National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA)
In an interview with Built Constructions, Mr. Mahendra Sethi, Urban-environment Expert and Editor, National Institute of Urban Affairs discusses the opportunities, challenges, economy NIUA’s initiatives for India’s smart city concept.
National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA) is a premier institute for research, capacity building and dissemination of knowledge for the urban sector in India. It conducts research on urbanization, urban policy and planning, municipal finance and governance, land economics, transit oriented development, urban livelihoods, sustainable habitat, environment, climate change and smart cities. The institute was set up in 1976, to bridge the gap between research and practice, and to provide critical and objective analyses of trends and prospects for urban development. NIUA has assisted in policy formulation, programme appraisal and monitoring for the Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD), state governments, multilateral agencies and other private organizations. It contributed to the National Commission on Urbanisation, participated in drafting the 74th Constitutional Amendment of 1992, prepared the Draft National Urban Policy and other documents for the roll out of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission. It also guided the discourse on municipal finance by framing the Model Municipal Law.
Need for Smart Cities
India is urbanizing at a swift pace. As per estimates backed by the Government, half of the country’s population would live in cities by 2039. The environmental, social, economic and administrative consequences would be enormous. The Prime Minister has a vision of developing ‘100 Smart Cities’, as satellite towns of metros and by modernising the existing mid-sized cities. Smart cities are those which have smart (intelligent) physical, social, institutional and economic infrastructure. It is expected that such a city will generate options for all residents to pursue their livelihoods and interests meaningfully and in the process encourage competitiveness, sustainability and quality of life. They exemplify smart mobility, energy efficiency, reliable utility services like electricity, water supply, waste management and ICT, financial sustainability and smart governance. The true mantra for SMART is S: Sustainability, M: Metrics of data, A: Adaptiveness to local planning and governance setup, R: Reliable reporting and sharing processed information and T: Technology for inclusiveness, attaining higher socio-economic and public good.
“Cities worldwide have proven to be engines of growth and prosperity. They are centres of innovation, intellect, art and culture. Experience also tells us that urban settings provide breeding grounds for agglomeration economics of various commodities and services. A protracted urbanizing India opens up umpteen opportunities for employment, business, finance, education, healthcare, leisure and entertainment. It also holds immense potential to create fresh housing stock for the urban poor and migrants, provide better quality of life and greater connectivity with the globe. At the same time, developing smart cities is an overwhelming and uphill task for the Government, posing several real-time challenges, says Mr. Mahendra Sethi, Urban-environment Expert and Editor, National Institute of Urban Affairs. Apart from the much talked about technical concerns, there are questions pertaining to urban sustainability, equity and governance. Smart cities in their quest to sustain economic prosperity should not relegate local environment and ecology. In this regard, the general Indian legacy of designing and planning with nature, than against it will become useful. In addition, smart cities should provide safety, security and basic services to the burgeoning urban populace. Finally, there is a huge challenge to integrate smart city initiative with prevailing local governance, ensuring that sufficient powers are devolved to local bodies, in due diligence to the 74th Constitutional Amendment Act and that the local bodies are financially sustainable and autonomous to decide for themselves. Smart cities affirm to bridge this real and utopian gap by framing several criteria to select cities, their precedent conditions and setting up benchmarks for 13 infrastructure and service components to be targeted.
Make Smart Cities Highly Resourceful
Smart Cities have been envisioned as satellite towns of metros and rapidly growing mid-sized cities. Satellites are conventionally dependent upon their parent city for natural resources, economic goods and services, and in the process become parasites. This initiative tends to fundamentally turn this picture upside down. This is plausible by making smart cities highly efficient in resource, energy and urban management (zero-defect) and mitigating their negative environmental and social impacts (zero-effect). Recently new developments like Masdar (UAE) and BedZed (London) have become self-sustainable by a series of efforts that involve tapping renewable energy and emitting zero-waste. In fact, they have been successful in contributing surplus energy to the local power-grid. India has taken a positive leap in this regard, adopting the novel smart cities initiative that addresses urban issues head-on, rather than a behind the curve or firefighting approach pursued in earlier urban programmes.
Customise Solutions to India's Own Needs
India is following the right footsteps by aligning with societies like Japan, Singapore, US, that have undergone this learning curve. My experience during research in Sustainable Urban Futures programme at United Nations University, Japan shows how ICT and ease of doing business with public and private institutions in cities enhances systems efficiency and human productivity by leaps and bounds. Application of technology is an obvious choice. It should enable easy and equal access to all public services like transport, education, healthcare, payment of bills, user charges and taxes, lodging inquiries and complaints, getting relief, etc. This mandates a lot of research into integrating ICT with local needs, user preferences for what would be culturally acceptable. A prudent thing would be to not blindly imitate or copy solutions from renowned smart cities being offered to us in silver package, but to customize technology to our own needs.
Building New India
Smart cities will definitely offer initial thrust to create a favourable business environment. “Government has pulled the plug by fast-tracking development, trying to bring down the mandatory clearances for projects in cities from 57 to almost a third and reducing the corresponding time involved to a month. In the same breath, I reckon it is high time that States, local bodies, private sector, NGOs and the citizenry should start taking keen interest and responsibility towards building a new India. As this is rather a formative stage of the programme, focus should be more on detailed conceptualization, robust planning, identifying cities and stakeholders, framing comprehensive guidelines and working mechanisms, keeping in mind the ultimate goal of sustainable urbanization,” adds Mr. Sethi.
Economy of Smart Cities
Smart cities require huge investments in the beginning. The draft policy document on Smart cities proposes a financial architecture enhancing their resource pool. It includes multitude of options like rationalization of user charges, land monetization through direct sale or betterment levy/ surcharge on sale transactions of newly developed land. It also recommends a healthy mix of debt- equity from bi-lateral and multi-lateral agency borrowings, Pooled Municipal Debt Obligation, Infrastructure debt funds, Real Estate Infrastructure Trusts, tax free municipal bonds, etc. This would be reinforced by transparent accounting systems (double entry) and convergence of funds from other Government programmes and viability gap funding from the MoUD. A good start has been made. UN-Habitat’s Executive Director, Dr. Joan Clos has recently said that the agency is committed to support this national programme. Meanwhile, a large chunk is expected to be raised from private investments and PPP. At the same time, we know that cities host public and social sector, which could not sustain on its own for long. It rather depends upon fortunes of manufacturing and tertiary economy. The private sector will persistently invest in smart cities only if it brings tangible and sizable returns in the form of incentives, tax rebates and concessions in labour and environmental laws. The relationship of industries and smart cities should be symbiotic creating higher social good, unlike the erstwhile SEZs that became life-long land grabs and real-estate ventures.
Green Growth Strategies by NIUA
NIUA supports the MoUD, Government of India for various technical and project management related inputs on Smart Cities. Recently, as part of GGGI’s India Programme, NIUA identified potential of green growth strategies across a range of Indian cities (green technologies, policies, business models, standards, systems, partnership models, etc). NIUA also hosts ‘CIDCO Smart City Chair’, a research and capacity-building unit that would develop and provide the latest training to CIDCO’s technical personnel, with particular focus on the development of smart cities. NIUA is continuously creating knowledge with industry, national and international research institutions in areas of smart cities, urban sustainability and green growth.
Author
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Mahendra Sethi is an Urban-Environment Expert and Editor at National Institute of Urban Affairs, New Delhi. He is primarily associated with the bi-annual research journal - Urban India and other publications of the Institute. He is a recipient of coveted UNU-IAS, Japan’s PhD Fellowship for 2013-14 in Sustainable Urban Futures Programme, where his research explored the role of cities at the interface of global environmental change and local governance, with a focus on developing countries. Sethi’s work experience ranges from private sector consultancy to research and academics in public sector.
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He has professional experience of appraisals and formulation of large scale urban and regional development plans for the Government, statutory bodies and multi-lateral organizations for BSUP (JNNURM), Govt of Uttarakhand, Govt of Punjab, NCR Planning Board, WWF for Nature - India, World Bank (PCDP) - Yemen, IL&FS Pvt Ltd etc. In the past, Sethi has served Consulting Engineering Services (I) Pvt Ltd and DKS Alplan Pvt Ltd. Born in India, Sethi had his early schooling in London, U.K. He later graduated with Bachelor of Architecture degree from Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, New Delhi. Sethi is a post-graduate with Masters in Mass Communications and also bears Masters in Planning from School of Planning & Architecture, Delhi. He is an associate with Institute of Town Planners and a member of Council of Architecture. Sethi is a recipient of Ministry of Human Resource Development Scholarship from 2005-07 and also offered Liverpool University Scholarship in 2005. He has authored numerous publications in books and journals and regularly disseminates research through national and international conferences.