NDTV Infrashakti Awards: Inspiring Innovation And Excellence - Winners' List

The NDTV Infrashakti Awards are aimed at celebrating outstanding infrastructure practices across India. The event was a defining part of the Infrashakti campaign, which sought to go beyond steel and concrete and tell the story of India's infrastructure growth through its people.

The awards will inspire innovation and excellence across India by celebrating extraordinary individual and institutional initiatives. From engineering feats to sustainable urban planning, these awards celebrate it all.

Pranav Adani, Managing Director (Agro, Oil and Gas) and Director, Adani Enterprises, delivered the keynote address.

Amit Singh, CEO of Adani Green Energy, said there is a need to discover innovators across the country to tap into their brand new ideas.

"India is a big country, and we have so many innovators and pioneers in different parts of India. They are coming up with brand new ideas which can scale, and that's what we need," Mr Singh said.

"When we have an award function as this, we're able to identify these innovators and bring them to a platform where they meet and interact with industrialists and we can take that innovation and idea to the next level," he said.

The panelists at the event included Ashwani Gupta, CEO, Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone Ltd; Anup Sahay, Head, Corporate Strategy and Special Initiatives, L&T; Mallanna Sasalu, CEO, Provident Housing Ltd, and Rumjhum Chatterjee, Co-founder, Infravision Foundation.

Trade is at the core of taking India's economy to $10 trillion, Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone CEO Ashwani Gupta said at the NDTV Infrashakti Awards. "We believe in a $10 trillion economy. Where will it come from? Trade is at the core of it," he said. "But what is it exactly about trade? When we talk about focus on infrastructure, energy, industrialisation - all that is about trade," Mr Gupta said.

"If we look at our figures, 95 per cent of our trade last year was done by maritime, which is 68 per cent of value of all India... This is very clear and more and more efficient trade, not only in India but globally, is going to contribute to this $10 trillion economy," Mr Gupta said.

Rumjhum Chatterjee, Co-founder, Infravision Foundation said the country has made significant progress in core infrastructure sectors in the last few years. "We are very proud of it. There is a lot of effort, however, that we now need to put into looking at how we can galvanise social sectors as well," she said.

The panelists in the conversations on sustainable and climate-resilient infrastructure were: Ricky Kej, three-time Grammy Award winner, composer and environmentalist; Amit Singh, CEO, Adani Green Energy; G Raghuram, Former Director, IIM Bangalore; Anumita Roychowdhury, Executive Director, Research and Advocacy, Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), and Vinayak Chatterjee of Infravision Foundation.

Vinayak Chatterjee, referring to India's Sustainability Index, gave two suggestions for policymakers.

"India is burdened with large historical installations of infrastructure from the colonial times - be it railway bridges or dams or tunnels. We should have strong inspection teams to keep that infrastructure in check so that railway bridges and dams don't collapse, and cracks don't appear in hill towns such as Joshimath," Mr Chatterjee said.

"India doesn't have a sustainable index. We at Infravision Foundation have developed a 102-point sustainability index. Policymakers should now use this index, and we have been propagating it largely," he said.

On climate change, CSE's Anumita Roychowdhury said if there's a takeaway from the summer we just had, first it was the persistent heatwave and then unprecedented flood. "It's telling us that climate change is real and constant, but we can't keep blaming climate change all the time, keeping in mind the way infrastructure is taking shape today. It aggravates and compounds the impact if we don't get the blueprint right," she said.

Ricky Kej said development, by its definition, should be in collaboration with the environment.

Winners of the NDTV Infrashakti Awards are- 

• Special Award for Infrastructure Financier - State Bank Of India.
• Lifetime Achievement Award for Connecting India - E Sreedharan.
• Infrashakti Award for Renewable Energy Star - Pankaj Kumar and Sidhant Agarwal, Founders of Quant Solar.
• Infrashakti Award for Transport Trailblazer - Afcons Infrastructure.
• Infrashakti Award for Infravisionary - Sudhanshu Mani.
• Infrashakti Award for Urban Infra Hero goes - Sandeep Patel, Founder of Nepra. 
• Infrashakti Award for Rural Infra Pioneer - Shashank Kumar, Co-founder of DeHaat.
• Infrashakti Award for Water Saviour - Arun Krishnamurthy
• Award for Inclusive Infrastructure - Swarga Foundation