Smart Cities

''The new NDA government under the leadership of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had announced that the UPA government’s Scheme of RAY would be discontinued and the liabilities of this scheme are proposed to be subsumed in the proposed new scheme, i.e., 'Sardar Patel National Housing Mission. ‘In fact, the NDA Government has proposed to provide Housing for All by the year 2022 and the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation is in the process of developing a new scheme to cater to housing for all by 2022, by building 30 million houses, mostly for the economically weaker sections and low income groups. The projects already proposed under RAY are planned to be subsumed in the new scheme. Experts believe that it will be tough task to fulfill the NDA government’s promise of “housing for all by 2022,” considering the track record of different government programmes in the recent years. The Standing Committee on Urban Development in its recent report (18 December, 2014) has urged upon the Ministry Urban Housing and Poverty Alleviation to make concerted efforts “to remove all the bottlenecks and implement the scheme in true spirit otherwise, the target for “Housing for All” would remain a distant dream.” The NDA government has also come out with the ambitious plan of building 100 smart new cities in the country. Smart cities are projected to be equipped with basic infrastructure and will offer a good quality of life through smart solutions. Assured water and power supply, sanitation and solid waste management, efficient urban mobility and public transport, robust IT connectivity, e-governance and citizen participation along with safety of its citizens are some of the likely attributes of these smart cities. The government seems to look forward to the building of the smart cities that will have better facilities, better connectivity and better environment. In 2015, the NDA government has unveiled a list of 98 cities, including 24 state capitals for its Smart Cities project. Moreover, there is also no reference about how far the concept of smart cities will help to make the Indian cities slum-free. In fact, it has to be noted that the strategy for the development of Indian cities, including the concept of smart cities, will not be fruitful unless it includes a plan for making the cities slum-free.

Unstable Waters: Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu is a water scarce area and rain water is the major source of water supply in the state. Tamil Nadu accounts for 4 per cent of the land area and 6 per cent of the population, but only 3 per cent of the water resources of the country. Most of Tamil Nadu is located in the rain shadow region of the Western Ghats and hence receives limited rainfall from the south-west monsoon. The total water potential of the State is 36 km3 or 24,864 M cum. There are 17 major river basins in the State with 61 reservoirs and about 41,948 tanks. Of the annual water potential of 46,540 million cubic metres (MCM), surface flows account for about half. Most of the surface water has already been tapped, primarily for irrigation which is the largest user. There are about 24 lakh hectares irrigated by surface water through major, medium and minor schemes. The utilisation of surface water for irrigation is about 90 percent. The utilisable groundwater recharge is 22,423 MCM. The current level of utilisation expressed as net ground water draft of 13,558 MCM is about 60 percent of the available recharge, while 8,875 MCM (40 percent) is the balance available for use. Over the last five years, the percentage of safe blocks has declined from 35.6 per cent to 25.2 percent while the semi-critical blocks have gone up by a similar percentage. There is shortage of water for various competing requirements such as, domestic, agricultural, commercial and industrial purposes. Moreover, over the years, proper attention has not been given to maintain the sources of water storage built in the past, viz., lakes, ponds and tanks (including the Temple tanks), which criss cross all over the State, besides the naturally formed lakes and estuaries. Over the years, a large number of the water bodies have been encroached by anti-social elements. Temple tanks all over the State are invariably occupied by encroachers. Moreover, most of the lakes, tanks and ponds have remained unattended for long and as a result, silt formation has reduced their storage capacities. Above all, unscientific (mostly illegal) sand mining has caused severe damage to most of the river systems in the State. As there is growing pressure on available water resources due to the burgeoning demand for water, concrete steps have to be initiated to desilt, renovate and restore the existing water bodies and create new sources to increase water storage facilities so as to enable adequate supply of water. For providing equitable, affordable piped water supply to the people of the State it is required to explore and tap all obtainable sources of water, including rain water, groundwater, surface sources, desalination and waste-water re-use.