Mumbai’s infrastructure extravaganza will soon be revealed

By Leo Mirani, Asia correspondent, The Economist

Upon taking office as India’s prime minister in 2014, Narendra Modi immediately boosted infrastructure spending. Many state and local governments followed suit. The country desperately needed it. Urban infrastructure has endured years of neglect even as cities expanded in size and population.

Nowhere is this more so than Mumbai, the commercial capital. Home to 22m people, India’s richest city had long been an embarrassment, with gridlocked roads, packed trains and an airport at capacity. In 2025 some of the city’s new infrastructure projects will, at last, be complete.

Perhaps the most eagerly awaited will be the opening of new metro lines. One that will connect the city’s southern tip to other business districts and the airport is expected to be fully operational by the end of 2025. It will be Mumbai’s first mass-transit link to the existing airport.

Another much-anticipated project is a coastal road running along the city’s west coast, part of which opened in 2024. The plan is to use the road, built on reclaimed land, to link the west with a bridge on the east of the city, in turn connecting the Mumbai peninsula to the mainland. The 10km road will be completed in 2025, with 175 acres of new parks and seaside promenades alongside it.

Arguably the most impressive infrastructure project to open in 2025 will be a vast new airport on the city’s outskirts. Mumbai’s existing airport has just one usable runway and is in the middle of the city.

The completion of these megaprojects will build upon a spate of ribbon-cuttings in 2024. More are on the way, including a high-speed rail link to Ahmedabad, an economic hub, and a motorway to Delhi, the capital.

To pay for all this, and similar projects across the country, India has in recent years turbocharged public investment. A record 11trn rupees ($130bn), or 3.4% of gdp, has been set aside for infrastructure in the year to the end of March 2025, three times the annual amount of a decade ago. Much more spending and building will be necessary to expand India’s economy and boost the living standards of its people. But the pace is picking up. ■