Renewal of Cities: Leaves little expectations

India has now entered third year of the Urban Renewal projects initiated in the cities across the country. We are burdened by exhausted administrators and monitoring committee who are supposed to take the initiative forward. Too much work and lack of coordination / management in the urban renewal projects is buzz going around the capitals of states. The participation of citizens in the effort is negligible with guidelines imported from external agencies, central and state government. The local bodies are burdned with works which seems alien to them and administrative preparedness for such an excercise is missing.

Most of the municipalities are falling short of the professionals like planners, engineers and contractors who can participate in these efforts. The capacity building is rarely undertaken seriously among the line and rank profile of the municipal administrators. We are left with thin force who are overburdned and often commit mistakes which are technical and in some cases financial.

Delhi is running fast to catch the Common Wealth Games, Mumbai busty to sort out water and waste problems, Kolkata and Chennai is fixed in transportation issues, where as second tier metros are left to cope with the shortage of manpower. The expediture is fine but there seems to be little commitment in the recovery of cost (as pledge in MoA with central government) by city managers. They are yet to reach citizens with escalated costs fearing political repurcursions during the present inflanationary trends in economy.

What makes situation very serious to urban managers? Much expectations from the citizens and government machinery about the turn around of the cities. Little hopes lies in completed projects related to infrastructure..but most of the objectives like housing, solid waste, environment, heritage, social infrastructure remain untouched. No amount of funding would ease the situation in metroes unless the professionals are enhanced and time scale is eased out for the projects. The cake is eaten fast by the developed states like Gujarat, Maharastra, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu investing heavily on large metros or state capital leaves little for small and medium towns to improve. Yet we would tend to focus on the SEZ and SIR and foresee a better urban India!!