Perhaps India doesn’t have any agreed list of its landmark projects, be infrastructure or in any other sector. Everyone has a different priority or selfish motive in calling a project as landmark one.

I have been appealing to promote Nalanda International University as one to reflect the national identity with presence of the best of educational institutes from all around the world in one campus with 10,000 dedicated teaching faculty and 1,00,000 best students coming from the countries around the globe.

One issue of ‘Business Today’ had a feature on ‘India’s Landmark Projects’. It listed six infrastructure projects that included New Delhi Indira Gandhi International Airport terminal 3, New Delhi Airport Express, P.V. Narasimha Rao Elevated Expressway (Hyderabad), Hyderabad growth Corridor (Outer ring Road), Vallarpadam International container Transshipment Terminal (Kochi), and Bandra-Worli sea link recently opened and named as Rajiv Gandhi Setu. Surprisingly, the Mumbai sea link took 10 years to complete that is unusually a very long time. Airport Express being built by Delhi Metro will connect New Delhi Airport to New Delhi Railway Station that will have check-in facilities. All the landmark projects are the right steps to push India as a developed nation.

I don’t know if the country’s government considered or considers these as landmark or not. I also don’t understand why the magazine neither mentioned Mumbai International Airport that is under up gradation along with New Delhi one or the Mumbai New Delhi Rail Freight Corridor under implementation with assistance from Japan.

I do also wish some additional projects to have ‘landmark’ as adjective. Kashmir Rail Link between Udhampur and Srinagar is one. Has the railways forgotten the project with change in minister, as the UPA government dropped the bullet train project between Mumbai and New Delhi or the river-interlinking project proposed by NDA government?

Near from Noida, I look to Mayawati’s Yamuna and then Ganga Expressways as also landmark projects. Both can impact the development of the region through which it will pass. But who does know if its announcement was an election gimmick or serious one. The NDA’s GQ and NS-EW corridor Expressways were certainly landmark projects in absence of any such major project in the past half century. Unfortunately, because of the inefficiency of the administration both the projects remain incomplete till date.

But then the rapidly expanding Delhi Metro network must be a landmark project for the country and needs emulation in other metros with the same speed minus the flaws that have been very lately reported.

I wish the country take pride in having more of these landmark projects and completing the same in time, as these are the indices of the nation’s skill and technological progress, as Delhi Metro have been doing but certainly without any quality doubts.