased to over 225 Billion.



• Indian Railways, the second largest rail network in the world, is executing many projects in difficult terrain conditions. For providing rail connectivity to various states falling in north India, tunneling appears to be a necessity to cross many hilly regions. Ministry of Railway, Government of India, is at present executing various railway projects in North and North Eastern regions involving an expenditure of more than USD 275 Million per year. Indian Railway is also executing Dedicated Freight Corridor (Eastern and Western) Projects to facilitate faster movement of trains carrying goods and raw materials from major ports to the industrial hubs. The 2763 km long project, is estimated to cost over USD 7 Billion. The plan outlay for the railways in the 11th Plan (2007-12) only is estimated at over USD 50 Billion. With the same level of development, the plan budget for railways by 2027 will be over 200 Billion.



• Delhi, the national capital with the population of about 16 million ought to have had a metropolitan rapid transportation network long back as per the prevailing standards. The first phase covering 65.10 km, at the cost of over USD 2 Billion, has already been completed and the work in phase II (125 km) having a tunnel length of about 29 km is in progress. Phases III & IV have been planned for extending the metro network. Metros are also planned for other cities namely Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kanpur, Kochi, Mumbai, Pune, etc. which would involve construction of no. of tunnels & underground works. As per the present estimates, these metro projects are going to cost over USD 16 Billion.



• India ranks 3rd amongst the coal producing countries in the world. India has got share of about 10% of the World’s Natural Resources and produces 90 minerals, which includes 04 fuel minerals, 11 metallic, 53 non-metallic and 22 minor minerals. The Indian Mining Industry provides employment to about 1.11 million people, and operates more than 3100 mines, which consist of 572 coal mines, 2500 metalliferrous mines. The coal sector alone has an estimated investment of about USD 80 Billion in next twenty years.



• Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas, Government of India, has envisaged an investment of over USD 22 Billion for creating additional refining capacity of about 110 million tones per annum. Besides these, three underground rock caverns for Strategic Crude Oil Reserves, having a capacity of 5 million tones, and costing over USD 500 Million, at Mangalore, Visakhapatnam and Padur, are being executed. These works are expected to be completed by 2012. Many more such works are planned in future.