Urbanisation

NAKSHA Scheme

Context: Union Rural Development Minister launched the Central government’s new initiative- ‘NAtional geospatial Knowledge-based land Survey of urban HAbitations’ (NAKSHA).

Relevance of the Topic:Prelims: NAKSHA Scheme

About NAKSHA Scheme

NAKSHA (National Geospatial Knowledge-based Land Survey of Urban Habitations) is a geospatial technology-driven city survey initiative under the existing Digital India Land Records Modernisation Programme (DILRMP).
Aim: To create and update land records in urban areas to ensure transparency, efficiency, and accuracy in property ownership documentation.
Nodal Ministry: Ministry of Rural Development.
Implemented by: Department of Land Resources, in collaboration with Survey of India, and National Informatics Centre Services Inc. (NICSI)

Objectives:

Modernise urban land records: Ensure accurate, updated, and digitalized land ownership records.
Enhance urban planning: Facilitate smart city development and infrastructure planning.
Reduce land disputes: Minimize property disputes through clear, verifiable records.
Foster transparency: Establish a Web-GIS-based IT system for land record management.
Support sustainable development: Improve urban governance and land resource management.

Key features

Launched as a pilot project in 152 Urban Local Bodies (ULBs): Across 26 States and 3 Union Territories (UTs).
- Cities selected meet two criteria: area less than 35 sq km, and population less than 2 lakhs. The pilot project will be completed in a year.
- As per the Census 2011, India has 7,933 towns covering 1.02 lakh square km of the total 32.87 lakh square km geographical area of the country. NAKSHA will cover 4,142.63 square km of area.
Estimated cost of pilot project: ₹194 crore (100% funded by Government of India).
Drone-based land survey: High-precision aerial surveys for accurate mapping.
Web-GIS platform: End-to-end IT-based land record management system.
Public accessibility: Citizens can access digital land records for ease of living.

How will the Survey be conducted?

Use of drone technology:
- Aerial photography using two types of cameras: Simple cameras & Oblique angle cameras (5 cameras with LiDAR sensors).
- Mounted on drones with 5 cm resolution, much sharper than satellite imagery.
Three-Stage survey process:
- Drone Survey & Data Collection:
  - Select survey area and create a flight plan for drone survey.
  - Drones capture images, from which data is extracted.
- Field Survey & Data Verification:
  - Ground verification of property tax, ownership, and registration records.
  - 2D/3D models are created, and draft land ownership details are published.
- Public Review & Finalisation:
  - Claims and objections are reviewed.
  - Grievance redressal is conducted.
  - Final maps are published.

Potential benefits:

Will provide comprehensive digital urban land records.
Reduce land disputes and facilitate faster and efficient urban planning.
Improve property tax collection and simplify property transactions.
Enhances access to credit by streamlining ownership records.

Need for Urban Land Record Updation:

While rural land records have improved due to efforts like Digital India Land Records Modernisation Programme (DILRMP), urban land records remain fragmented, outdated or incomplete in many Indian cities.
- As of 2024, around 95% of rural land records have been computerised, covering over 6.26 lakh villages.
Lack of cadastral map (detailed property maps within a specific area) in urban areas results in:
- Difficulty in verification of land ownership
- Disputes and delays in urban infrastructure projects
- Inefficiencies in governance and loss of tax revenue for municipal bodies.

Global Cities Index 2024 released by Oxford Economics

Context: Oxford Economics, which is an independent economic advisory firm, has developed the Global Cities Index.

Global Cities Index

Covers the 1,000 largest cities in the world which are in 163 countries.
The index is based on 5 categories of Economics, Human Capital, Quality of Life, Environment and Governance which are aggregated to create a overall score for each city.
According to the report, these 1,000 largest cities account for 60% of global GDP and 30% of global population.
Top 10 cities according to Global Cities Index: New York (USA), London (UK), San Jose (USA), Tokyo (Japan), Paris (France), Seattle (USA), Los Angeles (USA), San Francisco (USA), Melbourne (Australia), Zurich (Switzerland).
Close to three-fourths of these cities are clustered in the top 22 nations, with at least 10 big cities, and as many as one-third were bunched together in the top three nations: China with 159 cities, followed by the United States (US) with 92 and India with 91.

Methodology and indicators used to measure Global Cities Index

The report ranks the cities on a cumulative of 27 indicators grouped into following five categories:

Economics Category: Based on GDP size, GDP growth, GDP per person, Employment growth, Economic stability and Economic diversity.
Human Capital Category: Based on Educational attainment, Universities, Corporate Headquarters, Population growth, Age profile and Foreign-born population.
Quality of Life Category: Based on Life expectancy, Income per person, Income equality, Housing expenditure, Recreation & cultural sites and Internet speed.
Environment Category: Based on Air quality, Emissions intensity, Natural disasters, Temperature anomalies and Rainfall anomalies.
Governance Category: Based on institutions, political stability, business environment and civil liberties.

Status of Indian Cities in the Global Cities Index

Total 91 cities are included in the top 1000 cities of the Global Cities Index. However, the average rankings of Indian cities is much lower.
The low average ranking of Indian cities is due to large deficit in human capital, poor quality of life and environmental indicators.
Among Indian cities, the top 10 ranked were: Delhi (350), Bengaluru (411), Mumbai (427), Chennai (472), Kochi (521), Kolkata (528), Pune (534), Thrissur (550), Hyderabad (564) and Kozhikode (580).
There is a heavy concentration in some regions. The largest cluster was in northern belt, account for 40% of the 91 Indian cities. Next came southern India (29 cities), followed by western region (12 cities) and least in eastern region (10 cities).

Urbanization

Context: The recent inauguration of the new Parliament building, and the Ram temple has sparked discussions regarding the intersection of politics and religion in urbanisation.

About Urbanization:

Urbanization is a process that transforms the built environment, converting formerly rural into urban settlements, while also shifting the spatial distribution of a population from rural to urban areas.
Urbanization in India is mainly due to liberalization of its economy after the 1990s, which gave rise to the development of the private sector.
Presently, although urbanization is taking place at a fast rate in India, but still urban areas account for just 3% of the nation’s land and 31.1% of its population (Census of India 2011).

Factors that have led to the Urbanization in India

Population growth: An outcome of more births than deaths in urban areas, a direct function of the fertility rate as well as the quality of healthcare systems (lower mortality rates, particularly for infants).
Migration: Rural to urban migrations due to agriculture distress, better employment opportunities, access to better education, healthcare and amenities etc. has been a strong urbanization factor.
Expansion of towns and cities: Due to high economic growth that the city has witnessed over the years. Because of this, the government in India has decided to grab the opportunity to further thrust the country into urbanization, several smart cities to be put up in various locations, and other initiatives.

Emerging challenges due to unsustainable Urbanization

Overcrowding: Beyond the carrying capacity results in congestion, pollution and additional burden over limited natural resources of urban areas.
Governance status: As per Census 2011, the urban system of India consists of 7933 settlements - statutory and census towns. While statutory towns are governed as urban local bodies, census towns are governed as villages. As a result, India is transitioning from a mostly rural to a quasi-urban country.
Lack of adequate town planning: Master plans statutory instruments critical for managing urbanisation. They guide and regulate the present and future utilisation of land, expansion, and zoning of cities. But about half of our statutory towns are expanding without any master.
Enhanced sense of relative deprivation: Gives rise to urban crimes such as human trafficking, sexual assault, child labour, Juvenile delinquency, prostitution, drugs and suicides.
Sub-Optimal utilisation of urban land: Due to fragmented and poorly recorded ownership of urban land. multiple public sector organizations/agencies— ports, railways, ULBs, etc.— own land under their jurisdictions. For a city to develop holistically, planning for each land parcel needs to fall into one comprehensive spatial strategy.
Pressure on basic infrastructure: Giving rise to unsustainable land price, unaffordable rent, inadequate health and education infrastructure, solid waste management problem etc.
Unplanned growth of slums: As per Census 2011, 17.3% of the total urban population was under slums in India.

Government initiatives to deal with urbanisation:

100 Smart Cities Mission: To develop smart cities across the country, making them citizen friendly and sustainable.
Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT): To provide basic civic amenities like water supply, sewerage, urban transport, parks as to improve the quality of life for all especially the poor and the disadvantaged.
National Mission on sustainable habitat: It is one of the eight climate missions under the NAPCC mitigation strategy, to make the cities sustainable through improvements in energy efficiency in building, management of solid waste and to shift to public transport.
National Heritage City Development and Augmentation Yojana (HRIDAY): For bringing together urban planning, economic growth and heritage conservation in an inclusive manner to preserve the heritage character of each Heritage City.
Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana – Urban (PMAY-U): To addresses 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 Nation completes 75 years of its Independence.

Way forward:

Recommendations by Niti Aayog:
- 500 Healthy Cities Programme’, for a period of 5 years to ensure holistic socio-economic development of Indian cities.
- All the cities/towns under the proposed 'Healthy Cities Programme' should strengthen regulations to maximize the efficiency of urban land.
- A citizen outreach campaign for making the process of urban planning more inclusive and accessible.
- National Council of Town and Country Planners to be constituted as a statutory body of the Government of India to improve the governance of urban areas.
Adopt a circular economy system to minimize their negative impacts on the environment.
Preventing distress migration to cities through Rurbanization i.e., providing urban like facilities in rural areas or make rural areas smart.
The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs has recommended that master plans in cities should be revisited for the improved governance of cities.

Growth Hub Program of Niti Aayog

Context: NITI Aayog has conceived an initiative focused on developing city regions are growth hubs.

About Growth Hub Program of NITI Aayog

To leverage urbanisation for economic growth, NITI Aayog has conceived developing city-regions as growth hubs.
The program endeavors to forge a robust economic growth strategy for city-regions across India and prepare a roadmap for achieving the same.
Under the initiative, NITI Aayog will work in close collaboration with the State governments.
During the initial stage, four city regions will be taken up on a pilot basis to develop a template for devising an economic strategy. Later, 16 more cities will be taken up.
The economic strategy template will act as the model strategy for other city-regions across the country for achieving desired economic targets.
Economy growth strategy for cities: Under the program, a roadmap for developing economic growth strategy will be developed for each city region.
For developing this following activities will be taken up:
- Comprehensive baseline assessment of city region's economy
- SWOT analysis for understanding the strengths and challenges of the region
- Identification of growth drivers, setting economic goals
- Designing policy enablers
- Proposing governance structure for projectization of proposed strategies
Initial focus cities: Mumbai, Surat, Vishakhapatnam have been identified.

Significance of developing economic potential of urban areas

Urban areas hold immense potential to drive economic advancement to achieve the target of making India a developed country with a GDP $35-$45 trillion economy target by 2047.
GDP of several major city, regions worldwide appears to match the GDP of entire countries. This intriguing trend reflects urban centers' growing economic prominence and vitality, highlighting their pivotal role in shaping the country's economic development.
Indian cities also hold the potential to propel unparalleled economic growth which needs to be realised. While the government is exploring multiple pathways at all levels to achieve this target, strategizing \for transforming city regions into mega economic growth hubs is crucial.