Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday underlined the need for focussing on urban planning and governance to make cities garbage-free, climate resilient, and water secure. He said well-planned cities will decide the country’s future
“Our cities will become climate resilient and water secure only when the planning is good…,” he said at a post-budget webinar on urban planning, development, and sanitation.
He called planning and governance two main components of urban development. “Bad planning or its poor implementation…can pose a hurdle in India’s development,” he said.
He said India’s new cities have to be garbage-free, climate-resilient, and water secure. “…for this, we have to increase investment in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities.”
He asked development experts to focus on how to strengthen the urban planning ecosystem in states, use private sector expertise, and develop centres of excellence that can take urban planning to a new level.
Modi stressed the need for well-planned cities and added it is unfortunate that just a few of them have been developed post-Independence.
He said his government’s focus has been on the planned development of cities, which is going to be essential in the future. “There are two key aspects of urban development: Development of new cities and modernisation of existing systems in old cities. Keeping this vision in mind, our government has given importance to urban development in each budget. In this budget, an incentive of ₹15,000 crore has been allocated for urban development.”
He stressed the need for better transport planning and added Metro connectivity has increased post-2014. “Today, we are ahead of several countries when it comes to Metro networks. There is a need to strengthen this network and provide fast and last-mile connectivity. For this, we need efficient transport planning.”
He said that today 75% of the municipal waste is processed as against 14-15% prior to 2014. “If waste processing had started earlier, then mountains of garbage would not have come up in our cities.”
Modi referred to the success Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT). He added the government launched AMRUT 2.0 to provide clean drinking water in cities.
Source- Hindustan Times.
