Inclusive industrial development in India

Industrial development creating benefits for all

India’s leaders have a bold national vision of economic self-reliance and sustainable inclusive growth. To make this a reality requires a strong industrial and manufacturing base that can compete with the best in the world, and which creates employment opportunities and broader benefits for all social groups.

The Visakhapatnam-Chennai Industrial Corridor (VCIC) aligns with this vision completely. It is a landmark programme that aims to build a major global manufacturing and industrial hub in the southeast state of Andhra Pradesh, to attract a diverse range of industries, incentivise entrepreneurship and create more productive, better paying jobs.

VCIC is a key part of India’s first coastal corridor – the East Coast Economic Corridor (ECEC), with an aim to create world class infrastructure to support business development. It is also part of the government of India’s Act East policy, which aims to integrate the economy with global production networks in southeast and east Asia. The programme is forecast to create 11.8M new jobs in Andhra Pradesh by 2035, including 9M in the manufacturing sector, strongly boosting the state’s contribution to GDP.

11.8M jobs created by 2035 including 9M in manufacturing 

As lead project management and construction supervision consultant, we are responsible for delivering state-of-the-art transport, power transmission and distribution, renewable energy, water and wastewater infrastructure to support the 800km industrial corridor, which stretches along the coastline of Andhra Pradesh.

We have also been advising on policy reforms to improve the ease of doing business, running community engagement sessions, and developing an action plan for gender equality and social inclusion, as well as helping to build the state’s climate resilience.

A big achievement has been to reach out to women in local communities and consult on how to make the programme more inclusive – creating better employment opportunities, protecting women’s rights, offering flexible work schedules and providing a safer working environment for women. This is encouraging more women to participate in the socioeconomic development of the community. For example, road projects aim to encourage women’s mobility by promoting safe journeys, while supplying water to 72,000 households frees women from collecting water so they can work.

Managing a megaproject

Digital innovation has played a major role in ensuring good governance and programme management in tranche one of VCIC, which began in September 2018 and is currently in the execution phase. We created a purpose-built project progress dashboard in 2019 to keep track of key metrics, including the status of construction, procurement, safety and quality aspects, project loans and financials.

This dashboard tracks the overall physical and financial progress of the programme as well as giving a breakdown across the 11 projects in tranche one – spanning water supply, transport, power transmission and distribution, renewable energy, e-vehicles, waste management, sustainability and industry development. It has continued to be vital in tranche two, which is expected to start in April to May 2025 and includes four further projects.

The progress dashboard allows users to analyse a wide range of data as well as providing daily, weekly and monthly updates on key information. We also developed an app that provides real-time inputs directly from the site, including photos and videos, which feed into the dashboard.

Clients and government stakeholders, as well as the project team, have recognised the progress dashboard as a valuable tool, and it is now being implemented on all our major projects in India. An employee attendance app, developed in India for VCIC, has been adopted by other Mott MacDonald divisions. As a group, we continually seek new ways to use digital technology to improve project management, decision making and outcomes.

More than this, we developed a separate social outcomes dashboard, which provides a different lens through which to view project progress. This includes information on employment and training, awareness campaigns on health, safety and hygiene, community engagement meetings and participation by women across all activities. This is an incredibly important part of our programme management role, given that VCIC has such a strong focus on social inclusion.

Boosting business

The success of VCIC depends on attracting investors by creating a supportive business environment that will nurture micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). One of the barriers was the complexity of getting all the regulatory approvals needed to set up a business in the state of Andhra Pradesh.

“Our role was to help the Department of Industries for Andhra Pradesh to develop a set of clear industrial and sector policies designed to stimulate growth, with a real focus on incentives for women to participate. This removed the burden caused by conflicting policies at district, state and national level,” says Pankaj Vatsa, our divisional general manager for advisory services in India.

To make it as simple as possible to establish a business, we created an e-portal with a single desk system that allows companies to complete all the necessary steps in one place – fill in an online application, access government incentives, submit documents, track progress and pay fees.

This has cut the time taken to approve business applications from about 55 to 60 days to just 21 in most cases and has lowered the cost of these applications.  More than 24,000 entrepreneurs – including 4,500 women – have applied to establish industrial businesses in VCIC via the e-portal. The proportion of female applicants (over 18%) is relatively high given that women comprise only 14% of total entrepreneurs in India, according to government statistics.

Empowering women

Our technical advisers are making continuous efforts to inform the project implementing agencies and contractors to apply central government as well as state government policies regarding welfare, safety and empowerment to improve work opportunities for women. These include the enforcement of labour rights and policies against sexual harassment and gender discrimination at work as well as equal pay for equal work for women and men.

More than 50 public meetings have been held in local communities to discuss the factors that exclude women from work. These have been attended by more than 1,500 people including around 1,000 women (70%) and have led to practical interventions such as private and safe sex-segregated toilets, places to dispose of used menstrual materials, and sanitation, health, hygiene and safety improvements on roads and worksites.

Since the start of VCIC in September 2018, more than 6,000 construction workers have been employed, 17% of them women. Also, 25,000 young people without jobs have received training, with a high level of participation (59%) by female candidates.

Our skills development expert works with various education institutions to provide high quality training opportunities so that skills gaps in the construction workforce and other priority sectors are filled. Over 1,000 women have been trained in IT including 300 web developers, 400 field technicians in the computing sector, and 200 IT helpdesk assistants. In addition, 200 women were trained as customer relations executives.

The most popular training among women has been for roles in the textiles and clothing manufacturing sector, which is large in Andhra Pradesh. More than 3,700 women have been trained as self-employed tailors, 1,300 women as assistant fashion designers and 1,700 women as sewing machine operators.

Clean energy

Environmental protection is an integral part of the vision for VCIC as a manufacturing hub. This includes a focus on resource efficiency, minimising environmental impact, building climate change resilience, promoting sustainable procurement and developing a green transport network.

We have overseen the development of a floating solar energy plant, which sits on the surface of a local reservoir and a natural lake and was set up with negligible environmental disturbance. Almost 9,000 solar panels on Meghadri Gedda reservoir generate 3MW.

These plants supply clean energy via the grid to businesses along the industrial corridor and to the city of Vishakhapatnam. There is one ongoing challenge; the solar panels must be kept clear of bird droppings to operate efficiently, which requires a constant cycle of manual cleaning. This makes maintenance costs higher than for a plant on land.

However, building equivalent solar capacity on land would have had a greater environmental impact due to tree removal and land clearance. Moreover, the reservoir offers the potential to expand solar capacity over time. The SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) online monitoring system of this floating solar plant shows that it has contributed a carbon saving of 3,220MT per year and negated the burning of 54,000MT of coal.

Rejuvenation work at Mudasarlova Lake has removed silt and improved water storage, flood control, conservation of soil and water and groundwater drainage.
In addition, more than 10,000 trees have been planted to assist in carbon sequestration leading to lower carbon levels in the environment and improving air quality.

Project sustainability

Our multidisciplinary experts are constantly seeking to analyse the consequences of development choices for society and the environment, to better align projects with the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

VCIC is a shining example of a sustainable approach to industrial, infrastructure and urban development. Our digital tools enabled us to better understand the costs and benefits of the programme’s different interventions – such as converting streets to non-motorised zones, transporting waste using e-vehicles or installing solar streetlights.

In Andhra Pradesh and elsewhere, we will continue to work with policy makers and long-term investors to achieve sustainable returns on their capital investments, develop well-designed infrastructure, implement social and environmental safeguards and drive inclusive growth.

Visakhapatnam-Chennai Industrial Corridor Development Programme is the project of Government of Andhra Pradesh. M/s Mott MacDonald Pvt. Ltd is project management and supervision consultant.