Three major flagship missions of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (Urban), Atal Mission for Rejuvenation, and Urban Transformation (AMRUT), Smart Cities Mission, complete six years since their launch on 25 June 2015. These constitute a fascinating experiment involving a paradigm shift, subtle in its messaging but seminal in its impact. The government under the leadership of Narendra Modi is re-writing the way citizens of the country define their future.
The urban landscape is defined by cities and the cities, in turn, are defined by the people who inhabit them. The collective will and wisdom of the people craft the cities through its decision-makers. One of the most radical departures post-May 2014, was the actual invocation of the spirit of cooperative federalism. Each of the missions delegated the powers to the states to appraise and approve projects. Earlier, every project was appraised and approved in Delhi, in the Ministry, giving scant regard to the fact that equally competent officials work in the states and the state leadership is to be trusted to make decisions in the interests of its citizens.
This major step, of building trust between the states and the Central government, yielded results. In the 10 years of the UPA from 2004 to 2014, the total investment in the urban sector was around Rs 1,57,000 crore while in the seven years of the NDA from 2014 to 2021, that figure is approximately Rs 11,83,000 crore. Similarly, in 10 years of the UPA regime, around 12 lakh houses were built. Since the launch of the PMAY(U) in June 2015, the Modi Government has already sanctioned more than 1.12 crore houses, completed and handed over nearly 49 lakh houses and the rest will be completed well before March of 2022 when the mission period ends.
One of the banes of government programmes traditionally has been tardy implementation and leakages. These are being plugged. Through geo-tagging, the progress of the construction of houses is being monitored and tied to the release of funds. For the first time, it was this Prime Minister who asked ISRO, our world-class space agency, to handhold government departments in the use of space technology tools. All missions use GIS-based tools extensively.
To speed up the pace of construction and to bring in the best of new technologies, a Global Housing Technology Challenge was launched and based on the challenge process six lighthouse projects have been identified in six geo-climatic zones of the country. A sustained effort is being made to mainstream these technologies with strong linkages to the engineering institutions across the country.
Money from the Central government is being released through PFMS (Public Financial Management System). This electronic model ensures that Central funds seamlessly flow to the state treasury improving efficiency and preventing fraud. This along with Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT), where money intended for a beneficiary is directly credited to her bank account, has ensured that middlemen gaming the system or shortchanging the beneficiary, have been ousted.
A house built under PMAY(U) is in the name of the woman of the household or in joint ownership and mandatorily has a toilet. This provides a fillip to female empowerment and safeguards the dignity of the girl child. Her sense of shame and insecurity is a thing of the past with the access to a toilet within the confines of her home.
Aadhaar is another formidable weapon that ensures that every beneficiary gets the house for which he/she was registered and biometrics will help in that. For decades, the poor were deprived of a government benefit that was usurped by someone else through impersonation. The unholy nexus between middlemen and corrupt officials has ended.
AMRUT Mission addresses the creaky civic infrastructure that plagues our urban local bodies (ULBs) — electricity, water supply, and sewerage, etc. AMRUT addresses the weakest link in our urban governance that is the infrastructure supporting the basic necessities of households. Nearly 6,000 projects worth Rs 81,000 crore have been approved with some states having projects in excess of the State Approved Action Plan (SAAP) that was approved when the mission was launched. States are willing to bear the excess expenditure over and above the SAAP. It covers 500 cities with a population of over one lakh.
The AMRUT mission spans the entire gamut of city governance with a focus on the reform agenda. The push for sustainable ULBs is yielding results with 10 ULBs having already raised Rs 3,840 crore through municipal bonds. The push to strengthen ULBs is also being spearheaded through The Urban Learning Internship Programme (TULIP) in partnership with the Ministry of Education.
With envisaged investments to the tune of Rs 205,000 crore, the Smart Cities Mission is a people-centred evolutionary process with citizens participating vigorously in the vision for the cities they live in. It will be the young who will determine the nature of the city they wish to inhabit. The people, their habits, and behaviour have to change. During the vicious phase of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Integrated Command and Control Centres for the smart cities that are already operational in over 50 of the 100 smart cities played a pivotal role in providing real-time information to enable health workers and city administrators in tracking the virus spread and in relief and rehabilitation work.
Alongside these programmatic interventions, the NDA Government has strengthened the regulatory framework in the real estate sector with the path-breaking legislation of the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016 and more recently the Model Tenancy Act that provides the template to give impetus to the rental housing segment.
The urban space is being transformed at a rapid pace with the increasing use of technology. That is the way forward. City administrators are on their toes with a competitive spirit imbuing the missions and a periodic ranking of the cities on various parameters. It bodes well for the people. There is relentless monitoring of the missions at the highest levels. That is another novel feature of governance introduced by Prime Minister Modi. In the rigorous review meetings which are chaired by the Prime Minister himself, the accountability matrix is under careful scrutiny. Silently, non-performers are being weeded out, loopholes are plugged, and targets are set. With the poor at the focus of all programmes, the past seven years have shown that the Modi government is and will be unwavering in its commitment to the poor.
The writer is Union Minister for Housing & Urban Affairs. The views expressed are personal.