Concerned about the ‘urban mess’ across the States, Minister of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation and Urban Development Venkaiah Naidu on Friday asked them to come out with white papers in respect of each city with details of revenues, expenditure, availability of land, water and power to enable informed people’s participation in urban development.
He was addressing a meeting of Chief Secretaries of States and UTs here on Friday, convened to discuss the issue of providing shelter to urban homeless.
Emphasising the need for ‘people centered’ urban planning and ‘quality municipal administration’, Naidu said there is a need for specialised ‘municipal cadre’. He also suggested that there should be a special module on municipal administration as a component of training of IAS officers.
Naidu stated that the next years will be crucial for economic development of the country and equally so for ensuring better urban governance since over 75 per cent of the GDP is expected to be generated in urban areas. In this context, he said that deficiencies in the urban governance should be addressed through institution and capacity building, effective management of land and other utilities, governance reforms, empowering urban local bodies to make them effective institutions of urban governance and smart administrative and political leadership.
He said huge private investment is required for new urban development and housing initiatives can be mobilised only through quick, accountable and transparent decision making.
The Minister urged the States and UTs to learn from the experiences of implementation of JNNURM for better planning and execution of urban housing and development projects. He assured that the Centre will allow necessary flexibility in the execution of Centre sponsored schemes.
He also underscored the need to blend the elements of nature and local culture while planning for urban areas to enable quality urban life.
After deliberations on providing shelters to the urban homeless, the Ministry of Housing & Urban Poverty Alleviation will file an affidavit in the Supreme Court, as desired by the Apex Court, a senior HUPA official said.