Creating low carbon, sustainable infrastructure and leveraging the private sector evolving a transparent mechanism to collect user charges will improve quality of institutions, governance and urbanisation, Director and Chief Executive of Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations, Rajat Kathuria has said.
India’s urbanisation has underperformed basically in meeting the big challenge of creating jobs, he said sharing the results of an ongoing exercise involving ICRIER, World Resources Institute and The New Climate Economy in the session on “Financing Urban Infrastructure” on the second day of the third BRICS Urbanisation Summit.
The session was chaired by Deputy Director, Public Governance and Territorial Development Directorate, OECD, Luiz de Mello.
The PPP model has not been successful particularly when creating large infrastructure, Dr. Kathuria said. While urban infrastructure required an estimated $ 1 billion up to 2030, going in for low carbon, sustainable and efficient infrastructure could save up to half a trillion dollars, he said.
Later in an interaction, he said cities have to evaluate whether to go for Metro or not. For large cities like Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru, it was required but a number of other cities building Metro the financial aspects needed to be weighed in view of the huge investments. Dr. Kathuria is of the view Bus Rapid Transit System is cheaper and efficient and has to be seriously taken.
Cities need to compact, coordinated and connected and not sprawls, he said. For this floor area ratio (FAR) has to be increased spurring vertical growth. Productivity is lost with people caught in traffic jams for two to three hours.
He cited the example of the appreciation after one floor relaxation in a part of Delhi. The tax revenues from such properties could be used to take up affordable housing, he suggested.
