‘States planning new townships near cities’

What is the plan to cope with the big transformation, whereby some 200 new cities will have to be created, including upgradation of some villages to towns and some towns to cities?
The strategic plan of the ministry is to facilitate creation of economically vibrant, inclusive, efficient and sustainable habitats. We hope to achieve this by promoting cities as engines of economic growth. We also want them to lead to an improvement of the quality of urban life, creation of quality urban infrastructure with assured service levels and efficient governance.
The National Development Council has set up a sub-committee on urbanisation to review the legal, financial and institutional framework for urban governance.
Better local governance has been recognised as a key to meeting urban challenges.
Under the National Mission on Sustainable Habitat, urban planning parameters are being formulated for addressing issues related to regional development, urban poor, efficient and environmentally sustainable transport, etc.
 

What are you doing to encourage planned urbanisation by states?
See, channelling migration, or planned urbanisation, is the key to promoting sustainable habitats. This means provision of civic amenities and empowering urban local bodies so that they are capable of providing good quality civic services to sustain the present level of economic growth.
The ministry of urban development and the ministry of housing and urban poverty alleviation are working to promote inclusive cities.  Many states like Maharashtra, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and UP have framed policies for developing new townships in the vicinity of large cities to promote planned urbanisation.

States like UP have developed on your vision of planned urbanisation through SEZs. Is there any radical new project that your ministry would like to encourage?
We are implementing a scheme for funding infrastructure development in eight satellite towns around the seven mega cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, and Ahmedabad on a pilot basis.
Depending on the success of the scheme, it will be expanded to cover all the 35 metropolitan (million plus population) cities as per 2001 census.
To have an integrated database for urban settlements comprising both spatial and attribute data, and its periodic updating for use in planning and development by a number of agencies, we have taken up the National Urban Information System scheme covering 152 towns on a pilot basis.

Last month, your ministry organised a national workshop on accelerating efficient building. Will any of the recommendations be part of your new urbanisation policy?
The National Mission on Sustainable Habitat, which is one of the missions under the National Action Plan for Climate Change, will be implemented by my ministry.  One of its focus areas is to bring about energy efficiency in both residential and commercial building sectors.    
The Energy Conservation Act enables the government to prescribe an Energy Conservation Building Code, or ECBC, that sets minimum performance standards for buildings. There is a need to mainstream the ECBC. The national workshop was an effort in this direction. During the workshop, a comprehensive set of actions have been identified at various levels.

What’s your take on the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM)?
JNNURM aims at a reform-driven, planned and integrated development of urban infrastructure and services in 65 mission cities across various sectors. The scheme envisages providing grant-based financial support for urban infrastructure investments.
Notwithstanding excellent results in some cities, JNNURM has revealed the lack of capacity at local government level to prepare and implement projects in urban infrastructure. The capacity constraint is at different dimensions across all levels —- human resource capacity, financial capacity and institutional capacity.
Further, problems in implementation arise because the mission schemes link projects to overall reforms. Progress in implementing reforms under JNNURM has been slow, and it has been difficult to enforce conditionality of overall reforms in a project-based financing approach.

Moreover, JNNURM has had limited success in promoting PPPs (public private partnerships) in urban infrastructure projects.
What are your plans for the next phase of JNNURM?
Plans for the next phase of JNNURM are under discussion. The new mission shall have a vision for the next 20 years but a focused plan of action for the next five years. The new phase must be accessible to all cities and towns, big and small, and should recognise that smaller cities and towns need to be treated differently from larger cities and metros.

Which three or five cities are likely to be the biggest beneficiaries of JNNURM funds?
JNNURM is for all the cities. At present, 65 cities are taken up in the mission and remaining towns/cities are eligible for funding under Urban Infrastructure Development Scheme for Small and Medium Towns.
 

All the major metros are subsidiary companies under your ministry. How many more such entities have been lined up?
The approved metro projects which are under implementation are in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Jaipur. Metro projects under consideration or in the pipeline include extensions of the Delhi Metro into Haryana and UP and also some extensions in Chennai and Mumbai and Kochi.