Water

It may well be true that the most bitter conflict in the next fifty years will not be over oil but water. Already, almost a billion people in the world live without access to clean water. The sustainability of human development is being threatened by the growing scarcity of clean water. Climate change is likely to worsen the situation. Water will increasingly dominate national and international politics and power. It is this thirst for water that may become critical for ensuring political, social, and economic stability. Exponentially increasing demand for water due to population growth, agricultural practices, industrial growth and consequent pollution and poor civic infrastructure have further decreased the per capita availability of potable water.

Solid Waste

Increasing population and urbanization are creating heaps of waste across the world. With changing consumption patron, waste composition are becoming more and more indestructible. Indian municipalities who have the responsibility for taking care of municipal solid waste generated in their cities are failing their duty to ensure environmentally sound and sustainable ways of dealing with waste generation, collection, transport, treatment, and disposal.

Waste to energy, RDF, Composting are some of the commonly used practices to tackle this menace with funding from State, Central Government, International funding agencies and PPP.

Health Care

Population explosion, changing demographics and socio-economic profiles, change in disease profile, increasing health awareness, insurance coverage, and medical tourism are the key drivers of healthcare. Currently, India’s healthcare sector reflects poor performance of the sector in comparison to other developing countries. Government expenditure on healthcare sector is far below the requirement for the burgeoning population. Private sector spends accounts for 3/4th (nearly 80%) of the total healthcare spending in India. Mounting financial deficit in Indian economy and scarcity of public funding indicate that the opportunity for significantly higher public health spending will be limited in the foreseeable future thus releying more and more on private funding and PPP.

Tourism

Indian tourism sector needs to reposition itself for tapping both international and domestic tourism. Tourism is not only significant for contributing to GDP but also crucial for raising foreign exchange reserve of the country and employment generation.

Indian domestic tourism is very huge and is increasing, primarily linked to pilgrim and leisure. There is huge space for creation of infrastructure to address domestic tourist such as hotels , leisure parks, theme parks, airports, beautification of water bodies and rivers banks .

Energy

Energy is an essential building block of economic development and in improving the quality of life. To meet the increasing demand of developing nation, the Indian energy sector has witnessed a rapid growth.

The energy sector includes all the industries involved in the production and sale of energy. It includes sectors like petroleum, natural gas, coal, and power (including thermal, hydro, nuclear, as well as transmission and distribution).

India’s energy requirements have grown significantly since market reforms were initiated by the Government of India in the 1990s. Energy sector reforms, capacity addition and improvement in existing infrastructure are the government’s primary focus areas. The rapidly growing industrial base, urbanization, as well as improvement in the standard of living have widened the gap between energy demand and supply. Supply has not been able to keep pace with increasing demand, causing huge power shortages across the country. The deficit is largely due to T&D losses, poor transmission and distribution infrastructure, unaccountability in metering and billing, cross subsidies, etc.

For sustained economic growth, long-term availability of adequate energy at affordable cost is crucial. Meeting the energy challenge is therefore of fundamental importance to India’s economic growth imperatives and its efforts to raise its level of human development.

Renewable energy sources offer viable option to address the energy security concerns of a country. Today, India has one of the highest potentials for the effective use of renewable energy. There is a significant potential in India for generation of power from renewable energy sources—wind, small hydro, biomass, and solar energy.

Other renewable energy technologies, including solar photovoltaic, solar thermal, small hydro and biomass power are also spreading. Greater reliance on renewable energy sources offers enormous economic, social, and environmental benefits.

Transportation

Transportation sector moves economy on its wheels. .

• Railways - Indian Railways, one of the largest railways under single management is facing acute shortage of capacity in major corridors and wherewithal to rope in private investment.
• Roads - Roads are the dominant mode of transportation in India today through causing pollution and irreversible loss to non-renewable energy sources. They carry almost 90 percent of the country’s passenger traffic and 65 percent of its freight. Roads are critical for any economy, especially a growing economy like India with a large population and different topographies. Passenger traffic is growing at about 12% per annum, while cargo traffic is growing over 15%, which will continue to rise as economic activities improve along with the increase in foreign trade. Infusion of private investment and better infrastructure must to support the growth of the economy in the coming years. In one of the recent initiative through union budget 2013, government has proposed that there will be a regulator for road sector that will address concerns of road users and private developers as well.

• Ports - India has 12 major and 187 minor and intermediate ports along its more than 7500 km long coastline. These ports serve the country’s growing foreign trade in petroleum products, iron ore, and coal, as well as the increasing movement of containers. Inland water transportation remains largely undeveloped despite India's 14,000 kilometers of navigable rivers and canals.
• Aviation - India has 125 airports, including 11 international airports. The Indian airports handled 96 million passengers and 1.5 million tonnes of cargo in year 2006-2007, an increase of 31.4% for passenger and 10.6% for cargo traffic over previous year. The dramatic increase in air traffic for both passengers and cargo in recent years have placed a heavy strain on the country's major airports.