Articles
Put the ‘Public’ in ITLA: Move People and Goods, Not Just Plans
A Welcome First Step
On Tuesday, the Union Cabinet approved the Integrated Transport & Logistics Authority (ITLA) as a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) housed under the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT). Its mandate is to strengthen planning, appraisal, monitoring, and research across India’s transport and logistics sectors. Key responsibilities include preparing a National Transport Master Plan with a ten-year or longer horizon, harmonizing shorter-term ministerial plans, technically appraising projects exceeding ₹500 crore, and establishing a unified data repository leveraging e-way bills, FASTag, and Vahan databases. Given the high economic cost of historical, fragmented planning, this initiative is a long-overdue milestone.
Planning is Not the Binding Constraint
While ITLA provides a crucial framework for infrastructure planning and financial appraisal, India’s mobility crisis stems as much from restrictive service regulations as from physical deficits. Despite continuous investments in highways, logistics terminals, and metro networks, the fundamental rights governing who may operate a bus, transport cargo, or provide shared rides remain shackled by archaic permit regimes formulated decades ago. A superior master plan cannot override counterproductive regulatory frameworks; true structural reform requires opening up the sector and dismantling legacy licensing bottlenecks.
The Missing Word is ‘Public’
Public transport is conspicuously absent from ITLA’s nomenclature and receives only nominal reference within its mandate under the broad category of “urban mobility”—subordinated within a hierarchy dominated by highways, railways, ports, and airports. For the majority of citizens, however, daily mobility relies on buses, shared autorickshaws, ferries, and suburban rail networks. These sectors are precisely where state monopolies remain deeply entrenched, permit artificially ration supply, and students, women, daily wage workers, and low-income commuters bear the brunt of operational failure. Furthermore, passenger transport falls largely under state jurisdiction, rendering it largely inaccessible to an authority primarily structured for central project appraisal. An agency focusing exclusively on freight corridors while treating daily commuter transit as an administrative afterthought risks accelerating goods while stranding people. India requires an Integrated Public Transport & Logistics Authority (IPTLA) with an explicit statutory mandate to expand public transport services, enforce service and interoperability standards, and spearhead regulatory reform across states.
Unbundle and Denationalise
The core regulatory levers reside with state governments. Under prevailing state Motor Vehicle Rules, stage carriage permits are tightly rationed, profitable routes are reserved for State Transport Undertakings (STUs), fare structures are bound by executive orders, and autorickshaws are restricted from carrying cargo. Systemic reform demands unbundling transport operations—separating terminals and depots, fleet operations, ticketing systems, and regulatory oversight to foster genuine market competition. Routes must be denationalised to establish a level playing field for private operators. Sustainable transport networks thrive only when operators possess the commercial freedom to collaborate, compete, and integrate services seamlessly across modes.
A Three-Tier Architecture
To ensure effective execution, a recast ITLA should serve as an overarching national mechanism that genuinely integrates the Ministries of Road Transport and Highways, Railways, Ports, Shipping and Waterways, Civil Aviation, Housing and Urban Affairs, and Commerce and Industry. Institutionalizing a Federal Transport Council—modeled after the GST Council—would empower states with a decisive voice in framing operational guidelines and reform benchmarks. State-level authorities would subsequently transpose these reforms into state legislation, while local districts customize them for urban and rural jurisdictions in active consultation with transport operators, panchayats, municipalities, trade associations, labor unions, and commuter representatives.
Reward States That Reform
Incentive-based fiscal architecture should be prioritized over central mandates. Performance-linked grants must be directed toward states that proactively liberalize permit regimes, denationalise route allocations, and open their transport datasets. Competitive federalism will invariably yield more sustainable reforms than top-down directives.
Passengers and Freight Together
Buses, shared vans, and utility vehicles inherently transport both passengers and freight; rural feeder services, for instance, frequently accommodate agricultural produce alongside commuters. Integrating public transport and logistics generates mutually reinforcing efficiencies through shared infrastructure, multi-purpose vehicles, and robust last-mile networks. This synergy acts as a catalyst for economic growth: reducing transit costs, expanding employment opportunities, accelerating formalization, and opening broader markets for small-scale producers.
Open Digital Rails
The national data repository must be architected as an open ecosystem rather than a closed bureaucratic silo. By maintaining open data protocols, interoperable payment gateways, and standardized digital interfaces, the platform can empower start-ups and innovators to develop advanced journey-planning engines, freight-matching algorithms, and integrated mobility-as-a-service (MaaS) solutions. Certain administrative functions are optimized through centralized sharing, while others thrive by absorbing external technical capabilities and marketplace innovations.
Openness as the Design Principle
The ultimate objective extends beyond the mechanical integration of transport modes. India requires an open, competitive, and interoperable mobility ecosystem that fosters cross-sector collaboration, interdisciplinary innovation, and agile business models. The long-term success of IPTLA or a broader IPTLA framework should be evaluated by the quality of service delivered to commuters and the barrier-free entry afforded to new innovators, rather than the sheer volume of master plans approved.
Integration driven purely by administrative consolidation will merely move files; integration anchored in openness and market competition will move people and goods.
Dr D Dhanuraj is the Founder-Chairman at the Centre for Public Policy Research (CPPR), Kochi, Kerala, India.
Views expressed by the authors are personal and need not reflect or represent the views of the Centre for Public Policy Research (CPPR).
Dr Dhanuraj is the Chairman of CPPR. His core areas of expertise are in international relations, urbanisation, urban transport & infrastructure, education, health, livelihood, law, and election analysis. He can be contacted by email at [email protected] or on Twitter @dhanuraj.
