China will be fully covered by 5G network in urban area by 2020, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology on Monday.

5G network to cover urban areas in China by 2020

We often hear of Tier I and Tier II cities of India, but not many are sure on what basis cities are classified. There are two kinds of city classifications in India. One has been made by the various pay commissions to determine the HRA that government employees should receive. The latest such was made by the 7th Pay commission in 2017 according to which there are three categories. a) Category X (population of 50 lakh and above) b) Category Y (population between 5 and 50 lakh) and category Z (population below 5 lakh). In common parlance, these are called Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities respectively. According to the last census of 2011, however, there is a different classification in terms of million-plus agglomerations, which are 53 in number, including mega cities (population greater than 10 million) like Mumbai and Delhi. Then there are statutory towns - any town having a municipal corporation and at the third level are census towns having a population over 5000 people with most people engaged in non-agricultural work.

Hence, the classification of cities in India is itself not standardized. However, one thing is clear: Most of the infrastructure budget is spent on metros, BRT corridors and expressways in these cities of Mumbai, Delhi NCR, Chennai, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Hyderabad.

Meanwhile, Tier II cities, such as Surat, Bhopal, Kochi, Lucknow, and Vadodara, continue to have poor public transport facilities and reel under alarming air pollution levels. Several of these cities are billed to be among the top 10 fastest growing cities of the world! It is worth examining if mere fast growth is anything to be proud of when quality of life for its citizens remains one of the worst.

Inter-city bus services are typically nonexistent except perhaps for state capitals. The municipality in Jalandhar has tried to run a bus service off and on since 2006 with little success. It outsourced the job to private players who abruptly quit in 2014 protesting against auto drivers who were taking away their business. Since then residents rely on shared autos or private vehicles to commute inside the city. The result is chaos and traffic congestion, a scenario shared with all smaller Indian cities. Public transport accounts for a mere 1 per cent of all trips in Surat. Skeletal bus services run in most Tier II cities where inter-city buses start from the main bus terminal. 
 
These are run by the state road transport undertaking and private operators. Passengers hop onto these inter- city buses and get off on the way if their destination lies on the route, which naturally means there is limited connectivity. A good bus service in a smaller Indian city is rare to find, with the South faring better on this aspect.

Public utilities are poor. In Indore, only 60 per cent of households are connected to water supply provided by the public utility. Even if there is access, limited and unreliable hours of water supply in Tier II cities lead to some households depending on groundwater extraction using borewells, which, in turn, keeps depleting water reserves. This is also true of electricity where uncertain supply and power outages lead people to meet most of their electricity demands through diesel powered gensets, which has an adverse ecological impact. A few cities, though, like Pune and Surat have been innovative on the energy front, developing energy efficient programmes through renewable sources.

The most damning indictment of India’s Tier II cities is that nine of them fall in the ‘list of the world’s top 15 most polluted cities’. Agra, Lucknow, Varanasi, Patna, Jaipur, Jodhpur, Srinagar, Faridabad and, of course, Kanpur, which tops the list. Uncontrolled construction due to rapid urbanisation and in some cases like Kanpur, pollution caused by specific industries has bestowed these cities with this status.

Several of the Tier II cities feature in the 100 cities selected for the Smart Cities mission whose objective is “to provide core infrastructure and give a decent quality of life to its citizens, a clean and sustainable environment and application of ‘Smart’ Solution”. The Smart Cities mission is good for Tier II cities because it turns the spotlight towards India’s smaller cities which are often left out of the conversation on urban development and urban renewal. 
 
They will thus benefit from large resources that the central government has allocated for infrastructure and urban service delivery under this project. The challenge now is to empower local governing bodies and encourage them to innovate, relook at old models of service delivery and enable them to raise funds required for improvements. Given that the baseline of development is rather low, this would be a huge challenge for the city but one that is well worth undertaking to pull itself out of years of neglect.

(This article was originally published on The DNA. Read the <a href="https://www.dnaindia.com/analysis/column-tier-ii-cities-accelerated-growth-but-poor-quality-of-life-2695740">original article</a>)

(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed above are the personal views of the author and do not reflect the views of ZMCL)

We often hear of Tier I and Tier II cities of India, but not many are sure on what basis cities are classified. There are two kinds of city classifications in India.

We often hear of Tier I and Tier II cities of India, but not many are sure on what basis cities are classified. There are two kinds of city classifications in India. One has been made by the various pay commissions to determine the HRA that government employees should receive. The latest such was made by the 7th Pay commission in 2017 according to which there are three categories. a) Category X (population of 50 lakh and above) b) Category Y (population between 5 and 50 lakh) and category Z (population below 5 lakh). In common parlance, these are called Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities respectively. According to the last census of 2011, however, there is a different classification in terms of million-plus agglomerations, which are 53 in number, including mega cities (population greater than 10 million) like Mumbai and Delhi. Then there are statutory towns - any town having a municipal corporation and at the third level are census towns having a population over 5000 people with most people engaged in non-agricultural work. Hence, the classification of cities in India is itself not standardized. However, one thing is clear: Most of the infrastructure budget is spent on metros, BRT corridors and expressways in these cities of Mumbai, Delhi NCR, Chennai, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Hyderabad. Meanwhile, Tier II cities, such as Surat, Bhopal, Kochi, Lucknow, and Vadodara, continue to have poor public transport facilities and reel under alarming air pollution levels. Several of these cities are billed to be among the top 10 fastest growing cities of the world! It is worth examining if mere fast growth is anything to be proud of when quality of life for its citizens remains one of the worst. Inter-city bus services are typically nonexistent except perhaps for state capitals. The municipality in Jalandhar has tried to run a bus service off and on since 2006 with little success. It outsourced the job to private players who abruptly quit in 2014 protesting against auto drivers who were taking away their business. Since then residents rely on shared autos or private vehicles to commute inside the city. The result is chaos and traffic congestion, a scenario shared with all smaller Indian cities. Public transport accounts for a mere 1 per cent of all trips in Surat. Skeletal bus services run in most Tier II cities where inter-city buses start from the main bus terminal. These are run by the state road transport undertaking and private operators. Passengers hop onto these inter- city buses and get off on the way if their destination lies on the route, which naturally means there is limited connectivity. A good bus service in a smaller Indian city is rare to find, with the South faring better on this aspect. Public utilities are poor. In Indore, only 60 per cent of households are connected to water supply provided by the public utility. Even if there is access, limited and unreliable hours of water supply in Tier II cities lead to some households depending on groundwater extraction using borewells, which, in turn, keeps depleting water reserves. This is also true of electricity where uncertain supply and power outages lead people to meet most of their electricity demands through diesel powered gensets, which has an adverse ecological impact. A few cities, though, like Pune and Surat have been innovative on the energy front, developing energy efficient programmes through renewable sources. The most damning indictment of India’s Tier II cities is that nine of them fall in the ‘list of the world’s top 15 most polluted cities’. Agra, Lucknow, Varanasi, Patna, Jaipur, Jodhpur, Srinagar, Faridabad and, of course, Kanpur, which tops the list. Uncontrolled construction due to rapid urbanisation and in some cases like Kanpur, pollution caused by specific industries has bestowed these cities with this status. Several of the Tier II cities feature in the 100 cities selected for the Smart Cities mission whose objective is “to provide core infrastructure and give a decent quality of life to its citizens, a clean and sustainable environment and application of ‘Smart’ Solution”. The Smart Cities mission is good for Tier II cities because it turns the spotlight towards India’s smaller cities which are often left out of the conversation on urban development and urban renewal. They will thus benefit from large resources that the central government has allocated for infrastructure and urban service delivery under this project. The challenge now is to empower local governing bodies and encourage them to innovate, relook at old models of service delivery and enable them to raise funds required for improvements. Given that the baseline of development is rather low, this would be a huge challenge for the city but one that is well worth undertaking to pull itself out of years of neglect. (This article was originally published on The DNA. Read the original article) (Disclaimer: The opinions expressed above are the personal views of the author and do not reflect the views of ZMCL)

Smart Cities Mission puts spotlight on India's smaller cities

Gandhiji had once said, “The soul of India lives in its villages.” Seventy years after Independence, it’s still true that more than half of Indians live in villages. As per Census of 2011, about 31 per cent of the population lives in urban centres. However, this relatively small number masks the rapidly urbanising Indian populace thanks to the stringent Census definition of what constitutes ‘urban’. 
 
According to the Census, an area can be classified as urban if it meets the following three criteria: it has a population of over 5,000, with a density of 400 persons per square kilometre, and at least 75 per cent of its male population is engaged in non-farm activities. As the Economic Survey clearly notes, satellite data and relaxation of any of these criteria can significantly alter the urban population in India. For example, if we restrict the ‘urban’ definition to include places with 5,000 persons or more, at least 47 per cent of the population is urban.

At the same time, Census data and independent surveys reveal the rapidly growing rural-urban migration in the last decade. This migration, which was and continues to be male-dominated, is now witnessing a rise in the share of women. What this implies is that urbanisation is likely to be larger and more permanent than that witnessed previously, as male migrants usually leave their families in the villages and stay temporarily in the city, while female migrants are more likely to bring their families along and settle permanently in the city.

Yet, our current urban infrastructure simply cannot cope with the rapid urbanisation. Our public transport is in shambles, poor sewage systems lead to raw sewage being dumped into water bodies, garbage disposal is inadequate and the open-air landfills are filling up too fast. At the same time, quality and reliable power appear to be a distant dream, while erratic water supply forces urban residents to over-exploit groundwater.

Even urban local governance is far below potential. As the Economic Survey notes, urban local bodies (ULBs) generate less than 10 per cent of their resources on their own. They are overwhelmingly dependent on state and central government funds for the rest. Many of these ULBs also face the problems of low accountability and transparency.

Thus, there is an urgent need to improve our urban infrastructure and revamp urban governance. This is where schemes like AMRUT and Smart Cities come into play. These schemes focus more on outcomes with greater use of technology for better monitoring. At the same time, innovative financing schemes like municipal bonds and value capture financing (VCF) have been touted to improve urban finance. This also needs to be accompanied by an improvement in urban governance — increasing transparency and accountability, reducing para-statal agencies and devolution of more powers under the 12th schedule of the Constitution. Focussing on disaster management is the key to making cities resilient, while steps need to be taken to make cities more inclusive and accessible for women, SC/STs and differently abled.

At the same time, to stem the flow of rural-urban migrants, rural infrastructure needs to be improved. The SP Mukherjee RURBAN Mission aims to provide urban amenities in rural areas (PURA). This mission can help to make rural areas more productive, especially in non-farm activities.

(This article was originally published on DNA. Read the <a href="https://www.dnaindia.com/analysis/column-the-need-to-revamp-urban-infrastructure-2680024">original article</a>)

(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed above are the personal views of the author and do not reflect the views of ZMCL)

Gandhiji had once said, “The soul of India lives in its villages.” Seventy years after Independence, it’s still true that more than half of Indians live in villages.

Gandhiji had once said, “The soul of India lives in its villages.” Seventy years after Independence, it’s still true that more than half of Indians live in villages. As per Census of 2011, about 31 per cent of the population lives in urban centres. However, this relatively small number masks the rapidly urbanising Indian populace thanks to the stringent Census definition of what constitutes ‘urban’. According to the Census, an area can be classified as urban if it meets the following three criteria: it has a population of over 5,000, with a density of 400 persons per square kilometre, and at least 75 per cent of its male population is engaged in non-farm activities. As the Economic Survey clearly notes, satellite data and relaxation of any of these criteria can significantly alter the urban population in India. For example, if we restrict the ‘urban’ definition to include places with 5,000 persons or more, at least 47 per cent of the population is urban. At the same time, Census data and independent surveys reveal the rapidly growing rural-urban migration in the last decade. This migration, which was and continues to be male-dominated, is now witnessing a rise in the share of women. What this implies is that urbanisation is likely to be larger and more permanent than that witnessed previously, as male migrants usually leave their families in the villages and stay temporarily in the city, while female migrants are more likely to bring their families along and settle permanently in the city. Yet, our current urban infrastructure simply cannot cope with the rapid urbanisation. Our public transport is in shambles, poor sewage systems lead to raw sewage being dumped into water bodies, garbage disposal is inadequate and the open-air landfills are filling up too fast. At the same time, quality and reliable power appear to be a distant dream, while erratic water supply forces urban residents to over-exploit groundwater. Even urban local governance is far below potential. As the Economic Survey notes, urban local bodies (ULBs) generate less than 10 per cent of their resources on their own. They are overwhelmingly dependent on state and central government funds for the rest. Many of these ULBs also face the problems of low accountability and transparency. Thus, there is an urgent need to improve our urban infrastructure and revamp urban governance. This is where schemes like AMRUT and Smart Cities come into play. These schemes focus more on outcomes with greater use of technology for better monitoring. At the same time, innovative financing schemes like municipal bonds and value capture financing (VCF) have been touted to improve urban finance. This also needs to be accompanied by an improvement in urban governance — increasing transparency and accountability, reducing para-statal agencies and devolution of more powers under the 12th schedule of the Constitution. Focussing on disaster management is the key to making cities resilient, while steps need to be taken to make cities more inclusive and accessible for women, SC/STs and differently abled. At the same time, to stem the flow of rural-urban migrants, rural infrastructure needs to be improved. The SP Mukherjee RURBAN Mission aims to provide urban amenities in rural areas (PURA). This mission can help to make rural areas more productive, especially in non-farm activities. (This article was originally published on DNA. Read the original article) (Disclaimer: The opinions expressed above are the personal views of the author and do not reflect the views of ZMCL)

The need to revamp urban infrastructure

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