Guest column 8212; Privatise cities

The fiftieth year of India's independence is a milestone to look back and see the progress achieved in the five decades of urbanisation and...

The fiftieth year of India8217;s independence is a milestone to look back and see the progress achieved in the five decades of urbanisation and also to chart out new strategies for the future. It used to be said that India lived in the villages. With less than 15 per cent urban population out of 335 million population in 1947, this obviously was a true picture. Five decades down the line, with rapid industrialisation, industrial growth, shift of jobs from primary to secondary and tertiary sector, concentrating in cities, migration became the logical route.

The rural push8217; and the urban pull8217; have changed the demographic composition with over 28 per cent urbanisation. By the turn of the century, this would be 33.5 per cent. But then, the country would have a billion population. This would signify that we would be having in our cities and towns as much urban population as we had in the whole country at the time of independence.

Cities are engines of growth in the economy and they contribute in a significant manner to creation of national wealth. However, what is it that we are giving back to the cities in terms of the infrastructure to sustain this economic growth? Pretty little. We need a paradigm shift for creating the type of city infrastructure covering the utilities water supply, sewerage, drainage, solid waste management, transportation through roads, flyovers, subways etc., social infrastructure through better educational, health and community facilities and economic and commercial infrastructure through better markets, shopping complexes, office space and city centres.

All these cannot be done through initiative of local bodies alone. The paradigm shift is needed in respect of broad-basing the resources needed for the massive investments, identifying new actors and players to create and run the infrastructure. This would bring in the need for commercialisation of infrastructure with appropriate use pay, polluter pay approaches and with the free lunch approach to be tapered off over a period of time. The writing on the wall is clear: 8220;Cities and Citizens will get the infrastructure they deserve. There is a price they have to pay for better infrastructure and if not, they pay a larger price8221;. The larger price in terms of not only the deficient infrastructure affecting the very quality of life and even leading to dangerous levels of epidemics and poor health as well as drop in efficiency and productivity of city life.

If Delhi becomes the most polluted city, the answer cannot be found by only putting pollution clearance stickers on the cars. The larger price also keeps in view the annual increase in construction costs which is of the order of 50 per cent more than inflation. Commercialisation of infrastructure is the only key which can open up the solutions to the ills of the cities. Further, this has to be linked with efficiency in service through partnership and privatisation modes for creation of infrastructure and maintenance when we enter the 21st century 8212; bringing in increased resources, improved technologies and better management for cities. More than all of it, we are all on a learning curve and this has to be done very fast at a speed faster than the rate of urbanisation and even faster than the rate at which the city infrastructure is decaying 8212; for survival of our cities and still more for sustaining our economic development growth.

The author is the chairman and managing director or Housing and Urban Development Corporation and the views expressed are personal