Policy quagmires bog down flagship urban revamp plans

Urban development was the fifth of nine priorities of the 2024-25 Union budget. “Firstly, the Union’s main priority should be to drive economic productivity and growth in the top 90 cities with over half a million population through outcome-based funding linked to measureable improvements in factors that could potentially inhibit investments and talent coming into our cities.” He suggested that rather than nationwide flagship schemes, MoHUA should start being organised around regions. Tied funds are ineffective compared to untied funds as our own field visits in several cities across states have indicated.” Similarly, Hitesh Vaidya, former director at the National Institute of Urban Affairs and ex-country representative of UN-Habitat India, said, “A bottom-up approach can unlock significant creative potential in addressing the broad-based challenges defined by the centre, by allocating funds based on regional strengths and needs.” He stated that this model has worked relatively better for rural development than urban development. A senior central government official with experience in working in MoHUA in the recent past said that even in the current scenario, notable successes of the often-criticised Smart Cities Mission came from cities that had “a fairly bottom-up approach” in selection and design of projects. So lately there has been high incidences of surrendering of SBM funds by the states, and that has been spent by MoHUA on branding, advocacy.” Aravind Unni, an expert on urban poverty alleviation policies, said this top-down design of schemes with mandatory and significant state funding components does not augur well politically too, especially when states governed by opposition parties, even more so, if they have similar schemes already in place as seen in Kerala for PMAY.