India has a big urban population that is featured by empowered citizens, increasing incomes, and desires of the residents. In return, citizens are getting poor public service delivery, undeveloped infrastructure, and unsatisfactory urban governance. There are a lot of pending work under the urban authorities like:-
- Reliable transportation
- Building good roads
- Proper solid waste management
- Issuance of official documents
- Giving permissions for new building plans
- Billing and collecting utility price
- Building proper footpaths
- Up keeping open spaces
- Ensuring cleanliness of cities etc
Many of these aspects under Urban management are left to be completed. These pending works are a big challenge for the expansion and overall development of cities.
A newly developing trend, in this case, is unplanned urbanization. This unplanned expansion is expanding outwards, and the focus of urban growth has shifted from the core issues towards the outward issues. The authorities are working on building an outward transportation system network, decreasing the core land of the city. This fast-paced shift with random development intrusions is being conducted on the city periphery. The primary absence of urban planning has not been able to deal with the issues of decreasing core city roads. As a result, the small areas in the city centre with big disparities in infrastructure and utilities have been unable to deliver a good quality of life in cities.
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As per the constitution, a Metropolitan area means an area having a population of ten lakhs or more, comprised in one or more districts and consisting of two or more Municipalities or Panchayats or other contiguous areas, specified by the Governor by public notification to be a Metropolitan area for this Part. The 74th amendment in the constitution has given a framework for metropolitan planning. It includes developing infrastructure, spatial planning, environment conservation, and sharing resources.
A ‘Metropolitan area’ has a major role in economic development but lends regional connectivity and competitiveness. The 5 major Metropolitan areas in India are:-
- Mumbai
- Chennai
- Bangalore
- Kolkata
- Hyderabad
These areas make a total of 11% contribution to the national GDP. Mumbai and Bangalore contribute 35% to 38% to the GDP of their states. Despite these increasing contributions of these cities to the economy, the governance structure is yet to address important issues.
Pune has increased its municipalities’ boundaries. It has included 23 surrounding villages into its municipal system. So, the city’s boundary now stands at 518.6 sq km. The corporation now has an additional population of 5 lakh. Pune is now the largest city (area-wise) in Maharashtra. But, it has limited resources. The urban governance of the city will have to stretch more than its capacity. The capacity to provide basic services, like road, water, or electricity in the newly added villages will be a challenge. There is no achievement in becoming geographically the biggest city when it is difficult to fulfil the needs of the residents.
Some essential reforms that can be useful in this case are:-
- Give more power to the regional authorities of Metropolitan areas and ensure their accountability for the development of semi-urban areas in municipalities boundaries. The Maharashtra Metropolitan Region Development Authority Act in 2017 in the state is one step towards this process. But, this is not sufficient and a lot of work on this initiative is left.
- Don’t expand the geographical boundaries of cities, and in place make more municipal corporations. If needed, then the existing Municipal corporations can be divided. The Metropolitan areas of Delhi and Bangalore have more than one municipal corporation. This will decentralize the governance and more efficient management for providing Civic amenities can be done. It will stabilize the work and without putting the burden on the corporations, more efficient urban governance will be provided.
- Empower municipal corporations to make urban property tax reforms for designing a separate property tax framework relevant to local needs. At present, this authority lies with the state government to design, reform, rebate, and reform the property tax. But, a common property tax system is not suitable for different local needs.
The PM-Modi-led government has taken a keen interest in developing the urban areas by introducing various plans and schemes. It includes the Smart Cities Mission, clean cities (Swachh Bharat Mission), restructuring of cities through AMRUT (Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation) mission, and preserving, rejuvenating culturally significant cities through HRIDAY (Heritage City Development and Augmentation Yojana). Gradually, these reforms have started showing results.
The geographical areas of various Metropolitan cities resemble the size of mid-size European countries. It is important to make necessary urban reforms and restructure urban management structures. At the same time, it’s essential to empower the municipal corporations and ensure their accountability. Finally, these reforms are vital for conforming to people’s needs in urban cities.
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