Remedies for Urbanization

• Adopt a circular economy system to minimize their negative impacts on the environment.
• Adopt global best practices and learn from a global city like Singapore that was raised through firm political leadership, a professional approach, and intelligently created capacities.
• Planning interventions such as bringing census towns under urban governance. As of the 7933 towns that are accounted as urban, almost half have a status of census towns. As a census, a town is one whose population has attained urban characteristics, but they still governed as a rural entity.
• Foster partnerships with private sector companies, leverage their problem-solving capacities and efficiencies to provide innovative solutions to the public sector and good quality jobs to the future urban professionals
• Investment in new urban infrastructure assets and maintenance of assets.
• Preventing distress migration to cities through Rurbanization i.e., providing urban-like facilities in rural areas or making rural areas smart.

Importance of urbanisation

Urbanization is key, to achieving:

• India’s commitments to global agendas such as
  • UN-Sustainable Development Goal 11 (making cities inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable)
  • Paris Agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
  • UN-Habitat’s New Urban Agenda
• India’s National Growth Targets
  • Economic growth target: USD 5 trillion economy by 2024,Employment target: the total workforce is
  estimated to be 0.64 billion by 2030, of which 0.26 billion to be employed in urban areas (MoF, 2021)Infrastructure targets: the
  • creation of 11 large industrial corridors as part of the National Industrial Corridor Programme (Press Information Bureau, 2021), several multi-modal logistic parks, etc.
  • Environmental protection targets: river rejuvenation, clean air in cities, etc.

Thus, achieving a stronger urban planning ecosystem in the country is the need of the hour.

Government Initiatives

Smart Cities

It is a Centrally sponsored scheme

Key Features

• Aim: Promote sustainable and inclusive cities that provide core infrastructure and give a decent quality of life to its citizens, a clean and sustainable environment and application of ‘Smart’ Solutions.
• The focus is on sustainable and inclusive development and the idea is to look at compact areas, and create a replicable model which will act like a lighthouse to other aspiring cities.
• Three core ideas of Smart Cities, i.e., liveability, economic ability and sustainability.
• Some of the core infrastructure elements in a Smart City would include adequate water supply, assured electricity supply, sanitation, including solid waste management, efficient urban mobility and public transport, affordable housing, especially for the poor, robust IT connectivity and digitalization, good governance, especially e-Governance and citizen participation, sustainable environment, safety and security of citizens, particularly women, children and elderly, health and education.

Strategic components

• City improvement (retrofitting),
• City renewal (redevelopment) and
• City extension (Greenfield development) plus a Pan-city initiative in which Smart Solutions are applied covering larger parts of the city.
• The implementation of the Smart Cities Mission is done by a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) to be set up at the city level in the form of a limited company under the Companies Act, 2013 and will be promoted by the State/UT and the Urban Local Body (ULB) jointly both having 50:50 equity shareholding.
• After selection, each selected Smart Cities must set up SPVs and start implementation of their Smart City Proposal, preparation of Detailed Project Reports (DPRs), tenders etc.

Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT)

• Centrally sponsored scheme with the total outlay for AMRUT is Rs. 50,000 crores for five years from FY 2015-16 to FY 2019-20.
• It is divided among States/UTs using an equitable) the formula in which 50:50 weightage is being given to the urban population of each State/UT and a number of statutory towns.
• Coverage: 500 have been selected under AMRUT

Purpose

• Ensure that every household has access to a tap with an assured supply of water and a sewerage connection.
• To increase the amenity value of cities by developing greenery and well-maintained open spaces.
•  To reduce pollution by switching to public transport or constructing facilities for non-motorized transport e.g., walking and cycling.

Thrust Areas

• Water Supply
• Sewerage and septage management
• Storm Water Drainage to reduce flooding
• Non-motorized Urban Transport
• Green space/parks

Key Features

• The focus of the Mission is on infrastructure creation that has a direct link to the provision of better services to the citizens.
• The universal coverage of water supply and sewerage services have the first charge in the Mission. There is a maximum allocation of 2.5% of the project cost for the development of parks with children and elderly-friendly features.
• The Mission covers covering 500 cities that includes all cities and towns with a population of over one lakh with notified Municipalities.

Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation 2.0 (AMRUT 2.0)

• Aim To provide 100% coverage of water supply to all households in around 4,700 urban local bodies by providing around 2.68 crore tap connections.
• To provide 100% coverage of sewerage and septage in 500 AMRUT cities by providing around 2.64 crore sewer or septage connections, benefiting more than 10.5 crore people in urban areas.
• This will be achieved through a circular economy of water by effecting water source conservation, rejuvenation of water bodies and wells, recycling/ reuse of treated used water, and rainwater harvesting.
• It is a step towards AatmaNirbhar Bharat with the aim of making cities ‘water secure’.
• The mission also has a target of meeting 20% of water demand through recycled water and reducing non-revenue water to less than 20%.
• Public Private Partnership (PPP) projects are mandatory in million-plus cities and at least a minimum of 10% of total fund allocation at the city level shall be committed to PPP projects.
• Pey Jal Survekshan: Proposed in cities as a challenging process to assess the compliance of service level benchmarks with respect to quality, quantity, and coverage of water supply, sewerage & septage management, the extent of reuse & recycle of used water, and conservation of water bodies in the city.
• It will instil healthy competition among cities and act as a monitoring tool and Mission accelerator.

HRIDAY Scheme

• The scheme aims to preserve and revitalise the soul of the heritage city to reflect the city’s unique character by encouraging an aesthetically appealing, accessible, informative & secure environment.
• The Scheme is being implemented in 12 identified Cities namely, Ajmer, Amaravati, Amritsar, Badami, Dwarka, Gaya, Kanchipuram, Mathura, Puri, Varanasi, Velankanni and Warangal. The scheme is implemented in a mission mode.
• The Scheme supports the development of core heritage infrastructure projects which shall include revitalization of urban infrastructure for areas around heritage assets identified/approved by the Ministry of Culture, Government of India and State Governments.

Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana

• Urban (PMAY-U), a flagship Mission to address urban housing shortage among the EWS/LIG and MIG categories including the slum dwellers by ensuring a pucca house to all eligible urban households by the year 2022, when the Nation completes 75 years of its Independence.

Sardar Patel National Urban Housing Mission

It is a sub-scheme under PMAY-U to facilitate housing to slum dwellers, and urban poor at affordable cost and provide adequate rental houses to the migrants (single or family) who came to the city in search of employment or as unskilled workers by 2022

The Aspirational Districts Programme (ADP)

• It aims to quickly and effectively transform 117 most under-developed districts across the country.
• The broad contours of the programme are Convergence (of Central & State Schemes), Collaboration (of Central, State level Nodal Officers & District Collectors), and Competition among districts through monthly delta ranking; all driven by a mass movement.
• With States as the main drivers, this program focuses on the strength of each district, identifying low-hanging fruits for immediate improvement and measuring progress by ranking districts on a monthly basis.
• The ranking is based on the incremental progress made across 49 Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) under 5 broad socio-economic themes – Health & Nutrition, Education, Agriculture & Water Resources, Financial Inclusion & Skill Development and Infrastructure.
• The delta ranking of Aspirational Districts and the performance of all districts is available on the Champions of Change Dashboard.

National Urban Learning Platform (NULP)

It is an initiative of MoHUA which is envisioned as a means of digitally consolidating key skills and knowledge required by urban stakeholders and making these available to all actors on a channel of their choice.

It works by:

• Enrolling training institutions, schools, civil societies and other knowledge creators to ensure a variety of content on a wide range of topics
• Providing required telemetry frameworks, assessment mechanisms and tools to measure usage of content and engagement and completion levels achieved across specific pieces of content
• Facilitating collaboration and knowledge sharing
• Engaging with MoHUA missions and their existing capacity-building ecosystems to ensure that the content available is aligned with the practical needs of various missions
• Enabling responsive and data-driven governance

Swachh Bharat Mission

• To accelerate the efforts to achieve universal sanitation coverage and to put the focus on sanitation, the Prime Minister of India launched the Swachh Bharat Mission on 2nd October 2014.
• Under the mission, all villages, Gram Panchayats, Districts, States and Union Territories in India declared themselves “open-defecation free” (ODF) by 2 October 2019, the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, by constructing over 100 million toilets in rural India.
• To ensure that the open defecation-free behaviours are sustained, no one is left behind, and that solid and liquid waste management facilities are accessible, the Mission is moving towards the next Phase II of SBMG i.e ODF-Plus.
• ODF Plus activities under Phase II of the Swachh Bharat Mission (Grameen) will reinforce ODF behaviours and focus on providing interventions to safely manage solid and liquid waste in villages.

The Urban Learning and Internship Program (TULIP)

• A joint program of MoHUA and AICTE under the Ministry of Education aims to match opportunities in ULBs with the learning needs of fresh graduates.
• At the State level, TULIP will be supported by the Urban Development departments in providing a clear roadmap for the ULBs/smart cities to adopt TULIP in their respective organisations.
• At the ULB/smart city level, they have been provided flexibility in defining the roles, numbers and other parameters of how TULIP can best serve their contextual needs.

Objectives

• Short-term exposure to fresh graduates to enhance their professional development through experiential learning with ULBs and smart cities
• Harnessing fresh energy and ideas towards ULBs and smart cities endeavours to solve critical challenges.

Tenets of TULIP Platform

• Freedom: Flexible choice architecture for ULBs, Smart Cities and Interns
• Incentives: Platform-enabled Match as per need, Access to pan-India opportunities
• Transparency

National Urban Digital Mission

• A joint mission of MoHUA and the Ministry of Electronics and IT.
• It will create a shared digital infrastructure that can consolidate and cross-leverage various digital initiatives of MoHUA, enabling cities and towns to benefit from holistic and diverse forms of support, in keeping with their needs and local challenges.
• Work across 3 pillars of people, process and platform to provide holistic support to cities and towns.
• It will institutionalise a citizen-centric, ecosystem-driven and principles-based approach both in design and implementation.
• NUDM has articulated a set of governing principles and inherits the technology design principles of the National Urban Innovation Stack (NUIS), released by MoHUA in 2019.
• To be implemented in 2022 cities by 2022, and across all cities and towns in India by 2024.