Urban Update January 2018

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Setting The Agenda For Tomorrow’s Cities

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JANUARY 2018

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ISSN 2349-6266 RNI No DELENG/2014/57384

Setting The Agenda For Tomorrow’s Cities

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EDITORIAL

A New Year, New Hope for Cities

A

s we enter a new year, we always do so with hopes of a better future, healthier, happier and more prosperous. So too with cities. City residents look forward to better times in all aspects of their daily lives in the city.

In the New Year, among various attributes, some could look for more efficient cities.

Efficiency, in some ways can be defined as ‘doing more with less’. Looking at the severe service delivery deficits in many of our cities, while improving transparency and accountability, cities also need to work with less or with judicious use of resources. Among resources, fresh water availability is a crucial determinant of the quality of city life. In times to come, galloping urbanization, depleting natural supply sources, unpredictable rainfall patterns due to climate change and environmental degradation, will all combine to pose formidable challenges. Urban local bodies will have to strengthen their efforts for citizen engagement to promote conservation and judicious usage of this precious resource.

At the same time, city administrations will be called upon to create adequate infrastructure for recycling and reuse, full metering and cutting non-revenue water. Municipal waste is another area. Sustainable waste management will call for new initiatives to address the supply side, i.e., the generation of waste. Several drives will be required to reduce generation of waste at the household level and for citizens to facilitate increased recycling by segregation and proper disposal of recyclable waste. In addition, manufacturers and trade as well as restaurants and eateries need to participate by adopting more sustainable practices. Manufacturers for example, could adopt more benign packaging material such as glass and metal in place of plastic and other polymers; restaurants could opt for reusable plates, cups and glasses in place of disposable paper and plastic ones.

Urban local bodies, on their part, need to create and encourage recycling of waste by investing in infrastructure and technologies

and incentivizing recyclers through appropriate measures. Rag-pickers form a crucial link in the recycling chain and need to be in the mainstream rather than on the fringes of an informal economy.

Energy (power) saving offers another huge opportunity for local bodies in our quest for more sustainable cities. Many cities are switching to LED streetlights and the like.

Municipal bodies need to mandate if necessary, several energy saving measures in public as well as private buildings. For example illuminated billboards and other outdoor media are in any case, regulated by municipal bodies. They would do well to build in energy saving into their regulations.

In addition to efficiency, cities need to build in inclusivity in their agendas for the future. The needs of the poor and those of women, children and very importantly those of the specially abled need to be incorporated in design and execution of public spaces and the built environment. Such design needs of the specially abled, for instance, have been recognized long ago and made part of ULBs’ building regulations for cities. However implementation has been more modest than robust. Concepts of ‘Universal Design’ and ‘barrier-free access’ need constant reinforcement to enable the specially abled participate in full measure and live a life of dignity and pride.

All the above have been part of the urban development discourse for some time now. But as we start a new year with hope for a brighter future, it is time to rededicate ourselves to these principles and move ahead with greater energy and resolve.

I take this opportunity to wish our readers, their families and all our well-wishers a Happy, Healthy and Prosperous New Year.

Rajiv Agarwal Editor-In-Chief dg@aiilsg.org

www.urbanupdate.in | January 2018 5

PIN POINT BUZZ

Streets link citizens to their jobs and destinations and are the main arteries of economic development. Better designed streets ensure wellbeing of people living in the city Manoj Kumar Principal Secretary, Urban Development, Government of UP

We have already connected 227 railway stations in India through Google Stations to provide high speed connectivity. We are now taking this beyond the railway stations to entire smart cities

ShipraNarang Suri @ShipraSuri Coordinator, Urban Planning & Design Branch, UN-Habitat

In the developing and rapidly urbanizing world, having a broad range of medium-size cities adds more to economic growth. That’s why countries need #NationalUrbanPolicies that foster balanced urban development

Caesar Sengupta Vice-President, Next Billion Users, Google Dr. Ikramul Haq @DrIkramulHaq Writer/Advocate Supreme Court/International Tax

There is an urgent need to attend sites like Katas Raj or else we will probably lose them to industrial and urban development, and future generations will be deprived of their heritage and sources of revenue potential

India is being a leader on the world stage by stepping up its climate commitments despite having one of the lowest per capita emissions and significant development challenges. The country is setting an example for others to follow

Pankaj Bhatia Deputy Director, WRI’s Climate Program

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January 2018 | www.urbanupdate.in

With increasing scarcity, we must recognize the many values attached to water, be it economic, social, environmental, cultural or religious. I believe that by revaluing water, we will develop a deeper understanding and respect for this precious resource, and thus be better prepared for more efficient use Torgny Holmgren SIWI’s Executive Director

The Hindu @the_hindu

Air pollution in India is estimated to be killing 1.5 million people every year.

India has the world’s highest death rate from chronic respiratory diseases and asthma

AsianDevelopmentBank @ADB_HQ

Developing Asia’s infrastructure must be upgraded with a new generation of transport networks, energy facilities, and water and sanitation systems

Volume 4, Issue 9

ARTICLE

12

Urban India in 2030 By the year 2030 we will have census figures of the 2021 census and the number of cities in India would have gone up. In fact, by 2030 we may even have crossed the figure of fifty percent of the population living in urban areas

Inside January 2018

12

14 Solid waste management: Some thoughts Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) was launched on 2nd October, 2014 by the Government of India and it is being implemented by Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs (MOHUA) all over the country

16

Think cities beyond urban walls Augmented reality, off-grid energy, provision of hi-tech services all over, modern communication technologies, and other technological advancements can make it possible to live urban life almost anywhere

24

saga of delays and A abandonment: DMIC A mega project like DMIC conceived a decade ago is still struggling to take off.

The 90 bn dollar project expected to be finished by December 2019 is likely to miss the deadline. It’s turning into a saga of delays and abandonment

32

ities need to have river pollution C abatement plans and task forces Ever since the new government came to power at the Centre, the name of the Ministry of Water Resources was changed to give special emphasis to Ganga, considered the most sacred river of the nation

RegularS

6 36

Pin Point Newscan

8 46

Equi-City Urban Agenda

LEADerspeak

10

Walking is the best mobility choice for cities Have you ever wondered why most of the favourite cities for tourists offer abundant walking space? The answer is plain and simple: walking spaces allow people to explore the city at their own pace. It is believed that there is no better way to explore a city than strolling on foot or wandering in alleys and narrow lanes

article

34

Achieving disaster resilience through continuity planning

30

Creating gender responsive urban mobility plans

To realize the Vision statement mentioned in National Policy on Disaster Management, India will have to change its strategy and take a different route to prepare its cities to mitigate disaster risks and provide a safe urban environment to urban dwellers living in high risk regions. A special focus is required to safeguard vulnerable population in cities

Women’s access and use of urban transportation will play a big role in achieving India’s sustainable development goals (SDGs) and ensure women’s right to the city and its public spaces. Since urban transport is not the responsibility of one ministry or department, gender inclusion will be required

www.urbanupdate.in | January 2018 7

feature | Equi-City

Equi-City to evaluate municipal services, diversity in 2018 Equi-City Team

E

qui-City Project aims at promoting inclusive and sustainable growth of Indian cities through collaborative multi stakeholder approach using participatory governance between local authorities and stakeholders to ensure equitable provision of municipal services, which would be achieved through a set of diverse activities.

It is worth mentioning that the first year of the Project focused on establishing the Participatory Forum i,e. the City Development Forum (CDF), organizing zone level sensitization workshops on sanitation and municipal services, conducting the diversity survey for the Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) and doing the Training Needs Assessment (TNA). Following these the second year focused on formation of Diversity Committee and formulation of Training Policy, increasing the technical capacity of the NMC employees through various training workshops (10), developing the Monitoring and Evaluation Research framework for developing Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) Tools, etc.

Vision for 2018

Continuing with these activities and the objectives of the Project, the third year will specifically focus on the M&E of the Project. This would include developing tools such as Municipal Rating System, Citizens Scorecards, and organize Feedback meetings, design and develop website and smart phone applications and best practices and knowledge sharing forums, Finalizing the Equality and Diversity Framework and HR Policy for the NMC and organizing awareness campaigns. The Citizen Report and Community Scorecard will directly

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January 2018 | www.urbanupdate.in

The main vision for the third year is on developing the monitoring and implementation mechanisms to ensure accountability and transparency in delivery of municipal services, using tools that create a demand push by citizens and supply pull by Local Authorities benefit citizens. It will enhance citizen participation and effectiveness in local decision making and policy making, while at the same time improving citizen’s attitude and knowledge of Local Authorities.

Apart from this, Equi-City team will conduct number of activities throughout the year which includes organize Forum meetings with members of CDF and Diversity Committee members, develop the Diversity and Equality Policy Framework, development of an inclusive Human Resource Policy for NMC, training of Elected Officials and Representatives. A total of three training programmes for 50 Elected Representatives are on the cards.Other activities include formulation of a Citizen based Municipal Rating System and Community Scorecards, organise Feedback Meetings& developing a Web-based feedback system, organising Awareness Campaigns for sensitizing and updating citizens, especially urban poor on the initiatives of NMC.

A look back at Equi-City project activities- 2017

City Development Forum (February 28, 2017): The forum comprises of members from the NMC and various other background such as elected representatives, CSOs, academics, NGOs and other key stakeholders representing minority communities from target city Nagpur. The CDF will be headed by a Convenor .The Convenor will also convene meetings

of the CDF members to discuss various issues related to project and provide strategic directions. A core group is formed for assisting the Convenor in monitoring the project. The current post of the Convener is held by Girish Gandhi. The CDF consists of a Core Group comprising of 12 Experts from the diverse backgrounds of urban development and governance along with nine municipal officials. The first core group meeting of CDF took place on 28th of February, 2017 and meeting was chaired by CDF Convener Girish Gandhi and NMC Commissioner. Presentation on past year activities including findings of the workshops, diversity and SLB report was given by the Equicity Team, AIILSG. Presentation also highlighted initiatives of good practices in case of sanitation by citizens.

Launch of City Development Forum (March 26, 2017): The Launch event and Workshop was held on 26th March, 2017 in Nagpur. It started with the welcoming address delivered

by Jayant Pathak, Regional Director of AIILSG Nagpur Center, followed by the speech of the Municipal Commissioner Shravan Hardikar.

The Commissioner stressed upon the importance of delivering of the equitable distribution of municipal services. Further, the Senior Executive Director of AIILSG Delhi, Ravi Ranjan Guru imparted the theme address outlining the objectives of CDF, its aims, objectives and scope along

with ways of implementation of the outcomes delivered by the Forum.

Diversity Committee (30th June, 2017): The Diversity committee consists of officials, elected representatives, CSO’s representing minority communities and Ngo’s. The committee comprises of three NMC officials including the Hon’ble Municipal Commissioner along with three ward members with representatives from NGOs & members with primary experience in Human Resource Management. The first diversity committee meeting was held on 30th June 2017 chaired by Ashwin Mudgal, Commissioner, NMC. The second discussion session was focused on the process for formulating the Diversity and Equality Framework and also on the Training Workshop Policy.

Research and Analysis (January – February, 2017) a. Diversity in Nagpur Municipal Corporation- a Status Report published: As an important part of the Diversity report, the pilot diversity survey started on 22nd July 2016 with an aim to target around 850-900 officials from various departments of NMC, which is about 10 percent sample size of the total number of employees in the NMC. The departmental survey consists of filling up of questionnaire form, from three members of the respective department.

After studying the organizational Structure and related background information about NMC, the Equi-city Team prepared a Questionnaire. Out of the total employees, one percent employees belong to Class 1, 40 percent employees belong to Class III and 59 percent employees belong to Class IV. Presently only 5 NMC employees are in Class II. As per the NMC records, Class III and Class IV constitutes around 99 percent of the overall employees working in NMC. Chapter 4 provides the comparative analysis of existing Diversity in NMC workforce to that of Nagpur City. b. Municipal Services in Nagpur Municipal Corporation- a Benchmark

During a training workshop for NMC officials

Study Published: Draft-Service Level Benchmark has been prepared as a part of the Equicity project. Benchmarking will facilitate development of Performance Improvement Plans using information generated by the benchmarking exercises. It will address both, performance monitoring for internal decision making and reporting to higher levels of government and external stakeholders.

Training of NMC Officials: After successful completion of the training needs assessment in NMC. It was found that training is essential for nurturing skills of the staff for which several training workshops shall be conducted on selected themes which are as follows: To conduct 10 training programmes targeting 300 municipal officials, specifically on Water and sanitation, Public health, Citizen participation in delivery of municipal service. 300 Municipal officials will be trained. To conduct three training programmes targeting 50 elected representatives focusing on Citizen Engagement and Gender Equality, Training Workshop for NMC Officials: All 10 Training Workshop for NMC Officials were successfully conducted which includes Sanitation/

Solid waste management (Sanitary Inspector), Sanitation/ Solid Waste Management (Jamadars and Sweepers), Town Planning, Innovative Teaching Techniques, Disaster Response Program, , Administrative Efficiency, Resource Mobilization, Contract Management, Urban Transport, and ICT training.

Developing Equality Framework and Inclusive HR Policy for NMC (November-December 2017): This activity seeks to create Equality Framework which will enable municipalities to assess their Human resources structure from an equality and diversity perspective. It will be an internal assessment tool to ensure diversity within LA. Finalisation of Questionnaire for Municipal Rating System for Monitoring and Evaluation (November-December, 2017): The aim of this activity is to develop monitoring and evaluation tools which will allow both stakeholder (citizens, NGOs etc.) and local authorities to ensure transparent and accountable delivery of municipal services. The monitoring and evaluation tools will be collaboratively developed by all stakeholders – through iteration of the Municipal rating System.

www.urbanupdate.in | January 2018

9

leaderspeak | Walking in cities

Walking is the best mobility choice for cities Have you ever wondered why most of the favourite cities for tourists offer abundant walking space? The answer is plain and simple: walking spaces allow people to explore the city at their own pace. It is believed that there is no better way to explore a city than strolling on foot or wandering in alleys and narrow lanes. If everyone loves walking why have most of our cities neglected the much needed infrastructure—pedestrian pathways

Ranjit S Chavan President, AIILSG

A

ll of us love to walk. No matter whether you drive a personal vehicle or use public transport, you will be a pedestrian at some point of the day. If our streets will not have well-maintained and encroachment-free sidewalks and intersections with a provision of safe crossings, people will be put off from walking. Take the example of any public space in India or abroad; adequate walking space makes it attractive not adequate parking space.

Whether it is Marine Drive of Mumbai, Connaught Place in Delhi, the Bank of Seine River in Paris or the public spaces in Copenhagen, they all have one thing in common: they are popular among locals and tourists alike because they provide ample walking space to people. Jeff Speck, a renowned urban planner, states in his General Theory of Walkability that a journey on foot should satisfy four main conditions: be useful, safe, comfortable and interesting. The aforementioned

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January 2018 | www.urbanupdate.in

cities have designed their streets to fulfil these criteria.

Retrofitting walking infrastructure

Imagine scenes in old movies, the scenes of bustling sidewalks with people walking up and down the streets used to recreate cities on the silver screen. With changing development paradigm, the portrayal of cities in cinema has changed. Driving luxurious cars has replaced walking in cinematic representation of cities.

Why has it happened? Indian cities, which evolved after the industrial revolution, have not given much space to walking. Pathways do not exist or remain encroached by locals for parking or vending. Even the new cities which evolved in the 80s and 90s ignored walking infrastructure.

Existing city infrastructure needs to carve out space for walking. Smart Cities Mission that is now in the process of creating new hi-tech infrastructure needs to address the issue. American

cities are good examples of how car-first approach has ruined many of their cities. However, they have realised their mistake and have started building walking infrastructure and a comfortable environment for walkers.

The number of private vehicles in cities is increasing by the day in Indian cities too. Traffic congestion during peak hours in almost every city of India is reflective of the scale of the problem.

People prefer to use personal cars even for short distances because walking in cities, if you are living in a busy business or residential area, is not safe.

Widening of roads is a poor strategy for our urban centres because it makes walking uncomfortable and crossing roads dangerous. Most of our roads even do not have zebra crossings at crucial spots. Cities are widening their roads to accommodate more vehicles and it would increase the time taken to cross a road. Similarly, parking is another requirement in our cities.

There is no denying that we do not have enough parking spaces and people

end up parking on the road side. This further makes walking uncomfortable because vehicles hog walkways at times.

However, creating more parking spaces where facility is available at cheap rates and removing street parking could not be a solution.

City corporations should make parking available at key places and the charges must be increased in due consultation with locals. Parking fee at farther locations from prominent places like markets or other crowded places could be subsidised though.

Such efforts would definitely bring in systematic changes in how people perceive walking. Jeff Speck also supports the idea of street parking to make streets safer for walkers because he says, “on-street curb side parking buffers the sidewalk from moving vehicle traffic”. Transit Oriented Development (TOD) is a new buzz word in development quarters. Its success entirely depends on how walkable our areas are. Walkable neighbourhoods near the mass transit stops will help in making TOD a success.

Making walking interesting

Many cities have given freedom to local artists to make murals and graffiti on urban walls and it has turned into graffiti walking tour. This has made walking interesting for locals and tourists alike. The streets in Berlin, Montreal, Bogota, London, and many other European and American cities have made walking interesting by donning graffiti and murals made by international and local artists.

The famous architect Steve Mouzon’s wonderful theory of “walk appeal,” sayshow far people will walk is all about what they encounter along the way. This means walking has to be interesting. This is true if we look inwards in our busiest markets.

Whenever you are walking on any street with shops on both sides, you are encouraged to walk. This could be seen in Chandani Chowk, Connaught Place, Sarojini Nagar, Lajpat Nagar, Karol Bagh, etc. in the national capital. The lanes connecting these markets within the area are extremely crowded but you

Whether it is Marine Drive of Mumbai, Connaught Place in Delhi, the Bank of Seine River in Paris or the public spaces in Copenhagen, they all have one thing in common: they are popular among locals and tourists alike because they provide ample walking space to people. Jeff Speck’s grandly titled General Theory of Walkability states that a journey on foot should satisfy four main conditions: be useful, safe, comfortable and interesting. The aforementioned places fulfil all these criteria. can see hoards of people walking even if they are just crossing the market and not there for buying anything.

Walking is going up in the chart of priorities in many cities worldwide. For example, all major candidates forMayor of London in 2016 promised to pedestrianise Oxford Street. According to a report published in a London based newspaper, the street despite being a world-famous retail destination, is one of the most dangerous roads in London in terms of deaths and serious injuries, as well as one of the most polluted

streets in Britain. This trend is picking up in cities across the globe.

Apart from lowering GHG emission for cities, walking also ensures wellbeing of citizens. According to a recent research published in The Lancet medical journal, walking for as little as 30 minutes most days of the week has a substantial health benefit, and higher physical activity is associated with even lower health risks. This is another good reason for creating walking infrastructure and promoting walking in our cities.

www.urbanupdate.in | January 2018

11

Article | Urban Vision

Urban India in 2030 By the year 2030 we will have census figures of the 2021 census and the number of cities in India would have gone up. In fact by 2030 we may even have crossed the figure of fifty percent of the population living in urban areas

Dr M Ramachandran Former UD Secretary, (GoI) Chairperson, Indian Heritage Cities Network Foundation

W

hat are some of the positives we can expect by 2030?

Let us look at basic infrastructure.With the current emphasis placed on every household to get connection for piped water supply and sewage connectivity, it is likely we will succeed in this.

Similarly with the huge emphasis placed through the Swachh Bharat Mission, waste management could be under control and toilets for all could become a reality. Housing for all also is a target likely to be achieved. To this extent city living for most, particularly the less privileged sections, will be comfortable.

Share of cities in the GDP of the nation and similarly of tax revenue and employment generated will be substantial.

While the total number of cities and towns would have gone up, increasing number of mega cities will, if not properly attended to, create various imbalances. Some of the key concerns which if not addressed carefully could mean a situation where crowded cities would be struggling to address fundamental governance issues.

Will we be able to address the increasing water requirements of our

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cities? Water to be transported through villages to cities could meet with resistance. Another key concern would be whether all our cities and towns will have mechanisms in position to fully recycle the entire waste water.

Would we have structured proper waste management strategies to reduce waste and move towards zero waste as some cities like Ahmedabad have planned to do. The question also is how seriously will our cities be addressing the three ‘R’ s issue of reducing, reusing and recycling. Will we succeed in protecting our rivers from the careless culture of dumping everything that is waste into them?

One of the critical issues to be addressed for our cities to be real engines of growth will be that of effectively managing city transport.

Issues of congestion and time wasted on the city roads waiting for traffic to move will have to be addressed on priority. Unified metropolitan transport authorities with proper legislative backing will have to become functional and active. Efficient public transport will have to become dominant. Proper networks have to come into existence.

Last mile connectivity has to be properly worked out and sustained.

It looks like present day emphasis of

increased public investment in basics like water, waste management will shift to dominant investment in public transport.

Another key issue which will dominate city governance will be proper environment management. Air pollution is already flagged as ‘a multi headed monster with many causes’.

Mechanisms to continuously monitor air quality in cities and take proactive measures to correct the issues will take precedence. Already the smog crisis is considered a drag on the economy.

Issues arising out of increasing diesel fumes, construction dust, emissions from coal plants, smoke from burning of crop residues will become serious issues. In 2015 pollution was linked to 2.5 million deaths in India according to a medical journal and a UNICEF report says that the smog crisis must be permanently damaging children’s brains.

Pushing the solar energy agenda, cracking down on truck traffic within cities, going in for electric vehicles, restrictions on coal fired power plants are better city governance agenda points which would require priority.

City governance arrangements will have to undergo a big change. With regional and cluster approach to

An illustration of an Indian city by Bindia Thapar

increased economic activity gaining prominence as seen in countries like the UK, our traditional concept of mechanical notified city limits will need a relook so that coordinated functioning beyond notified limits becomes possible.

With complexities of governing mega cities increasing every day, we will also need to position an entirely different governance arrangement for these cities so that various citizen related issues are addressed efficiently going beyond the ‘silos’ of individual institutions. Holistic future planning for cities will have to gain prominence.

The way we undertake our urban planning today, considered stuck in the bullock cart age will also need to be recast if cities are to be able to play their rightful role. We have to get out of the cycle of master plans emphasizing land use more and not taking into account other equally critical areas.

Another key issue which will dominate city governance will be proper environment management. Air pollution is already flagged as ‘a multi headed monster with many causes’. Mechanisms to continuously monitor air quality in cities and take proactive measures to correct the issues will take precedence Much of how efficient our cities of tomorrow will look like would depend on the seriousness with which we handle the livability issue.

This is an aspect of governance

about which we have not been serious.

Briefly it is worth noting that the UN Habitat’s City Prosperity Initiative takes into account the six key dimensions of prosperity, infrastructure, quality of life, equity & social inclusion, environmental sustainability and governance. The World Economic Forum looks at urbanization, rising inequalities, sustainability, technological change, industrial clusters and governance as the six mega trends which determine the competitiveness of cities. The livability index initiative recently initiated by the central ministry of Urban Affairs lists fifteen attributes which will form the basis for this. It is time all our cities assess themselves comprehensively based on a mix of these critical parameters and constantly upgrade their performance and governance if our cities are to have high livability standards.

www.urbanupdate.in | January 2018

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Article | Swachh Bharat

SOLID WASTE MANAGEMENT: SOME THOUGHTS Swachh Bharat Mission gives significant focus to Municipal Solid Waste Management (MSWM). It is well known that the problem of Solid Waste in Municipal areas, especially in Metropolitan cities, has reached alarming proportions

Rajiv Agarwal Director General, AIILSG

T

he sheer quantity of Solid Waste generated in municipal areas is gigantic and the question facing us is how to manage the waste. This has implication for the environment of our cities and towns and also aesthetic concerns as well. Central Pollution Control Board has compiled figures of Solid Waste generated every day. In 2013-14, it is estimated that 1,44,165 Tonnes of waste was generated every day in the country. Out of this only 80% (1,15,742) was collected and only 22.8% (32,871) was actually treated. These figures indicate the magnitude of the problem that urban India is facing and it is the need of the hour to take steps to urgently tackle this problem. Not only the waste is required to be collected, it is also required to be treated. We have to look at the solutions, which may not require collection of entire waste by Urban Local Bodies. One report about generation of garbage in seven major cities in India suggests that there has been phenomenal increase in garbage generation between 2000 and 2015. In Delhi, the increase has been a staggering 2075%. The figures as reported in Times of India, Mumbai on 12th November 2017 in this regard are as follows:

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Garbage generated (In MTs) CITIES

2000

2015

INCREASE (%)

Bengaluru

200 3700 1750%

Mumbai

5355 11000 105%

Ahmedabad 1683 2500 48.5% Delhi

400 8700 2075%

Hyderabad

1566 4000 155%

Chennai

3124 5000 60%

Kolkata

3692 4000 8.3%

These figures show the level of problem our major cities are facing. So far the model of Solid Waste Management envisaged collection and disposal of entire waste by ULBs. However this model has failed, as can be seen by the state of dumping grounds in all the cities and towns in the country. One way to reduce the magnitude of the problem is to segregate the waste at the point of generation. Apart from the role envisaged for the Administrators, people’s participation is equally important. This requires basic change in the behavior of the people and needs inculcation of sense of responsibility that it is the duty of every citizen to help in keeping the city clean and it is not the duty only of the ULBs.

So far the solid waste disposal has been by dumping the same at some dumping ground. In big cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Pune etc., mountains of wastes have been created, which are a big health hazard. The waste disposal has to be decentralized urgently. Involvement of housing societies and even individual households in this effort is necessary.

The waste can be segregated into biodegradable, recyclable and domestic hazardous waste at household level.

Personal experience

I was living in a housing complex in Mumbai. In our house and I am sure in most of the other houses also, waste was being segregated. The person collecting the waste puts everything in the same

bin and the purpose of segregating waste at house-hold level is defeated.

To cite another instance, at one point in my career, I was working as Managing Director of Maharashtra Agro Industries Development Corporation, Mumbai.

This Corporation had established a waste treating plant at Deonar in Mumbai in collaboration with Mumbai Municipal Corporation. Idea was to dry the biogradable waste and after pulverising it, convert the same into manure. I can’t recall at this stage, the details of the technology which was being used.

However, the machinery was repeatedly breaking down mainly as glass and metal pieces were mixed in the waste.

The whole investment made by MAIDC was required to be written off and no dent could be made in disposal of solid waste. Various other projects have been established to generate electricity from organic waste. Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation proposes to do so in near future. However, unless there is effective segregation of wet and dry waste at the point of generation, no such project can succeed with the present technology.

Segregation at the point of generation of waste is quite simple and in-expensive.

However, if there is mixing, it becomes difficult to segregate the organic waste from inorganic waste.

As mentioned earlier, this waste can be converted into energy: biogas and electricity. The technology to be used for this purpose will depend on various factors. For a household, best option may be to compost the kitchen waste either at household level itself or by the Housing Society Complex.

Other dry waste can be handed over to NGOs etc. for recycling. The same may be the case for housing societies. For bigger housing societies, bio-gas plant maybe a viable solution. Even sewage treatment plants can be installed in bigger societies and recycled water used for gardening. It appears that solution to this problem is within reach. If the people’s participation can be ensured, 70% of the waste (kitchen or wet waste) can be disposed at household or housing society level. The question is, how to achieve that objective. You might have read that Nobel Prize in Economics was

given this year to Mr Richard Thaler. He is most famous as a pioneer of “nudging” theory, the use of behavioral economics as a public policy tool. Nudging can be by providing default mechanism or by trying to change the behavior of the people in a particular matter.

across Singapore”. Needless to say this “nudging” had positive impact on behavior of MCP holders.

In the context of subject at hand, we may also consider introducing some steps which may induce the general public to help segregate waste and

We in AIILSG have undertaken a Research study to identify markets for recycled solid waste. I am sure, if there is economic incentive, the people’s participation in segregation may be much more serious and willing.

The Nudging Theory

I was going through an article in a magazine published by Civil Service College of Singapore. It appears that the Singapore Government has been using this practice of nudging as a public policy tool for quite some time. One example is the temperature kept in air conditioned buildings. Raising the temperature by 1 or 2 degrees can help save on electricity bills and also conserve electricity. The difference may not be felt by the people working there. In another experiment in Singapore, students were nudged to register the boarding and alighting from public buses. Public transport for reaching educational institutions is provided at concessional rates (Monthly Concession Pass) to the students. MCP holders pay a flat fee for unlimited travel, so they do not see the need to register when alighting from the bus.

Buses are run by private operators and they are paid subsidy on the basis of actual usage. Failure to register exit may mean payment on the basis of maximum usage i.e. till the end of the route. Emails were sent to the MCP holders to register exit from bus (tap out) by sending simple messages like: “It is important that you tap out when alighting from buses even if, as a monthly concession pass holder you might feel it makes no difference to you. This is because by tapping out, you give the government more accurate information about your bus journeys and how crowded buses truly are. With this information, the government can do a better job of improving bus services

also do composting of wet waste in a decentralized manner reducing burden on the Municipal Bodies. Cost of Waste Management at household /society level is very low, around Rs.180-200 p.m., which is reasonable. In case, the waste is collected and managed by municipal bodies, the cost is much higher and the burden is ultimately upon the citizens, by way of increased taxes. Some concession in property tax may also be thought of, as the society is taking burden, which was being done by ULBs since then.

Our emphasis should be on low cost solutions. I find that Nagpur Solid Waste Processing and Management Private Limited, has proposed to establish a Power Project with a capacity of 11.5 MW, where the cost is coming to Rs 218.80 crore and tariff is coming to Rs 7.80 per unit. This cost appears to be 3-4 times the cost of energy generated from other sources, including solar energy.

It is, therefore, necessary that low cost solutions are given priority.

Segregating and disposing the wet wastes at decentralized level is possible.

It can be done by the Resident Welfare Associations (RWA) themselves. It is possible that the whole work can be given to service providers. This cost can be recovered by reduction in manpower required by the Housing Societies for waste collection and also by reduction of cess for garbage collection by the ULBs. In conclusion, it is eminently possible to collect, segregate and dispose of the solid waste in a decentralized manner. However, it can be done only if the general public is fully involved in this effort.

www.urbanupdate.in | January 2018

15

Article | Future Cities

Think cities beyond urban walls Augmented reality, off-grid energy, provision of hi-tech services all over, continuing improvements in communication technologies, and other technological advancements can make it possible to live urban life almost anywhere

Abhishek Pandey Editor

T

here is no doubt that there are positives and negatives of living in cities of today. The lure of better lifestyle and bright economic opportunities has attracted people from rural settings to come and live in cities. In the present context, urban life does not necessary mean an improved living standard; yet rural to urban migration continues to rise. It is a general perception, with many researches and data backing it, that urbanisation is an inescapable and irreversible reality. Many research reports suggest that the world will be 70 per cent urban by 2050.What kind of cities will those be? No one really knows what the future holds for cities.

But it is certain that if the current trends continue,cities will lose their charm. One has to see for how long the economic trends will outshine the discomforts of urban living such as congestion, severe pollution levels andsparse civic amenities.

Living in a metro might give people the best chance at career success

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January 2018 | www.urbanupdate.in

but I think many urbanites, if given an option, would prefer living in small towns or villages if their basic economic requirements are met. Small towns and rural settings too have many perks to offer—clean air, connected communities, andlow-cost lifestyle.

Crumbling infrastructure and poor ecosystem in our urban centres may reverse the trend. Policy makers need to create a suitable alternative by making villages the centres of employment using modern technologies.

Cities of Tomorrow

Thinking about the cities of the future is in itself a creative and adventurous ride. Seeing the speedy evolution of technologies, we can imagine that the cities of the future will have flying cars, robots cleaning the streets and other public places and doing lots of other odd works without any human intervention, but with robust digital infrastructure for seamless urban management. Another change we could see is in the physical manifestation of cities. In a more

connected world, the line between the urban and rural settings will blur.

Providing employment and good economic opportunity to people in rural settings will become possible.

They will have a choice whether they want to work in an urban environment or in a rural setting. The small towns or rural areas will aggressively compete with industrial pockets of metro cities.

This will also change the existing financial distribution. 25 cities of the world account for almost 50 per cent of global wealth. The distribution and generation of wealth from city centres are expected to diversify and the role of small towns could become significant if the urban development paradigm is corrected.

Cities are also well-known for providing vibrant social life. Designing of public spaces will also see a sea change.In the cities of tomorrow, the focus will be on the use of technology as a fundamental tool in the formation of social communities at the scale of the neighbourhood and the entire town. This will certainly be useful for

the new habitation that will spring up in rural areas. These urban centres may not be like ones with high-rise glass towers but with a well-connected intelligent township tailored to improve employability and bring economic prosperity in rural areas or say in those small townships.

Don’t raise your eyebrows. Traditional cities are not going to disappear into thin air. They will survive and thrive.

The alternative model of habitation would definitely help existing cities recover from the ever increasing burden.

How can rural India leapfrog?

Many of our policies, tools and instruments are already delivering valuable building blocks for smart villages. Adarsh Gram Yojana of Government of India was a laudable initiative in which every Member of Parliament had adopted a village for its holistic development. The scheme was laudable but there are

many components which need to be incorporated for making villages the hubs of employment other than agriculture and other traditional rural industries.

The perception of rural areas is among general public, simply a place to live, work and raise families. As of now, if we ignore the Zamindari system or those who own huge parcels of land in rural India, villages have failed to fulfil the dream of bright economic future of rural youth. This in turn resulted in migration of youngsters to cities and metros. This needs to change if we really want to empower villages and unburden cities. Our rural communities need jobs, basic services, connectivity and smart transport solutions as well as a favourable climate for entrepreneurship. The situation is not very different in small towns which cater to the requirements of cluster of villages.

We must enable new types of business models to emerge in towns and villages and the development paradigm should be regional so that each individual

Cities are not going to disappear into thin air. They will survive and thrive. The alternative model of habitation would definitely help existing cities recover from the ever increasing burden.

Ho-Chi-Minh City,Vietnam

industry in a village can complement another one in the region. Another approach that could enhance the productivity and prosperity is portalbased services that assist existing rural businesses to connect, integrate and cooperate better with urban business.

However, this will require extensive training of leaders in those regions.

Skill India Mission of the Government of India will have to be tailored to the requirements of local industries in the region.

Another area that will require attention simultaneously will be intelligent logistics networks.

Several rural markets are not able to reach out to the masses or say, their potential customer base because of non-existing logistics network. Can we create a system using today’s most advanced technologies that can allow rural India to leapfrog in the same way they’ve done with mobile telephones in the last 10 years? We have excellent telecommunications today without ever putting copper lines in the ground. Could we do the same for transportation? Drones could be the future. They can reach to the places where there is no road. Electric autonomous flying vehicles will come into the picture after security concerns related to them are resolved.

According to Andreas Raptopoulos, Airborne Logistic Activist, “We’re using small quads. These are able to transport two kilograms over 10 kilometres in just about 15 minutes. Compare this with trying to trespass a bad road in the developing world, or even being stuck in traffic in a developed world country.

These fly autonomously. This is the key to the technology.

So they use GPS and other sensors on board to navigate between ground stations. Every vehicle is equipped with an automatic payload and battery exchange mechanism, so these vehicles navigate to those ground stations; they dock, swap a battery automatically, and go out again.” The technology is certainly in a nascent stage and has not been tried on a large scale. This can be a game changer for cities and villages both.

www.urbanupdate.in | January 2018

17

Article | Smart cities mission

Smart Cities A daunting task While going through a critique of the prestigious Namami Gange project of the government for which a whooping Rs 20,000 crore had been sanctioned by the GoI in 2014 with less than 9 per cent (Rs 1074. 91 crore released till June 2017) having been released in three years, I was wondering what had happened to the equally ambitious project: The Smart Cities Mission!

Abhilash Khandekar Senior Journalist

C

leaning national river Ganga was an important poll promise of Modi Government for which a separate ministry was created and attached to the existing water resources ministry and a Ganga devotee and former CM of a large state, Uma Bharti, was made in charge, but nothing really has changed on the ground (or on the water!) She had to be shifted for non-performance and a doer Nitin Gadkari was given yet another ministry.

Well, I am not talking of Ganga cleaning, but of making cities smart, an equally tough task that this government, with all good intentions, had taken upon itself. The story of release of shockingly meagre amount for Ganga cleaning programme was quoted because almost the same kind of picture is being seen on smart cities front.

An interesting advertisement caught my attention as I was writing this article and that forced me to change

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January 2018 | www.urbanupdate.in

the complete approach to it to put things in a better perspective. Times of India newspaper of December 10, 2017, carried an advertisement (a Tender) about Agra Smart City. What did it say?

It invited bids for supply of furniture for the municipal corporation’s smart city office, giving the last date as 22nd December 2017 for submitting the small tender. Agra was the city which was picked up after a competition (that was the norm of urban development ministry to select 100 cities from states and union territories) in the third round. If furniture is being supplied now, when do we expect Agra to be smart, in the real sense?

The Smart Cities Mission is a unique urban renewal and retrofitting programme of 2015 which promised in all a staggering Rs 98,000 crore grant by the GoI. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, in his first budget of 2014, allocated Rs 7,016 crore only to quickly realise that by the next year’s budget only Rs 924 crore had been utilised, forcing him to cut the allocation to a meagre Rs 143

crore in 2015 regular budget, against the earlier seven thousand. Naturally, the second allocation was expected to be higher but it came down drastically.

Even if it is agreed that the mission was still slowly taking its roots, the tardy spending indicated the shape of things to come.

Well after three years of the launch of the project, through the first list of 20 “light house cities” was released by the then Urban Development Minister Venkaiah Naidu in January 2016, the pace of smart cities mission is still embroiled in bureaucratic maze and is very slow with no results in sight.

In three instalments, 98 cities from all states (barring West Bengal) got one or the other city’s name in the list for developing it into a ‘smart city’. The first list which was eagerly awaited by the nation, thanks to the huge hype created around it, included cities like Bhubaneswar, Visakhapatnam, Pune, Indore, Bhopal, Coimbatore, Chennai, New Delhi (NDMC) Belgaum and Ludhiana, to name a few. Naidu was a

minister who was in such demand that every Member of Parliament in the Lok Sabha was asking for his constituency to be included in the mission, he was quoted as telling the august House.

Everyone then thought that the entire city would be endowed with new and modern facilities, and would be plush cities like their western counterparts- beautiful, comfortable and spic and span, but that was not to be! What happened, on the other hand, was increased influx of rural population into cities in the hope of jobs and facilities.

There was a phase soon after all lists were out when people thought it to be just like another poll promise to keep the voters engaged. Many accusations were levelled against the selection process and then even the intentions of the government were doubted; if actually a city was going to be transformed into a smart city at all. There were mainly two reasons: one, the definition of a smart city which was acceptable to all was absent and secondly, if the same municipal corporation officials were to implement the new and ambitious plan why had the cities not become smart when large budgets were already provided to them under the JNNURM scheme of the UPA Government? Of course, the new smart city formula had a CEO appointed for the city, which did not really cut much ice with the critics and people on the streets have not

witnessed much change, barring a few examples. A top globally reputed urban planner termed it as a ‘ joke’ while talking to this writer recently.

Prasad Shetty and Rupali Gupte, in a wonderfully written article (The Contemporary Urban Conundrum/ IIC Quarterly) remarked that “the government soon realised that it is not possible for it to make even one new city, as the promise was toned down to making existing cities ‘smarter’.”

Later, instead of one city to be made smarter (sic), only a particular portion of a city was picked up to be retrofitted and given some new facilitiessomething the municipal corporations under the state government directions were anyway capable of doing under the existing master planning tools.

Even after speaking to a large number of people across different professions and domain expertise, I have not come across a common definition that terms the city as a smart city. Some say ‘smart is as smart does’! Many people actually thought the government was reinventing the idea of urban growth in India and paraphrasing it under the influence of global software companies to help them sell their projects.

None of the 98-100 cities chosen so far have shown any marked improvement in basic city governance. Yes municipal corporations are increasingly going digital to increase speed of delivery and to cut corruption, but water scarcity,

urban waste, pollution, greenery remain the problems all over. In Bhopal which was selected in the first list of 20 cities, there is just no worthwhile progress. Its very choice of a locality was first challenged by the local citizens who protested vehemently to cutting down of over 20,000 trees. The location was then changed and nothing has happened there since.

In New Delhi which was picked up in the first list, like Bhopal, pollution has brought unimaginable and international ignominy as its not being controlled since the three years of Modi Government rule over the national capital. Much of the time was wasted on ugly fights over the division of powers between the Delhi Government and the Union Government. The Ghazipur waste dump, meanwhile, remains as tall and stinking as ever.

Urban development ministry had set its eyes on 2022 to see the results after the project actually tookoff in 2017. But midway through, it saw an energetic minister of Cabinet rank becoming the Vice President and a new incumbent with no background of urban administration or municipal/district bureaucracy heading the ministry with no cabinet minister in charge. It is argued that the new minister has lots of international exposure, having been an IFS officer, so he would be dealing well with Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Government’s knowledge partner for the Smart Cities Mission and other global partners who have shown interest in developing Indian cities into smarter cities.

In short, like the other signature programmes of the government, smart cities should not remain on paper.

A huge urban population is waiting for good and liveable cities-smart or otherwise. They don’t want just digital efficiency but want clean drinking water, safe roads, clean air to breathe and affordable housing.

Will the smart cities deliver all this?

And a little more?

(The writer is a veteran political journalist and writes on urban affairs, environment and books. He can be contacted at kabhilash59@gmail.com and Abhikhandekar1)

www.urbanupdate.in | January 2018

19

Article | City Leadership

Wake up call for our City fathers The political representatives in municipal corporations and municipal committees have failed to provide the needed leadership and vision to our cities

O

ur cities are in various degrees of decay, decay of the civic infrastructure, decay of the environment and a general deficit of facilities that can facilitatecitizen’s well-being and pursuit of prosperity. Even as mandated service providers, the municipalities have been indifferent, inadequate and callous in quality. Statistics, such as they are, will tell a dismal story of the state of civic services across all states in our country. Water supply, power supply, waste management, air pollution levels, cleanliness of public spaces, public conveniences, pathways for pedestrians, indeed, take any point of reference, we are in deficit or decline or neglect.

It is true that the magnitude of the shift of the people from villages to cities has been quite large. The postcolonial period of the last seventy years, has seen almost over 35 crore people move to the cities. While the census data suggests that 31% of India is urban, satellite images suggest that our urban population is twice that much of this figure. This is in conformity with world-wide trends as people are moving for economic, education and health care reasons to

20 January 2018 | www.urbanupdate.in

Raj Liberhan Former Director India Habitat Center

cities. The burden of city management has thus hugely increased but our local bodies’ competence has diminished at an exponential rate, failing to match the needed professionalism and capacity for governance. Consequently, cities have got a bad name. While urbanization has helped economic and social progress, it has led to socioeconomic problems. The utter failure to anticipate, then plan and develop spaces and to establish municipal governance as the prime navigator and lead pilot of city’s prosperity has been a lapse of monumental consequence and its mitigation will possibly take us half a century or more, were we to start now in right earnest.

It is true that if we want democracy as a preferred form of governance, we will also necessarily have politics that will need to engage with institutions of public policy and their performance.

Barring a few corporation towns in different states, the municipal bodies in all other cities were totally dependent on the state budgets for their survival and even human resources. The situation even today is no better despite 73rd and 74th amendments to the Constitution.

These two amendments gave constitutional status to Panchayati

Raj Institutions (PRIs) and Urban Local Bodies respectively, in both letter and spirit to bring about greater decentralization and increase the involvement of the local community in planning and implementation of needed projects and developments. A number of programmes and initiatives were conceived and implemented to help create competence and capacity at the local institution levels, but the results have been mixed. The JNNURM and currently the modified clone in the shape of Smart CitiesInitiative, have done their bit but not enough and not at a consistently impressive pace.

Besides, in content, these programs are not total in approach. Many of them are partial or part answers to a vast array of issues. There has been a predominant tendency to run the affairs of the state from the capital. The major part of the senior bureaucracy is housed in the capital as is the political power and the district level is still in the hands of the authority called collector/deputy commissioner/district magistrate, who is the fount of all developmental initiatives. The consultative process is still only formal and fund flow is restricted. The municipal governance, even where there is political representation, is dependent on the

goodwill of the collector. Assuming that this one man possesses omnicompetence and has the time and inclination to resolve civic problems, his average tenure is less than a year in almost all states of India. No surprise, therefore, at the state of our cities without exception.

Structurally, our system of local governance is flawed. A district is a large enough entity and combined with its peri-urban areas, tehsils and villages, and, therefore, needs a competent set of institutions manned by professionals to guide the ambitions of the citizens of the district.

Obviously something needs to change and change quickly as we are plumbing the depths of despair in so far as urban living is concerned.

We cannot go on without restoring a fair system of providing services and obligating citizens to abide by an orderly framework of rules enforced by a compassionate and receptive managerial structure. The goal of all civic management has to be the welfare of the citizen and enabling her excellence to bloom. Given that worthy aspiration, who should change and who will induce that trigger that can compel ethics of service and performance to replace the prevalentinertia in municipal attitudes.

What is needed?

It is a very tall order but it has to be

The division of powers in our federal polity, though conceived in pragmatism has in fact been worked in competitive applications, reserving every discretion for the state chief ministers and leaving the local selfgovernance system in the cities, at their mercy.

fulfilled as it has become a question of survival of our cities and those who live in them. First and foremost, what is needed is a qualified municipal service cadre. But matters have got out of hand now. Garbage removal, waste management, road maintenance, public transport, horticulture, safe access to public spaces, climate mitigation and adaptation, have all become multi-dimensional city issues needing management skills and technical skills. If the local bodies have to perform, they have to be populated with these skills and expertise and full scope for esteem and aspirations to be met in the career profiles. Some state governments have been thinking about this need, but the time has come to act on their thinking.

Management of volumes to achieve satisfaction is no longer possible through manual instruments. No matter how well intentioned the personnel of any municipal body are, and truth be told, that they are not exactly motivated by work ethics, technology integration into management structures is badly needed. Easier said than done, no doubt, but there is no short cut to these mandates that have to be embedded in the daily agenda of municipal governance.

The fund flows to the third tier, i.e., the municipal level was one of the prime motivations for the 74th amendment in 1992. The Union government has been acutely aware of the reluctance of the state governments to provide funds to municipalities.

There have been various constraints, sometimes political and at other times, the financial health of the state itself is not good. Therefore, arrangements were contemplated to enable funds to flow to the third tier from the Union, but this has not been really institutionalized, at least not efficiently. At the same time, the internal capability of the local bodies is severely limited for various reasons.

If they want to raise debt, then they do not have adequate guarantees or collaterals; if they want to raise taxes, they do not have enough range to meet all expenses. Worse, 99% of them have

no idea of their land assets and if they do, these are hugely encroached. A way out of this impasse has to be found.

To start with, there has to be an independent municipal rating agency that will monitor and evaluate and grade municipalities on essential parameters. These ratings will be reviewed every six months for the first five years and then annually.

The grades will help build the credentials of the municipal body and enhance its ability to access debts funds based on revenue streams and land assets. As these ratings are put into public domain, the pressure to improve will also build and we all know that transparency drives accountability.

Of course, the shortfalls in resources will have to be met from state budgets but with diligent oversight on a real time basis.

The larger and more difficult question is: who will or what can trigger these changes or for that matter, any performance oriented transformation in municipal governance? The answer will surely fetch a fortune much bigger than the vaunted KBC- a popular TV quiz amongst our country’s eager to earn and learn.

There are success stories of local initiatives, somewhere a waste management enterprise prospers, somewhere a small community organizes sanitation and cleanliness change, somewhere an organized garbage collection but the scale is still evading our efforts. The challenge is to tackle volumes that are demanding services and infrastructure and housing.

A beginning must be made by restructuring the configuration of the municipal organization, as well as the working of its functional relationships with thecitizens, relationship with the parent state government too, as this is important for a well-defined autonomous sphere of its mandates without let or hindrance. Above all, the prevailing politics has to come to terms with the compulsion to deliver effective service in cities across all segments, if India’s urban story is not to reach a dismal conclusion.

www.urbanupdate.in | January 2018

21

Article | Cities and their growth

Measuring the city’s progress With nearly 70 percent of the global population likely to live in cities over the next three decades, these urban centres will increasingly play the lead roles in ensuring a sustainable future for this planet. In order that cities are able to objectively measure and effectively manage their progress on this front, they need to have the right tools

V Vijaykumar Sr Advisor, AIILSG

I

s your city safer than this one?

Does your city have better transportation than it had five years ago? City managers and urban local bodies wish they had clear, unambiguous answers to such questions. At best cities rely on surveys done by different agencies to rank them on specific parameters. Such surveys are often done by travel magazines, tour operator companies, business advisory firms and the like.

However, cities and city managers now have a better way of measuring the performance of their cities.

The International Organisation for Standardization developed and released in 2014 for the first time, a standard to measure service delivery and quality of life of cities. The Standard is known as ISO 37120. It is one among the latest standards adopted internationally. Most citizens are quite familiar with the ISO 9000 series, for Quality Management, which enables an organization to ensure that its product or service meets customer needs while complying with regulatory requirements. The standard

22 January 2018 | www.urbanupdate.in

ISO 9001:2008 is the edition of the standard 9001 released in 2008 while ISO 9001:2000 is the earlier version released in the year 2000. Many are also familiar with the ISO 14001 standards which help organizations to measure and improve their environmental performance. These have been extensively used across the globe not just by manufacturing companies but also organizations such as banks and hospitals.

The ISO 37120:2014 Standard was released under the title Sustainable development of communities, and incorporates a set of indicators that can be used by urban local bodies, politicians, city managers, corporate leaders, architects and planners to measure and improve the performance of their cities in their journey towards more inclusive, successful and livable habitats. A common saying goes, ‘what cannot be measured, cannot be improved’. Cities therefore need a set of indicators and a standard way of measurement of these indicators so that they can improve upon their

performance. As the briefing note on ISO 37120 says (https://www.iso.org/ files/live/sites/isoorg/files/archive/ pdf/en/37120_briefing_note.pdf), “As part of a new series of International Standards being developed for a holistic

A common saying goes, ‘what can set of indicators and a standard wa upon their performance.ISO 3712 uniform approach to what is m

Bureau of Indian Standards and Smart Cities In November 2017 the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) released the Pre-Standardization Study Report for Unified, Secure and Resilient ICT Framework for Smart Infrastructure.

It has been compiled by the smart infrastructure panel under the Electronics and Information Technology Department of BIS. This was an initiative for identifying standardization need with respect to Unified, Secure and Resilient ICT Backbone for Smart Cities. This report contains three sections: 1.

Last Mile Communication for M2M/IoT Applications in Smart Cities 2. Common Service Layer Requirements in ICT Architecture for Smart Infrastructure 3. Comprehensive ICT Reference Architecture for Smart Cities

Infrastructure The report states that it is aimed at wider dissemination of the knowledge and concerns as well as to help proceed with Standard Development Activities in the respective areas. If implemented, it could enable optimization of ICT infrastructure and bring down costs in smart city deployments.

The report observes that while all smart city projects follow some common goals such as efficiency, resilience, safety, sustainable development and promoting citizen engagement, the implementation is somewhat disjointed. Each project is primarily local, resulting in duplication of work and solutions are not reusable.

As per the report, promoting cities that provide core infrastructure and a decent quality of life to its citizens,

and integrated approach to sustainable development and resilience under ISO/ TC 268, Sustainable development of communities, ISO 37120 establishes a set of standardized indicators that provide a uniform approach to what is measured, and how that measurement

is to be undertaken. This International Standard does not provide a value judgement, or numeric thresholds on what a particular city should choose as appropriate targets for the indicators.”

The Standard aims to set out an internationally standardized set of

nnot be measured, cannot be improved’. Cities therefore need a ay of measurement of these indicators so that they can improve 20 establishes a set of standardized indicators that provide a measured, and how that measurement is to be undertaken The quality of civic services in Indian cities has to be measured to understand gaps in providing basic amenities to citizens

a clean and sustainable environment through application of ‘smart’ solutions using ICT tools is a common objective of all smart city projects and therefore standardization, interoperability and seamless integration of numerous physical infrastructures, utilities and services have become important. The BIS Panel thus worked to create a comprehensive ICT framework in order to improve interfaces, avoid unnecessary overlaps and deliver high quality services to all citizens. The members of the panel studied standardization activities around the world related to smart cities and smart infrastructure that could be useful in the Indian context.

Compiled from main report at:http://www.bis.org.in/other/USR_ ICT_FSI_V_1_0.pdf. The full report can be accessed here. metrics to be measured in a particular specified way and reported in a commonly understood manner. The measurements are by nature verifiable and therefore enable evidence-based actions including corrective measures and improvement interventions.

The Standard is thus a powerful tool available to municipal bodies and other stakeholders to enable them to improve upon service levels, benchmark with other cities, and share with neighbours.

The Standard uses indicators across seventeen ‘themes’, namely Economy, Education, Energy, Environment, Recreation, Safety, Shelter, Solid Waste, Telecommunications and innovation, Finance, Fire and emergency response, Governance, Health, Transportation, Urban planning, Wastewater, and Water and sanitation. The range of the themes appears quite exhaustive and covers the entire spectrum of parameters that affect the livability and hence the success of a city. This tool is likely to prove useful to city administrators.

(For more information please visit www.iso.org, www.bis.org.in)

www.urbanupdate.in | January 2018

23

Article | DMIC

A Saga of Delays and Abandonment: DMIC A mega project like DMIC conceived a decade ago is still struggling to take off. The ninety billion dollar project expected to be finished by December 2019 is likely to miss the deadline.

It’s turning into a saga of delays and abandonment. There is a lack of political will to tie up the funds and execution of the project as decisions are taken and then withdrawn

Kumar Dhananjay Consulting Editor

D

elhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC) is a mega infrastructure project conceived a decade ago. The project is supposed to cover a length of almost fifteen hundred kilometers between the political capital on India, Delhi and business capital of India Mumbai. The project as envisaged incorporates nine mega industrial zones of about 200-250 square kilometers each, six airports, high speed freight lines, a six lane intersection free expressway connecting Delhi and Mumbai, several industrial estates and clusters with high end infrastructure.

The project will pass through six states and the union territory of Delhi. It will also include eight smart cities and two mass rapid transit systems.

The eight investment regions proposed to be developed in Phase I of DMIC. The work on the dedicated freight corridor is expected to be completed by December 2019. Funds have been made available from the Government of India and loans from Japan. The vision for DMIC is to create

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strong economic base in this band with globally competitive environment and state-of-the-art infrastructure to activate local commerce, enhance foreign investments, real-estate investments and attain sustainable development.

A tale of abandonment & delays

Let’s look at the good news first. A decade after former PM Manmohan Singh announced this mega project, finally things have started moving.

Orders have started coming in.

Companies like Larsen and Turbo and Shapoorji Pallonji have bagged contracts worth thousands of crores. Other companies too have bagged contracts worth hundreds of crores to execute infrastructure facilities, administrative buildings, sewage plants and water treatment facilities among others. In 2016-17, then commerce and industries minister Nirmala Sitharaman had informed parliament that government has given almost five hundred crores to DMIC. In the first two years of the Modi government it was just fifty crores each.

The bad news is: this ambitious project

has been moving at a snail’s pace. Land acquisition has remained a big problem for the project with almost all states struggling to acquire land. Detailed Project Reports of many big projects have been approved recently after they were conceived a decade back. Many big power projects along the corridor have been abandoned. DMIC board, in 2016, decided to return to respective states the land for gas power plants abandoned due to their unviability. These thousand megawatt plants were to be set up in Maharashtra, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh. According to DMICDC, the process of ensuring gas supply was directly being monitored by the Prime Minister’s Office. But in November 2016, the plan was abandoned due to difficulties in procuring gas. A financial statement was presented before the parliament. It stated: “After the development of projects and allotment of lands for the same the overall output in gas has fallen consequent to which availability of gas became difficult affecting the development of power projects. DMIC Development

Corporation had tried to structure these projects on imported Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) after blending with domestic gas. On account of non-viability of the project at high prices of imported gas and in the absence of any policy framework regarding fuel pass through, it was extremely difficult to secure a power purchase agreement at those price inputs. In view of these developments the board in its meeting on November 16, 2016, has decided to return the land to the state governments”.

Name of the Node

State

Dadri-Noida-Ghaziabad Investment Region

Uttar Pradesh

Manesar-Bawal Investment Region

Haryana

Khushkhera-Bhiwadi – Neemrana Investment Region

Rajasthan

Pithampur-Dhar-Mhow Investment Region

Madhya Pradesh

Ahmedabad-Dholera Investment Region

Gujarat

Shendra Bidkin Investment Region

Maharashtra

Dighi Port Industrial Area

Maharashtra

Jodhpur Pali Marwar Industrial Area

Rajasthan

The land acquisition imbroglio

The project after its inception has been bogged down on the question of land acquisition. If we take the example of Dholera, the ancient port city which the government wants to convert into a smart city, has been struggling to find adequate land since 2009. Though the Gujarat government transferred land in installments, in 2015 Gujarat High Court stayed the land acquisition after local farmers’ body approached the Court. Gujarat government has been able to provide just about one third of the land required by DMIC which is 900 sq kms. DMIC has its own justification.

In its project brochure it says “Since the entire trunk infrastructure cannot be implemented in one go, a phased approach has been adopted and an activation area of 22.5 sq. Km has been identified which would act as catalyst for further investments and will provide a base for taking up development of further phases. The activation area is envisaged to trigger developmental activities in Dholera Special Investment Region and attract local and global investments. The area shall also help build confidence in the market for attracting anchor tenants thereby paving the way for development of remaining part of Dholera Special Investment Region.”

Rajasthan struggle

Rajasthan too has been struggling on this front. Farmers of Rajasthan agreed to sell their land without protest. It was unlike Gujarat or Maharashtra. The process to acquire the land for Khuskhera-BhiwadiNeemrana (KBN) Industrial Smart City

started in 2012. But it was only in April 2015 that the government was able to declare compensation of Rs 3000 crore for 1425 hectare. But the government is yet to disburse the money. Farmers have been making frequent trips to Jaipur but to no avail. It seems the government has neither the money nor the will to tie up the funds. While land acquisition has run into trouble in many states there are other hurdles as well.

According to a financial statement laid before parliament even the land parcels which have been acquired are not contiguous and it says “project development activities will be initiated only once the contiguous land is made available by the state government,”. In other investment zones as well things are moving at a snail’s pace. A look at the corridor today shows that it will certainly not meet the target of completion

by December 2019. Even if we see momentum picking up on the corridor for some time now it’s almost certain that it’s going to miss the deadline. What is worse is that respective governments have sought to dilute their focus on the project.

The vision must be inclusive While we envision a mega project we must have every stake holder in mind. Be it investors, businessman, landowners or farmers. While we must take their interests into account we must ensure that projects are feasible and implemented on time. There has been a difference between master plans on the table and progress on the ground. Otherwise chicken may come home to roost much earlier than expected. Let’s not remain a nation in waiting eternally.

www.urbanupdate.in | January 2018

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info graphs

top 6 biggest Cities by 2030 1 Tokyo, Japan Present Population Population by 2030

2 delhi, india Present Population Population by 2030

38.0 million 37.2 million

4 mumbai, india

3 shanghai, china Present Population Population by 2030

25.0 million 36.1 million

Present Population Population by 2030

20.7 million 27.8 million

24.15 million 30.8 million

2030

5 beijing, china Present Population Population by 2030

21.7 million 27.7 million

6 dhaka, b’desh Present Population Population by 2030

19.0 million 27.4 million

2018

Tokyo is projected to remain the world’s largest city in 2030

By 2030, 13 new megacities will emerge in the less developed regions including capital cities such as Bangkok, Bogota and Lima, plus seven more mega cities in Asia and two in Africa

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Africa and Asia are urbanizing faster than the other regions

Just three countries—India, China and Nigeria—together are expected to account for 37 per cent of the projected growth of the world’s urban popula-tion between 2014 and 2050

India is projected to add 404 million urban dwellers, China 292 million and Nigeria 212 million

Info Graphs

05

times the number by which GDP will have multiplied by 2030

`

270

million people net increse in working-age population

$1.2

66

trilion capital investement is necessery to meet projected demand in India’s cities

cities will have population of 1 million plus, up from 42 today; Europe has 35 today

590

million people will live in cities, nearly twice the population of the United States today

`

70

percent of net new employment will be generated in cities

180-210 million people in rural areas will benefit from their proximity to the 70 largest cities by 2030

INDIAN CITIES IN 2030 Cities will witness the change in every sphere of their operations. The state of affairs in Indian cities need to change to ensure our urban local bodies become capable enough to take the evolving challenges head-on. The increasing demand for infrastructure and investment in urban centres will be fulfilled if our local governments evolve a feasible financial mechanism. A sneak peek into the prospective state of affairs in cities of India in 2030

2.5

billion square meters of roads will have to be paved, 20 times the capacity added in the past decade

700-900

million square meters of commercial and residential space needs to be built or a new Chicago every year

Source: McKinsey Global Institute Analysis, UN World Urbanisation Prospects, 2014 revision

www.urbanupdate.in | January 2018 27

Article | Environmental challenges

Environmental challenges: Forget smart cities, civic bodies need to be smart More than the common citizens, it is high time that the civic bodies came up with innovative projects and strict implementation to meet the environmental challenges in the face of changing climate

Nivedita Khandekar Independent Journalist

L

ong time ago, when I was covering Delhi Jal Board (DJB), the national capital’s nodal agency for water, I had asked one of its top engineers ‘why at all the DJB needed to outsource so many of its works?

Whatever happened to its inhouse talents?’

“What else can we do? If I try to force someone to work, he flatly refuses. Plus, transfers or suspension are no deterrents as such people have some or the other kind of political backing or workers’ union support,” the exasperated official said.

Either ways, the fate is sealed. Work will not be done up to the mark and never on time. This is, more or less, the same story across India for scores of government agencies. Manpower is one of the most challenging aspects and under that broad umbrella, it is the quality that tops the list. A term that has gained much currency in recent years is ‘capacity building’ and scores of transnational NGOs and consultancy

28 January 2018 | www.urbanupdate.in

firms have had a field day building capacity of Indian institutions. The jury is still out on the impact of such efforts but there is no doubt about the need for building capacities of our agencies keeping in tune with the times.

A 2011 report of the ‘High Power Executive Committee (HPEC)’ has estimated that India will have more than 85 metropolitan areas by 2031, a little more than a decade away. Predicting the pace and scale of urbanisation, the report said, India’s urban population is likely to soar to over 600 million.

Tackling urban poverty will not be the only issue in view of the large-scale migration but the pressure on resources will need to be addressed first and foremost.

Current scenario: bleak picture with scope for much improvement

A case in point is changing climate and let us take just one issue, an issue so vital for our survival - water. In times to come when erratic precipitation has been

forecast for the Indian subcontinent by climate scientists, it is no more an option but an imperative for the Indian authorities to ensure that its machinery is equipped to handle the impacts due to these changes. This is especially true for civic bodies across states as this is the agency that is the nodal point for implementing preventive measures and taking mitigating steps. Also, these agencies would be the ones to start rebuilding in case of destruction and damage due to natural disaster or even due to changing climate.

As it is, across India, we suffer from inadequate water supply and inefficient management of available resources when it comes to this most precious one, water. It is not that the policy makers are not aware of the importance of having adequate water for rising population, but the lopsided policies ensure that there is no equitable distribution in any of the cities. Be it South Mumbai or the prime VIP area under the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC), be it the plush Banjara Hills in Hyderabad

or the Salt Lake area at Kolkata, these areas are the most pampered areas with 24x7 water and possibly that of highest quality. But scores of residential colonies in these cities suffer from both quantity and quality issues.

Next, over last few decades, the demand for drinking water (thanks to increased urbanization) agriculture and industry has been increasing. Also, in view of the changing climate, the overall availability of water at our disposal has been decreasing.

We have not even reached 100 % coverage capacity for all areas of cities – both metropolitan and tier I cities, forget providing 24x7 water supply.

The less said the better about tier II and III cities. What is applicable to water supply is equally applicable to – or perhaps the situation is worse – waste water treatment. The result is there for all to see – highly polluted rivers, drains and nullahs apart from local water bodies. The conundrum called urban local bodies (ULBs) is responsible for this deplorable status.

Basic issues need to be addressed

One of the most basic problems that needs to be addressed is the

linking of planning, development and implementation process across cities. For many decades now, city improvement trusts (for instance, Nagpur Improvement Trust) or development authorities (e.g. Indore Development Authority) have been tasked with the development process.

This is done without considering the municipal capacities but once these colonies are developed, the actual implementation is done by the municipal corporation.

Municipalities are required to take care of newly developed areas which were planned without their involvement. The need for de-centralised planning and implementation is much highlighted in such cases. Also, the municipalities need to have institutionalised knowledge and capacities to implement concepts such as green spaces, wetlands and increasing tree cover to tackle the growing environmental problems.

Second important issue that needs to be addressed is the perennial staff crunch problem (both technically sound and general). Since more than a decade, the Central and the state governments have stopped recruitment at lower ranks and outsourced much of their work. At the higher level, the

planning, engineering etc., despite having staff, the quality is suspect and hence, here too, the work is outsourced.

Better idea will be to start hiring and developing in-house institutionalised capacity building that too of personnel drawn from local areas who will have better first hand understanding of the local environmental issues.

Third is to ensure capacity building in the right manner. It is nobody’s argument that the NGO consultancy firms or transnational consultants bring no knowledge. But application of that knowledge needs to be aligned to suit Indian needs. It is here where the real capacity building needs to be done.

Last but not the least,this capacity building need not stop at adequately equipping the officials and other personnel with knowledge, but should ensure that the planning is done diligently, and implementation is done even more assiduously.

Scope for learnings

The changing climate has already started showing its impact across states in India. The urban areas – especially high population density cities – are turning out to be most vulnerable and prone to suffer more damages in the face of a natural disaster. Floods and heat waves are two of the most common problems that Indian cities have faced increasingly in recent times. While many cities have devised ways to lessen the impact of heat wave – for example Ahmedabad’s preventive measures to beat the heat island effect – there are others that have been trying to mitigate damage caused due to recurring floods (for instance, the early warning systems for cyclone in Odisha). The civic bodies and other agencies such as Jal Nigams and/or Jal Boards need overhauling when it comes to their own system of governance. The powers that be will need to ensure that the inefficient, the non-performers do not get protection under political or union patronage.

(Nivedita Khandekar writes on environmental, developmental and social issues. She can be reached at nivedita_him@rediffmail.com or follow her on twitter at @nivedita_Him)

www.urbanupdate.in | January 2018

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Article | Urban Transport

Creating Gender Responsive Urban Mobility Plans Women’s access and use of urban transportation will play a big role in achieving India’s sustainable development goals (SDGs) and ensure women’s right to the city and its public spaces. Since urban transport is not the responsibility of one ministry or department, gender inclusion will require interventions at multiple scales and coordination with a number of ministries and departments

O

Sonal Shah Senior Manager, Institute for Transportation and Development Policy

ver 2012-20, around 865 million women are expected to enter the workforce (Strategy and PwC 2012). According to the McKinsey Global Institute, if women were to play an equal role in labour markets, as much as USD 28 trillion could be added to the global economy by 2025. Yet, in urban India, women’s labour force participation is only at 15.5 per cent (MoSPI 2014) and in fact, India’s female labour force dropped by 19.2 million individuals between 2004-5 and 2011-12 (Andres, et al. 2017).

The performance of urban transport services places different burdens on women and men, with the costs of poor public transport often being borne by women. For example, women may turn down better employment opportunities further away from home in favour of lower-paid local opportunities when the public transport system is unreliable or unaffordable (ADB 2013). Safe, comfortable, convenient and affordable transport can play an important role in not only helping

30 January 2018 | www.urbanupdate.in

meet women’s practical needs such as access to schools and markets, but also in contributing to their strategic empowerment by facilitating access to social and economic opportunities.

In India, women’s concerns in urban transport came to the fore primarily through the lens of safety since Jyoti Singh’s death in December 2012. It brought this issue, which had earlier remained confined to feminist and queer movements (Baxi 2014), to the public discourse and galvanized action by civil society and different levels of government to create safer public transportation systems.

Women and girls are close to 50 per cent of our urban population. While they comprise only 19 per cent of “other workers” and yet 84 per cent of their trips are by public, intermediate public and non-motorized modes of transport (Census 2011). While 73 per cent of trips by “other workers” in urban areas are by sustainable modes of transport, women and girls’ share is only 14 per cent. In the coming decade, cities will need to make a concerted effort to improve women and girls’ experience

of sustainable modes of transport to achieve a target of 40 per cent of all trips. The National Urban Transport Policy should adopt the sustainable development goal 11.2, which aims to “By 2030, provide access to safe, affordable, accessible and sustainable transport systems for all, improving road safety, notably by expanding public transport, with special attention to the needs of those in vulnerable situations, women, children, persons with disabilities and older persons”.

The following indicators recommend a framework to assess comprehensive mobility plans through a gender lens.

It provides a framework to integrate technical and social, quantitative and qualitative approaches for enabling this transition. n Urban mobility plans need to adopt a holistic approach towards gender inclusion. An institutional framework is recommended to guide the preparation, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the comprehensive mobility plan. n Create a functional Unified Metropolitan Transport Authority

2

Create a Mobility Plan Underpinning Women’s Concerns

♦♦ Identify goals, targets and projects with women’s groups to increase women and girls’ mode shares in sustainable transport i.e. walking, cycling, public transport, prevent and reduce women’s experience of sexual harassment, reduce time poverty and improve affordability, comfort and convenience. ♦♦ Create gender disaggregated business as usual and subsequent sustainable transport scenario to estimate reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. ♦♦ Organize inclusive consultations and design charrettes to incorporate women’s perspectives and prioritize projects

(UMTA) in 1 million+ cities. The UMTA should include women’s groups, gender, urban planning and transportation experts. n Create a multi-stakeholder committee (MSC) in cities less than a population of 1 million, comprising of the urban local body, urban development authority, traffic police, police, public transport authorities, relevant state departments along with women’s groups, gender, urban planning and transportation experts. n Create a Gender Advisory Committee (GAC) within the UMTA or the multistakeholder committee to review each stage of the comprehensive mobility plan process, transportation projects, policies and programs, monitor implementation, evaluate impact and implement a capacity building program. The GAC will include gender experts from transport organizations in the UMTA. Identify a senior state level official, such as the Chairman of the UMTA or MSC to preside over the GAC and become a champion for implementation of gender responsive projects in the mobility plan.

(This article is an excerpt from the policy brief Women and Transport in Indian Cities, released by ITDP India and Safetipin.)

Recommendations

1

Measure Gendered Mobility Patterns

Conduct household surveys to n Understand gendered mobility l patterns such as trip origins/ destinations/purposes/chaining/mode of transport/trip lengths/costs/travel times.

Understand women’s percepl tions of security, comfort and convenience and aspirations from the transportation system.

Measure gendered inequities l

in travel such as time poverty, travel costs, forced mobility and forced immobility.

Consider time use diaries to unn derstand how men and women structure their everyday life for productive, care and leisure Conduct surveys and focus group n discussions with commuters, bus conductors and public transport officials to assess their awareness and perceptions of sexual harassment, and how it can be addressed.

Conduct universal accessibility n and women’s safety audits

3

Prepare an Implementation Plan

4

Set Goals and Create a Mobility Plan Underpinning

♦♦ Prepare implementation and phasing plan with timelines, financial resources to meet the gender targets, goals and projects of the comprehensive mobility plan and identify responsible agencies. ♦♦ Gender Advisory Committee (GAC) should monitor implementation progress on an annual or bi-annual basis

♦♦ Conduct periodic evaluations by a third party (with women’s groups) to monitor implementation progress and assess impact. ♦♦ Share implementation challenges, successes and build capacity within UMTA or multistakeholder committee. These can be facilitated by the Gender Advisory Committee.

www.urbanupdate.in | January 2018

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Article | River pollution

Cities need to have River Pollution Abatement Plans and Task Forces Rivers have always been considered sacred in Indian culture but the neglect and poor handling of rivers by cities, citizens and government has been posing a huge threat to their very existence

Ranjan K Panda Convenor, Combat Climate Change Network, India

E

ver since the new government came to power at the centre, the name of the Ministry of Water Resources was changed to give special emphasis to Ganga, considered the most sacred river of the nation. The name of the ministry was changed to include ‘River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation’ and ministers none less than the Prime Minister took personal vows to save Ganga. The first water resource minister of the current regime went to the extent of promising to lay her life if Ganga was not cleaned.

She is no more the minister and Ganga is far from being cleaned.

The Comptroller and Auditor General(CAG) of India, in a recent audit, has found out that under the National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG) programme the government has been able to spend, between April 2015 to March 2017,only about 260 million USD of the 1.05 billion USD earmarked for cleaning the Ganga in this period. The central government, in 2015, had actually committed an amount of 3 billion USD for a five-year project to clean the 2525 kilometre long river that is now one of world’s most polluted rivers.

At least 400 million people depend on this river for their water

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requirement. Water quality of 8 of the 10 cities surveyed along the river did not meet outdoor bathing standards.

If this is the fate of Ganga, the river that gets maximum attention of the government of theday at the centre, one could imagine the fate of other rivers of this country.

River pollution has doubled in four years

Latest data that is available for river

pollution says that a total length of 12,363 kilometres of all our rivers is highly polluted. The Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), based on monitoring of data collected during the period 2009-2012, has found that 302 river stretches are now polluted compared to 150 river stretches that were found to be polluted based on data for period 2002-2008. Pollution of our rivers has doubled. And CPCB attributes most of this pollution to

urban waste.

In 2009, the CPCB had estimated that 38,000 million litres per day (mld) of wastewater was being generated in the urban centres having population more than 50,000 in India (housing more than 70% of urban population).

This had jumped to almost 57,000 mld by the year 2015. That’s a jump of 50 per cent! The CPCB had in 2009 estimated that capacity developed for treating wastewater in these categories of cities was only for 11,000 mld.

It means the rest of the wastewater was simply flowing into the rivers and other water bodies. However, this statistic cannot be relied upon as we could find from our own studies. Even government officials and ministers have admitted in public speeches that the treatment facility of 29 per cent is overestimated. Comparing Census statistics and other statistics also makes it clear. Several estimates put that the current treatment may be somewhere around 15 to 20 per cent of the total waste generated, or even less.

Strategy 2030

Urban bodies of India need to invest in strategies to abate pollution of our rivers. While the National Sanitation Policy as well as Sanitation Strategies for the few states which have so far

formed one, ask for containment of all kinds of wastes and treatment, there is no clear strategy and time plan to check pollution of rivers and water bodies by urban areas. By not doing this the cities are doing a great disservice to their own population as well as rural areas and the ecology.

A new UN Environment report that draws on the latest data from every continent warns that freshwater bodies, on which billions of people depend for water, food and transport, are heavily affected by nutrient run-off from agriculture, chemicals and pathogens in untreated wastewater, heavy metals from mining and industrial effluents.

In fact, to facilitate meeting of the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, this UN Report has made some vital suggestions to curb pollution.

Indian citiespollute the rivers the most, and hence need to take lead in these actions. Cities need to Increase treatment, recycling and reuse of wastewater to reduce the amount of untreated wastewater discharged into freshwater bodies by at least 50 per cent by 2030.

To do this, all the existing gaps in finance, manpower and infrastructure need to be plugged; data need to be generated in dynamic, efficient and transparent manner to be used in

ULBs need to form special Task Forces to abate pollution of rivers with citizens taking the key charge of the same.

Such Task Forces should have power to ensure accountability of ULBs and pollution monitoring/ enforcing agencies. For this, capacity building of all stakeholders and necessary resource provisioning have to be taken care of

planning; convergence between the various departments and stakeholders needs to be established; and time bound action plan for abatement of river pollution needs to be prepared and implemented with active participation of all the stakeholders including urban local bodies (ULBs), governments of the state and centre, citizens and their organisations, civil society organisations, corporate and industrial houses that have a stake in the cities.

Another important aspect is to work towards obtaining and implementing decentralised wastewater technologies.

Our cities are heavily dependent on knowledge systems that promote centralised systems of waste treatment which not only take time but are not as efficient as the decentralised systems. While we cannot do much about the already implemented (or in in implementation stage) systems, in case of the new ones that are being planned and for upcoming plans, innovations with regard to segregation of wastes and promoting decentralised systems of treatment be tried along with promotion of reuse of wastewater in agriculture and other purposes. For this, strong monitoring standards and institutions are needed, which we lack at the moment.

ULBs need to form special Task Forces to abate pollution of rivers with citizens taking the key charge of the same. Such Task Forces should have power to ensure accountability of ULBs and pollution monitoring/enforcing agencies such as Pollution Control Boards. For this, capacity building of all stakeholders and necessary resource provisioning have to be taken care of.

As I have always been saying, urban citizens should not be made only ‘customers’ and ULBs ‘service providers’. Citizens need to be owners of the processes of development and for that governments must create enabling provisions to ensure that their rights over resources are ensured, as well as their sense of responsibility towards conservation of these resources is facilitated. This is very important if we want to free our rivers and water bodies of pollution.

www.urbanupdate.in | January 2018

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Article | Disaster Resilience

Disaster Resilience is a challenge

To realize the Vision statement mentioned in National Policy on Disaster Management, India will have to change its strategy and take a different route

O

n 22nd May, 2017, Denis McClean Head of Communications at UNISDR said “India is the largest democracy which has braced the Sendai Framework for disaster risk reduction and the first country to have drawn a national and local strategy with a short term goal achievement target set for 2020.” He further added “we would like to see this kind of action to be replicated by other countries.” A proud moment for all people working in the field of Disaster Management on two counts. (1) Their efforts are recognized & appreciated at UN Platform and (2) they are on the ‘right’ path for implementing Sendai Framework.

For India it’s a long journey from “Flood Centric Response & Relief“ approach to a “holistic continuous process of Planning, Organizing, Coordinating and Implementing measures for Disaster Risk Reduction” as mentioned in the Disaster Management Act, 2005.

Disaster management Act, 2005 ensured a paradigm shift in our policy, from the erstwhile ‘reactive’ approach to a ‘proactive prevention, mitigation and preparedness-driven’ approach for conserving developmental gains

34 January 2018 | www.urbanupdate.in

Sanjeevan Joshi Head, Disaster Management Cell, AIILSG

and to minimize loss of life, livelihood and property. In the National Disaster Management Policy, 2009 the ‘Vision’ is mentioned as ‘to build a safe and disaster resilient India by developing a holistic, proactive, multidisaster oriented and technology driven strategy through a culture of prevention, mitigation, preparedness and response’.

The Disaster Management Act, Policy and Plans are developed on the basis of lessons learnt in many disasters - natural, man-made and technological.

They all are India specific. India has witnessed loss of millions of lives, more than ten millions injured and a large number continues to suffer for years after the disaster.

Let us take the example of the devastating earthquake near Koyna Nagar town in Maharashtra in 1967.

The magnitude of the earthquake was R 6.6 and it occurred near the site of Koyna dam, raising questions about induced seismicity. It claimed more than 200 lives and injured more than 2,200 people. The entire Koyna Nagar Township was destroyed. During the last fifty years more than 1500 earthquakes are reported in the same area and hence nobody is willing to stay in the township. There is a great

fear in the minds of people and many people including scientists feel that the Dam is wrongly located.

Let us take another example of the Bhopal Gas Leakage Tragedy of 1984.

More than half a million people were exposed to ‘highly toxic gas MIC’ from Union Carbide Factory resulting in about 4,000 immediate deaths and

National Disaster Management Plan, 2016 Vision statement commits to ‘significantly decrease the losses of life, livelihoods, and assets – economic, physical, social, cultural, and environmental – by maximizing the ability to cope with disasters at all levels of administration as well as among communities and make India Disaster Resilient’

more than 8,000 deaths in subsequent years due to gas related diseases. Even after 33 years about 40,000 people are under regular medication. Further, there is still a large quantity of MIC Gas in the tanks at the said factory site.

We are unable to deicide the procedure to dispose of this highly toxic gas.

Although UNISDR has praised India, the above cases point out the lacuna in our implementation of disaster management plans.

Our documentation in terms of Disaster Management Act, Disaster Management Policy and National Disaster Management Plan show a rosy picture. But we are not able to develop confidence among our own people about disaster management capabilities.

If we analyze the disasters during the last 50 years, we will find that the biggest problem faced by community in post-disaster scenario is ‘livelihood’.

The concept of livelihood reflects the ability of people to sustain their daily needs and draws on the combination of a large array of resources. These resources strongly interplay with the ability of people to face the threat of and recover from the impact of disaster.

It happened in Koyna Nagar case fifty year back and very recently in the Malin Landslide, 2014 & Chennai Floods, 2015. People lost their livelihood and had to migrate out of the area in search of livelihood. Therefore ensuring livelihood is a crucial component of disaster management.

The problem has social and financial background.

National Disaster Management Plan, 2016 Vision statement commits to ‘significantly decrease the losses of life, livelihoods, and assets – economic, physical, social, cultural, and environmental – by maximizing the ability to cope with disasters at all levels of administration as well as among communities and make India disaster Resilient’.

In National Disaster Management Plan, 2016 the ‘Recovery’ phase is divided in three sub-phases as (i) Early – 3 to 18 months, (ii) Mid Term – upto 5 years and (iii) Long Term – within 10 years. The ‘Early Phase’ stipulates implementation of measures such as Cash for work, Resumption of markets, commerce & trade, Restoration of social services and Transitional & temporary shelters. The ‘Mid Term Phase’ stipulates implementation of

measures such as Recovery of assets & livelihoods, and Reconstruction planning for housing, infrastructure, public buildings & cultural heritage buildings.

The above two paras clearly indicate that we have to concentrate on ‘restoring livelihood’ for affected people as well as ‘developing their resilience’. But if we analyze the present status in our country, we realize that neither government organizations nor private organizations / corporates are aligned to this thought.

‘Continuity’ of operations, may be at lower level, is very vital for giving confidence to the community. No doubt providing temporary shelters is a priority, but it is equally important to ensure ‘continuity’ of operations in Industrial sector, Public & Private sectors and ensuring resumption of market & trading activity. This will reduce the burden on disaster management personnel as the trauma of the disaster gets reduced.

To achieve continuity of operations it is essential to add one more component in the ‘Disaster Management Continuum Cycle’ advocated in the National Policy on Disaster Management, 2009. A thought has been given in National Disaster management Plan, 2016 as stated above and is required to be implemented properly and rigorously.

Educating the local institutions, government organizations, corporates, and NGOs about inclusion of ‘continuity’ planning as an integral part of disaster management plan is very essential. It shall in turn make the community more disaster resilient. It’s a win-win situation. People are assured about their livelihoods and in turn their resilience is also boosted.

At AIILSG, in the New Year, let us commit ourselves to make the Public and Private sectors as well as the community aware about the ‘Continuity’ concept as enshrined in the National Disaster Management Plan, 2016 and through that make community disaster resilient. Let us strive to make India, Disaster Resilient through Continuity Planning!

www.urbanupdate.in | January 2018

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NEWSCAN

AIILSG to strengthen nursing workforce in Gujarat To create a skilled workforce in health sector, AIILSG proposes to enlarge its outreach by opening up nursing colleges in various states. The recent addition was a new nursing college in Ahmedabad Ahmedabad: Health is one of the primary duties of the State along with education, in a welfare state like India.

For the business sector also, healthy workers mean more productivity. State provides health facilities, mostly at very low cost to the populace. However, to augment the facilities provided by the Government, private sector is also contributing in a big way to provide healthcare at reasonable cost.

Apart from trained medical personnel, there is tremendous demand for support staff in this field. In view of this demand and shortage of trained nurses all over the country and abroad, and considering its employment potential, the Health Department of Government of Gujarat had requested AIILSG to start suitable Nursing Courses. AIILSG started the first batch of the Diploma course in General Nursing & Midwifery Course in September 2004 at its Nursing Academy with the recognition of Gujarat Nursing Council and Indian Nursing Council.

Recently, Rajiv Agarwal, IAS (Retd.), Director General of AIILSG, inaugurated the Nursing College in Ahmedabad.

In his inaugural speech, he spoke about the importance of nursing schools in the growing scenario of Healthcare. He added that AIILSG proposed to open a nursing college in each state of the country. AIILSG is also planning to set

36 January 2018 | www.urbanupdate.in

Director General, Rajiv Agarwal IAS (Retd.) inaugurated the Nursing College in Ahmedabad

up a National Mission to benefit the students in its various centres who aspire to join the healthcare and sanitation sector.

Health insurance and India With rising medical cost, there is need for a wider penetration of health insurance. In a country with a population of 1.25 billion people, private health insurance penetration is still only approximately 5 per cent. Moreover, in India the share of out-of-pocket expenditure in overall healthcare expenditure is significantly higher than in comparison to developing countries as well as the developed countries.

Healthcare spending in India is focused on low income and Below Poverty Line (BPL) segments. The primary objective of the government is to make health services universal and accessible to all. However, this cannot be done without involvement of private sector.

For the people who are risk averse, it is important to incentivize them by offering some value to them like free health

check-ups or discounts, which will help in realizing the goal to make health insurance universal.

To make healthcare available to all sections of the society, health insurance plays an important role. Healthcare has been one of the fastest growing segments within the insurance industry.

However, despite its growth, the penetration of health insurance remains low in the country, rendering a large section of the population open to huge out-ofpocket medical expenses.

Skilled healthcare workforce There is demand for trained nurses, both in government and private sector.

These days, nurses, who can educate or manage other nurses, are in high demand. These career-oriented positions typically pay better, sometimes even into six figures, but do require additional education. Management, education, and advocacy are three essential roles in recruiting more high quality professional nurses to the field who can adopt new technologies.

ICEQUI-T celebrates anniversary of MAMTA Movement PUNE: AIILSG’s International Centre of EQUI-T (ICEQUI-T) organised a program on November 11, 2017 to celebrate the Children’s Day. Rajiv Agarwal, Director General of AIILSG, was the Chief Guest. The program was held under the aegis of AIILSG’s Centre for Children’s Rights established at ICEQUI-T. In sync with its vision of ‘Enabling the Child Rights for the Disadvantaged Children’ & with the ICEQUIT’s ethos of avoiding any extravaganza that contradicts the sensitivity towards the disadvantaged, the program was held at a humble grassroots setting: the Samaj Mandir of the Patil Estate Slum in Pune where ICEQUI-T is working for more than five years.

Synergizing the occasion with the completion of one year of AIILSG’s International Center for Differently Abled (I.C. Differently), part of the program was dedicated to the differently abled children from the slum. It is important to mention that ICEQUI-T provides a special emphasis on the differently abled children in all field actions.

AIILSG’s efforts to bring happiness to the lives of the differently-abled children were symbolized in gifting appropriate disability-specific games/ toys to the differently abled children from the slum at the hands of the Director General. He also interacted with the children and youth from the Patil Estate slum and Mahatma Gandhi Vasti slum, and inspired them through his motivational speech. Children performed theme-based street plays, mime-act, and puppet show on the occasion.

On November 19, 2017, AIILSG’s ICEQUI-T marked one year of it’s another crucial initiative—MAMTA Movement. The movement was launched on October 22, 2016. The MAMTA movement has till now reached extremely poverty ridden impoverished indigenous populations from 66 villages in

Director General of AIILSG Rajiv Agarwal addressing the tribal students in Palghar District

the tribal belt of Palghar district and 24 settlements of the Denotified & Nomadic Tribes in Beed district.

A one-day program with the participation of the tribals and their children was held at Kalampada village in Vikramgadh taluka of Palghar district.

DG of AIILSG rendered the key note address. He also paid visit to the remote tribal locations in tough geographical terrain to the MAMTA movement actions & the ICEQUI-T’s another innovation of the TARFA model for tribal empowerment.

TARFA model TARFA, the word derived from a traditional musical instrument of the tribal, is acronym for Transformative Actions for Rural Development, Food Security & (especially in the context of the landless) Animal-husbandry. The model addresses the food security and livelihood issues in holistic and gender-sensitive manner. The innovative model developed by Dr Kanaskar addresses the issues in the long term through appropriate horti-forestry & livestock interventions by tribals. The short term

food security issues with the highly impoverished tribals are addressed through the activities of—1) For landholder families: improved agriculture, improving crop productivity, cropping intensity & enriching cropping pattern, vegetable cultivation, women-friendly appropriate technologies, and, 2) for landless families: appropriate live stock interventions such as poultryand Rural Non-Farm Sector interventions.

Both these programs were anchored

by Dr Mukesh Kanaskar, Deputy Director General, AIILSG along with the team of ICEQUI-T: Shweta Gupta, Executive Director; Shriniwas Indapurkar, Sr Program Director & Head of Centre for Rural & Tribal Development and for Empowerment of Denotified & Nomadic Tribals; Dr Shrikant Khadilkar, Sr Program Director & Head-Centre for RMNCH+A; Swati Sonawane, Project Director; Gulab Rade, Program Coordinator and other team members of AIILSG’s ICEQUIT. V Vijaykumar, Sr Advisor, AIILSG, and Dr Vijay Kulkarni, Dean, Faculty of Arts, Social Sciences & Commerce, Bharati Vidyapeeth University participated in the deliberations.

www.urbanupdate.in | January 2018 37

NEWSCAN

DMRC launches Delhi Metro’s Magenta Line NEW DELHI: Travelling from Delhi to Noida has become easier than ever and more convenient for the NCR commuters as the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) launched its magenta line on 25th December. Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated Metro’s Magenta Line. In a tweet, PM Modi called Delhi-Metro Magenta line an example of “modernising urban transport”. This is the third metro line to be inaugurated by PM Modi in 2017 after the launch of Kochi metro and Hyderabad metro.

The metro line is 12.64-km long and connects Botanical Garden in Noida to KalkajiMandir in south Delhi. Coaches measuring 3.2 m in width will be in operation on the magenta line. It will also allow 30-40 more passengers than the capacity of coaches running on a standard gauge.

The coaches running on this line have electronic information display, multi-handle rails, power charging capacity, including directly through USB ports. The new metro trains are also energy-efficient and would save about 20 percent energy compared to the ex-

isting coaches.

The DMRC authorities have said that 10 trains would operate on this new line, while two would be kept on reserve, one each at KalkajiMandir and Botanical Garden stations. The trains will initially operate with a frequency of five minutes and 14 seconds on this section.

The Botanical Garden Station has been developed as the Metro’s first-ever inter-change station outside Delhi.

As the entire corridor from Botanical

Garden till Janakpuri West (38.23 km) becomes functional, commuters from Noida will be able to go to Gurgaon by changing trains at HauzKhas.

The launch comes after a couple of trial runs, where during one of the trial runs, a driverless train on the Magenta Line crashed into a wall. Two coaches were badly damaged after the train, which was empty, went through a wall at the KalindiKunj depot and barely missed crashing to the ground on December 19.

West Bengal’s first floating market to set up in Kolkata KOLKATA: The Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority (KMDA) will be setting up the first floating market of West Bengal in the southern fringes of the city. The move is being taken in an attempt to rehabilitate vendors who were displaced during widening of EM Bypass.

A senior official of the KMDA said, “There are many sellers who have been displaced because of the widening programme of the EM Bypass taken up at Patuli area near Garia. Our principal idea is to rehabilitate those who were having their business at the Baishnabghata-Patuli market on the EM Bypass

38 January 2018 | www.urbanupdate.in

to the floating market.”

The floating market will be set up on a water body near Patuli which would incur a cost of nearly Rs nine crore. According to a KDMA official, the market will have 114 boats with stalls selling vegetables, fruits, fish, meat, cereals etc. The market would remain open for 24 hours. The decision to set up a floating market was taken three years back by the KDMA so that the EM road could be widened.

The Dal lake of Jammu & Kashmir is famous for its floating market. “We have such markets floating on the Dal Lake of Srinagar. Such markets are

there in Bangkok and in Singapore,” he said. Of the 114 boats, the KMDA has already bought 32 and the remaining boats will arrive by this month end, the official said.

9th Wolrd Urban Forum to lay roadmap for New Urban Agenda kuala lumpur: Between 7-13 February 2018, the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) will convene the Ninth session of the World Urban Forum (WUF9), hosted in Kuala Lumpur by the Government of Malaysia, under the theme: Cities 2030 – Cities for All: Implementing the New Urban Agenda.

The World Urban Forum, convened every two years, is recognized as the foremost global arena for interaction among policymakers, local government leaders, non-government organizations and expert practitioners in the field of sustainable urban development and human settlements.

WUF9 is expected to draw around 25,000 attendees. The Forum is a non-legislative technical forum established by the UN General Assembly and convened by UN-Habitat held since 2002. After WUF4 in Nanjing, China, in 2008, it is the second time that the WUF is held in Asia.

WUF9 will be the first session to focus on implementation of the New Urban Agenda adopted at the United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development (Habitat III) held in Quito, Ecuador, in October 2016. It will be instrumental to substantively feed inputs to the first report of its implementation.

The Forum will also contribute to global mobilization towards advocating for the common vision on sustainable urban development enshrined in the Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals. WUF9 offers a stage for showcasing achievements and discussing national and local urban development challenges at the global level. It will offer numerous opportunities to share lessons and learn about best practices and good policies.

The New Urban Agenda WUF9 takes place during a shift in international urban development paradigms. In 2015 the United Na-

tions Member States adopted a comprehensive new development agenda.

The Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development establishes a new set of goals and targets addressing emerging concerns including elements that are today part of everyone’s lives, both in developing and developed countries. At the same time, it maintains a focus on the root causes of poverty and inequality. By setting ambitious targets, it aims to drive progress towards achievement of the full human potential in harmony with a healthy environment.

The Sustainable Development Goals, for the first time, express a wide recognition of the spatial dimension of development. This is clearly translated in the incorporation of SDG 11, “Make cities and human settlement inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable”. With this Goal, Member States have not only recognized the scale of the phenomenon of urbanization, but also the role of cities in the global economy, the climate change agenda, in the use and consumption of natural resources, as well as their contribution to social advancement and innovations.

Referenced in this milestone commitment, this recognition advanced

further and culminated with the historical adoption of the New Urban Agendain the United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development - Habitat III in Quito, Ecuador, in October 2016.

The New Urban Agenda, grounded on bold transformative commitments articulated across the three pillars of sustainability, provides a blue-print towards the achievement of sustainable urbanization. It also provides a qualitative roadmap for its effective implementation. It reasserts a positive notion of cities, demonstrating that, if well planned and managed, urbanization can be a transformative force for inclusive prosperity and well-being, while protecting the environment and addressing climate change. It also provides implementation tools for resilience building and the operationalization of the humanitarian-development nexus.

The shift of paradigm provided by the New Urban Agenda, if translated into policies and integrated actions at all levels, will contribute to the realization of the Agenda 2030, including SDG11 and other goals and targets.

(More information about WUF9 can be found on www.wuf9.org.)

www.urbanupdate.in | January 2018 39

NEWSCAN

SDMC frames new parking policy NEW DELHI: The South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC) formulated a new parking policy, which will perhaps be adopted by the entire city.

This would be the first comprehensive parking policy for a city which would include as many as eight land-owning agencies. There would be strict fines and criminal proceedings against vehicle owners violating its provisions.

If implemented, the parking rates will shoot up in commercial and busy areas. As per the draft policy, the base parking fare will remain Rs 20 for the first hour but for subsequent hours the rate will double. If, presently, a person is paying a maximum of Rs 100 for parking their car for an entire day, they will soon have to pay as much as Rs 500. For busy areas, the cost may be even higher.

A senior SDMC official said that the policy has been drafted to discourage people from using private vehicles and

shift to public transport under the citywide decongestion plan.

An SDMC officer said, “The approach and model adopted by the SDMC is comprehensive and in complete adherence to the Transport Department’s vision in this regard. So, it has been requested to present it to representatives from other civic bodies at several workshops which will be held over the coming days.”

The proposal for implementing the policy will also be presented before other municipalities so that they can adjust the broader framework of the policy to suit their area requirements before being submitted to Lieutenant-Governor Anil Baijal for the final nod.

Apart from this, the SDMC has also proposed that higher rates will also be applicable during peak traffic hours.

These rates are only being revised for surface parking lots. Parking charges for multi-level parking lots will remain the same, the officials said.

An SDMC official said, “We have also proposed that parking fee be implemented for residential parking areas, on a monthly basis. This has been a matter of contention among the resident welfare associations but we are trying to get an approval for this as well. This will deter people from buying more cars.”

Google station to launch free Wi-Fi in smart cities MUMBAI: Months after enabling high-speed internet access at more than 200 railway stations in India, Google now will expand Google Station to various cities across the country. Google Station currently offers public Wi-Fi at 227 Indian railway stations and is looking to expand its reach to smart cities.

CaeserSengupta, the Vice President of Product Management and Next billion users (NBU) at Google, revealed that there are over 7.5 million users who use high-speed internet access through the Google Station programme in India. “The programme provides Internet to 227 stations in the country, with 22 stations going live by this month,” he said. With this achievement, Google is on track to connect all 400 stations next year that was planned late last year.

CaeserSengupta said, “Google Station is helping connect more people to affordable and reliable Internet. Public Wi-Fi hotspots, we believe, are the internet cafe of the mobile generation - a daily place where you go to get high-quality internet to download videos and apps, whatever you choose to do. And even with the amazing progress on expanding mobile Internet in India, we are still finding that public Wi-Fi remains a crucial step in getting high-quality affordable internet to everyone.”

40 January 2018 | www.urbanupdate.in

He added, “Now Google Station is expanding outside of railway stations, into cities and other countries like Indonesia.”

After launching Google station at 53 railway stations in the country in September, Google had planned to scale up the public Wi-Fi network to 100 stations by the end of 2016. However, after reaching the mark of 100 stations in December, the search engine expanded and set to add as many as 400 stations by 2018.

Currently, Google is in a partnership with the government’s enterprise RailTel Corporation to provide fast Internet access on mobile devices through Google Station. However, with the upcoming expansion programmes the search giant is also planning to tie up with new ISPs.

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NEWSCAN

‘Anti-smog cannon’ to curb Delhi’s air pollution

NEW DELHI: The Delhi Government has unveiled a new method against the air pollution an “anti-smog gun”. The manufacturers of the anti-smog cannon say that the fine droplets of water ejected at high speed can flush out deadly airborne pollutants in one of the world’s smoggiest capitals.

The water mist cannons or “antismog guns have undergone daylong trials carried out by the Department of Environment and the Delhi Pollution Control Committee in one of the Delhi’s most polluted area i.e. Anand Vihar, an area in northern Delhi.

A machine is well connected to a water tank and mounted on a flatbed truck and sprays atomized water, in which liquid is broken up into smaller droplets that is up to 230 feet into the air.

The idea of working of the machine is that the droplets merge with dust particles, replicating the effect of rain. Rain lowers levels of air pollution by bringing particulates in pollution down to the ground.

In 2015, use of these kinds of machines was widely reported in China,

42 January 2018 | www.urbanupdate.in

and they could soon become a familiar site on the streets of Delhi.Delhi Environment Minister Imran Hussain, who witnessed the tests, said “the idea came about in a series of meetings, where even helicopters sprinkling water on the city were suggested.”

If the trial is successful, the machines will be used across the city when pollution levels rise, according to Hussain.

“These only work in a very local situation like a construction site, if you want to douse the dust, then you do this for an immediate and instantaneous effect, but this is not what you would use to control air pollution,” said Anumita Roychowdhury of the Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment.

Pollution control measures should give you sustained improvement over time, she said. “The government needs to focus on systemic changes, infrastructural changes so that they can effectively control pollution across the city.”

The machines known as the fog cannon are made by Cloud Tech, an Indian firm based in Haryana state, which borders Delhi.

Beautification Project under Flyovers by SDMC NEW DELHI: Pravesh Verma, MP West Delhi has inaugurated the project of beautification under two flyovers – Raja Garden and Mayapuri.

Project is taken up by South Delhi Municipal Corporation to beautify the space underneath flyovers under its authorities and out of the 14 proposed flyovers; SDMC has completed work on five flyovers.

“The beautified space under flyovers will glorify the image of Delhi in future and for the upcoming summit of leaders of ASEAN countries, which will be held in January 2018,” said Verma.

Deputy Mayor Kailash Sankla said that all flyovers are being developed with different themes. “The themes include Make in India, Yoga, Wildlife, etc. The entire work was undertaken due to a mission to get rid of an atmosphere of filth and stink leading to unhealthy ambience and antisocial elements, including drug addicts. The space is now being used in the evening by locals for a walk and acts as a sitting area,” said Sankla.

SDMC has developed the boundary walls along with grill, pathways, and green areas, plantation of ornamental plants and shrubs sculptures and benches as key features of the project.

“Before undertaking execution of work, a major challenge was the eviction of unauthorized occupants who had made the areas filthy by urinating/defecating in open, removal of the parked vehicles and other encroachments. After the eviction of the unauthorized occupants, the actual execution of work was taken up at a fast pace. All the work has been completed in a period of 30-40 days,” said a senior official from SDMC.

Kerala’s ‘Zero-Waste’ Alappuzha won a spot among top 5 cities in UN list KERALA:Alappuzha located in Kerala, was recently recognised by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) as one of the five model cities across the world for successfully and sustainably managing solid waste.

Alappuzha was once a paradox of high morbidity caused by environmentrelated diseases. The success of the campaign — called ‘NirmalaBhavanam, NirmalaNagaram ‘(Clean House, Clean City) — reduced the weight of waste management that earlier rested solely on the shoulders of the municipal authorities, it has led to the town winning the title of ‘cleanest city in the country’ by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE).When Alappuzha began its cleanliness drive, the town was produc-

ing nearly 58 tons of waste on a daily basis. Most of the generated waste was dispatched to Sarvodayaparum, which had become a receptacle of stinking urban waste.The first step the government took to tackle this problem was sensitizing people to adopt a holistic approach towards hygiene, sanitation and waste management. The objective of both was the same: converting domestic wet waste into usable biomanure. Every ward would also have its own maintenance team consisting of two or three trained women.

As for the plastic waste, it would be periodically collected (on specified dates and specified locations) and handed over to either private contractors or the state-owned Clean Kerala

Company for recycling. The collected organic waste would then be composted in aerobic compost bins installed in various parts of the city. These bins were an innovation by the Kerala Agricultural University. In these bins, organic waste and dry leaves were layered in a well-ventilated manner and sprayed with an inoculate of cow dung culture. Each bin could process 2000 kgs of waste and create high-quality compost in three months. Surveillance cameras were also set up at various points in the city. A penalty of Rs 2,500 was introduced for those caught littering the streets. Seeing the immediate impact of the pilot project, the Alappuzha municipality rolled out the scheme in more wards.

IMC introduces high tech garbage transfer stations INDORE: Indore Municipal Corporation (IMC) in optimization of its garbage transfer system has come up with high-tech transfer stations that will help them reduce operation and maintenance cost.

IMC’s waste management consultant Asad Warsi said that they have used an all new technology to optimize their garbage transfer system. “This ultra-modern garbage transfer station which has three major parts including compactor, bucket and hook-loader is meant to reduce our operation and maintenance cost. The cost of each of the stations is around Rs 1.75crore” he said.

Detailing about the functioning of this system, Warsi said that there are separate chambers for collection of wet and dry waste. “Both wet and dry waste is collected form garbage vans and is dumped in buckets. Then the waste is loaded in the containers for transportation,” he said.

He said that previously they were able to transport waste of 30 vehicles in a container, but with this high-tech transfer station they will be able to load waste from at least 45 garbage vans in one container. Eight high-tech transfer stations are being installed in city. The locations include Star Square, Sawer Road, Sangam Nagar, Lalbagh, IT Park, Azad Nagar, Dhar Road and RatlamKothi. One of them installed at Star Square has already become functional, and the civic body aims to start remaining stations by the end of this month.

Civic body officials also claimed that this is for the first time in the country when a civic body has installed this kind of set up for garbage trans portation purpose.

www.urbanupdate.in | January 2018 43

NEWSCAN

France to Ban all oil, gas production by 2040 PARIS: The parliament of France has approved a law banning all exploration and production of oil and natural gas by 2040 within the country and its overseas territories. Under the law all existing drilling permits will not be renewed and no new exploration licenses will be granted.

France’s Environment Minister Nicolas Hulot said that the law shows “current generations can take care of future generations.”

The French government claims the ban is a world first. However, it is largely symbolic since oil and gas produced in France accounts for just 1 percent of its consumption. France will continue to import and refine oil. “The law will halt the exploitation of hydrocarbons in our territory; existing concessions cannot be renewed beyond 2040,” the draft bill states.

The ban has been implemented in the light of a larger plan to wean the French economy from fossil fuels and to fulfil France’s commitments un-

der the Paris climate agreement to curb global warming. The law may affect companies such as France’s Total, which has permits to explore in overseas territories such as offshore Guyane Maritime in French Guiana.

Apart from this, France plans to stop generating electricity from coal by 2022 and reduce to 50 percent from more than 75 percent the share of nuclear in its power generation, favor-

ing increased renewable energy. The Hydrocarbon production in mainland France takes place mostly in the Paris Basin and Aquitaine Basin, where Vermilion Energy operates several permits.

Lundin Petroleum, through its Canadabased spin-off International Petroleum Corp, and privately owned Geopetrol are the other producers in France. The companies were not immediately available to comment.

Eastern India’s first CNG stations inaugurated in Bhubaneswar BHUBANESWAR: Eastern India’s first CNG stations at Chandrasekharpur and Patiawas were inaugurated by Union petroleum minister, Dharmendra Pradhan. He also launched CNG-run scooters and auto-rickshaws.

Pradhan said the environmentfriendly fuel will help in reducing air pollution. “While many cities of the country are suffering due to transportation pollution, CNG will be a smart fuel for the capital city,” he said while inaugurating the CNG stations.

He said CNG connection is the New Year gift for Odisha. “We had announced to provide cooking gas to households in Bhubaneswar through pipeline. We kept our promises and started it in the city. Now we intro-

44 January 2018 | www.urbanupdate.in

duced CNG in the state. It will bring positive change in the lives of people,” he said.

He said a CNG-run scooter can run 80 km per kg of this fuel. An auto-rickshaw can show a mileage of 60 km per 1 kg of CNG. A person can save 30 to 40 per cent of his/her oil expenses every month, he added.

Pradhan said two more stations will be ready soon at Khandagiri and Tamando area. “We are planning to build 15 similar stations in Bhubaneswar and 10 others at Cuttack in a phased manner to promote the use of CNG,” he added. The rate of 1 kg of CNG is Rs 59. To avail the service, an owner has to convert his/her scooter into CNG mode by spending Rs 15,500. The min-

Union Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Dharmendra Pradhan inaugurating CNG stations at Chandrasekharpur area of Bhubaneswar under the Pradhan Mantri Urja Ganga scheme

ister will also lay foundation stone for two gas pipelines - one new DhamraAngul main line and BhubaneswarCuttack-Paradip spur line - to supply gas to the CGD project and other commercial purposes. For the 769-km-long gas pipeline project in Odisha, the company will spend Rs 4,000 crore.

CITY IMAGES

3 APWS strengthens Water Security approach for Sustainable Development rd

About 1.1 billion people in Asia live in areas currently experiencing severe water stress, and unless significant action is taken, that number is expected to increase by more than 40 per cent by 2050, according to the Yangon Declaration of the 3rd Asia-Pacific Water Summit.

YANGON: The Third Asia-Pacific Water Summit (APWS) was held in Yangon, Myanmar on the 11th and 12th of December 2017. In pursuit of the SDGs adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2015, the 3rd Asia-Pacific Water Summit (APWS) was jointly organised by the Republic of the Union of Myanmar and the Asia-Pacific Water Forum under the overarching theme of “water security for sustainable development”.

About 1.1 billion people in Asia live in areas currently experiencing severe water stress, and unless significant action is taken, that number is expected to increase by more than 40 per cent by 2050, according to the Yangon Declaration of the 3rd Asia-Pacific Water Summit.

In his address on the second-day of the summit, Union Minister for Trans-

port and Communications U Thant Sin Maung called for mutual cooperation among various countries in the AsiaPacific region to achieve water security at the regional, national, as well as global level.

“It is clear that the water resources potential for the realisation of a waterbased economy in Myanmar is quite bright. We need to use it sustainably and pass it onto the future generations,” said U Thant Sin Maung.

The second day of the 3rd Asia-Pacific Water Summit (3rd APWS) set out a course for the sustainable development of the region with a perspective on water, improved cooperation in safeguarding against disasters related to water, to encourage partnership and share knowledge and experience.

Three parallel thematic sessions were

held under the titles “Financing the Implementation of Water-Related SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals),” “Working Together: Multi-Stakeholders Partnership for Regional Cooperation” and “Source-to-Sea Opportunities in the Asia-Pacific Region”, with local and foreign experts participating in the discussions.

The vice chairperson of the National Water Resources Committee and Union Minister for Transport and Communications U Thant Sin Maung also announced the adoption of the Yangon Declaration: The Pathway Forward with the overwhelming approval of the representatives of the Asia-Pacific region countries and international organisations attending the Third AsiaPacific Water Summit: Water Security forSustainableDevelopment.

www.urbanupdate.in | January 2018 45

Urban Agenda | New Aspirations

Will 2018 be the year of cities?

Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs saw some drastic changes in 2017. Its name was changed. It witnessed three ministers and two secretaries at the helm of affairs. With new bosses in the ministry, what is in the offing in the year 2018 for cities?

Ashok Wankhade Managing Editor

2

017 saw major developments for Indian cities which will have a significant bearing on their economic prospects for the coming year and beyond. The year 2018 has come with many hopes and aspirations. Certainly, people have pinned their hope to see more efficient urban management in every domain related to their day-to-day lives.

Traffic, waste management, disaster management, water supply, roads and business-friendly environment need an urgent overhaul as many cities including the national capital are plagued with many problems despite multiple missions on cities.

Hardeep Singh Puri, Union Minister of State for Housing and Urban Affairs, has assured countrymen, in an interview with a newspaper, that people will start seeing the physical manifestation of smart cities by June 2018. It will be very interesting to see how Indian policymakers and planners have envisaged smart cities and what these cities will look like. The proposed projects are out in the open but implementation in our cities will be a different ball game. General elections

46 January 2018 | www.urbanupdate.in

are not very far. NDA Government has just one year to showcase the result of its flagship programs. Most of its projects are routed through cities. Whether it is Swachh Bharat Mission, Smart Cities

The success of Smart Cities Mission also lies on this fundamental requirement for cities as the state and centre will give only a part of total requirement to cities and the remaining amount will have to be generated by the cities themselves.

Mission, Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT), Make in India, Start-up India, they will falter if they do not perform well in urban centres. It is expected that the focus will be on cities. I am hopeful that the great economic divide between the big corporations and smaller ones will also be addressed by making systematic

changes to ensure every municipal corporation becomes self-sufficient financially. The success of Smart Cities Mission also lies on this fundamental requirement for cities as the state and centre will give only a part of total requirement to cities and the remaining amount will have to be generated by the cities themselves.

Globally, the issue of climate change and its impact on cities will be discussed strongly as the rulebook for Paris accord will also be finalised this year. As changing urban ecosystem is also affecting health of city dwellers, I am sure, they will accept the potential convergence between environmental and personal well-being by bringing in fundamental changes in their lifestyle.

The need to change individual lifestyle will surely benefit cities. The year started with a note of restriction for Indian cricket players in South Africa.

They were asked to limit their shower to two minutes because the South African cities are going through the worst water crisis in recent times. It is important that everyone everywhere should adopt sustainable lifestyle to ensure a better, brighter future for the cities of tomorrow.

AIILSG has a footprint across the value chain in urban transformation.

Our areas of functioning involve creating and appraising DPRs, monitoring & evaluation and capacity building under Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) The institute is active in

1560

200 cities of 11 states

In 2016-17 training workshops Municipal officials/employees trained

52

Urban

Dialogues February 2018 Agra

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