Prime Minister launches the Smart Cities Mission, Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) and Housing for All Mission, in New Delhi yesterday. He is flanked by Urban Development Minister M Venkaiah Naidu (left) and Minister of State for Urban Development Babul Supriyo.
Agencies/New Delhi
Prime Minister Narendra Modi yesterday launched three major projects including the Smart Cities Mission with the aim of transforming urban India and boosting economic growth.
Under the scheme, which was allocated some $940mn in the current budget, the government plans to develop 100 urban hubs that rely on information technology to reduce costs and use resources more effectively.
“This is not a paper-based programme. Stakeholders of all kinds have been consulted, including the financial world,” Modi said at the event in New Delhi attended by corporate leaders including Microsoft boss Satya Nadella, Airbus Group CEO Tom Enders and Tata Group chairman Cyrus Mistry.
“Private property developers should not decide how a city should grow; it should be decided by residents and the city leadership,” he added.
“Many are wondering what a smart city is ... Smart city is a city that provides more than what a citizen expects. Before he wants it, we provide it.”
“The city’s vision towards its future development is necessary for any programme’s success. Otherwise it will get bogged down, where state-level departments and agencies are awaiting directions from the Centre, while cities are awaiting a decision from the state governments,” Modi said.
He said the selection process for smart cities will be according to parameters, “and thereafter the Centre and states will come in to help realise it. Competition is critical for the success of the programme.”
Under the Smart Cities Mission, 100 new smart cities, which would promote adoption of smart solutions for efficient use of available assets and enhance the quality of urban life, would be made.
Aspirants will be selected through a “City Challenge Competition” intended to link financing with the city’s ability to achieve the mission objectives.
Cities must qualify themselves through challenge criteria such as sanitation, clean water, power, greenery quotient and ratio between revenue and expenditure on municipal salaries.
Each selected city will get central assistance of Rs1bn per year for five years.
Modi said the country’s 40% population lives in cities and “it is the responsibility of the government to uplift their standards of life.”
“We cannot leave them to their fate,” he said.
The two other projects launched by Modi yesterday were AMRUT - the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation - named after former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and the Housing for All initiative aimed at homes for the poor.
“Urban areas are catalysts of social change,” Urban Development Minister Venkaiah Naidu said at the event. He said the government wanted to build 20mn homes largely for lower income groups by 2022.
The total funding for all three projects has been estimated at some $60bn over several years.
Commenting on the three missions, industry stakeholders said they will generate a lot of employment opportunities in the country.
“Once these initiatives are actually implemented, they will also have an economic multiplier effect on the nation’s economy as a whole, since such huge infrastructure development initiatives will require a massive increase in production and manufacturing output of the country,” said Amit Modi, vice president of the Confederation of Real Estate Developers Association of India (CREDAI).
“Critical urban infrastructure is urgently required in order to make the economy efficient. The process of building this urban infrastructure would lead to an explosive growth in the economy as the execution of the vision would entail large-scale consumption of cement, metals, plastics, materials and services,” said Jaijit Bhattacharya, partner, infrastructure services, KPMG in India.
Ruling Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah said said the launch of the three initiatives will prove to be “a milestone in the welfare of the poor.”
“The BJP-led central government is committed to provide housing to all and improve standard of life of people. The government is working to empower every urban poor so that he has his own house,” Shah said.
However, the Congress branded the new schemes as another “event management ploy” of the government which had “repackaged” existing schemes.
“They have repackaged our schemes like Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission and renamed it after Atal Bihari Vajpayee,” Congress leader Ajay Maken said.
“The PM is indulging in another event management ploy,” he said, adding the smart cities project is an elitist concept.