The project, July 4 -- For fifteen years, the Pachpadra refinery existed mostly in political arguments and environmental impact assessments, debating where exactly to build it, how much it would cost, and which government could claim credit when it was done. On Friday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi ended that era, inaugurating what stands in the Thar Desert: India's first greenfield integrated refinery in roughly a decade, a complex that will make the polypropylene and polyethylene India currently imports from the Middle East and Southeast Asia.

the project spent most of its lifespan running in the opposite direction.

India's original cost estimate was Rs 43,129 crore. The final construction bill came to Rs 79,450 crore, an 84 per cent o...