What are the lessons to be learnt from the successes and failures of past urban development schemes. Discuss the role of local government in it.(200 Words)
Refer - The IndianExpress
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IAS Parliament 6 years
KEY POINTS
Successes
· JNNURM covered a wide variety of sectors from roads and transport to water and sanitation.
· AMRUT covers roads, transport, water and sewerage, while JNNURM intended to promote self-governing cities.
· A major achievement of the current urban programme, AMRUT though, has been in decentralising the project sanction process.
· The Smart Cities Mission (SCM) was launched as a “bold, new” initiative to cater to the ambitions of the urban middle class, escalate the country’s digital transformation and justify the current government’s commitment to the eternal aspiration of modernity.
Failures
· Waste management was isolated and transferred to the massive sanitation programme — the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM).
· AMRUT focused only on big cities as opposed to the JNNURM that covered smaller towns as well.
· JNNURM also uncovered the lack of capacity of local governments with small and medium towns struggling to complete projects.
· Centralised administration under JNNURM.
· The Smart City mission largely covers traditional infrastructure projects which are already eligible under AMRUT, causing overlapping.
Lessons learnt and role of local government
· Prevention of overlapping the objectives in schemes and integrating them thereby saving time and financial resources.
· Devolution of powers in administration is the need of the hour, simultaneously increasing the human resource capacity and technical skills at local level.
· Proper planning at state level and district level via District planning committee and Metropolitan planning committee.
· The Centre will have to undertake timely data reporting protocols to ensure the proper functioning of its schemes.
· Moreover, one approach cannot work for urban areas of different sizes. We also need to reconsider the simplistic rural-urban binary in formulating policy.
· A graded urban policy that addresses the needs of the smallest urban settlements will be more effective in catering to every section of society.
SARI 6 years
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IAS Parliament 6 years
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