Prime Minister Narendra Modi today launched three major urban development initiatives: Smart Cities Mission; AMRUT (Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation) and Housing for All (Urban), at Vigyan Bhawan in New Delhi.
Let's have a look at the major highlights of all the 3 schemes:
Smart Cities Mission
20 cities will be shortlisted for the Smart City project in the first phase. 40 others will be selected in the next phase followed by 40 more later on.
Smart Cities are intended to enhance the quality of urban life by providing a clean and sustainable environment with 24 hour water and power supply.
Sanitation and solid waste management, efficient urban mobility and public transportation, affordable housing for poor, and robust IT connectivity among others are essential features.
Smart City aspirants will be selected through a "City Challenge Competition" intended to link financing with the ability of the cities to perform to achieve the mission objectives.
Cities must qualify themselves through city-challenge criteria like sanitation, clean water, power, greenery quotient and ratio between revenue and expenditure on municipal salaries.
Each selected city would get central assistance of Rs.100 crore per year for five years.
Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT)
500 cities having 1 lakh and more population will be chosen for AMRUT project.
AMRUT will focus on ensuring basic infrastructure services such as water supply, sewerage, storm water drains, transport and development of green spaces and parks with special provision for meeting the needs of children.
Promotion of urban reforms like e-governance, setting up of professional municipal cadre, improvement in assessment and collection of municipal taxes, credit rating of urban local bodies and citizen-centric urban planning are among other essential features.
Housing For All (Urban)
The Housing For (Urban) scheme will ensure every urban poor is enabled to own a house by 2022.
The scheme provides homes to slum-dwellers at no cost through a PPP slum rehabilitation project.
According to a quick back-of-envelope calculation by JLL India, close to 57,392 acres would be required to build the 2 crore homes, if one were to assume a size of 500 sq ft per home and an available floor space-index (FSI) of 4.
Under this scheme, the government aims to make 2 crore homes in urban areas, mainly to service the urban poor.
The scheme will also have provisions for tax incentives on interest rates charged by banks on loans for the poor section of the society.
