Indian Urban Development and Public Policy Discussion

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JayS
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Re: Indian Urban Development and Public Policy Discussion

Post by JayS »

I saw news on TV yesterday that the funds utilization for Smart Cities project is mere 1.8%...!!! Too many road blocks. Especially in the non-BJP states. MP, GJ and MH are top three so far.

Looks like before upgrading cities we need to upgrade city admin people's mentality. I often feel in case of BLR that the civic admin folks grossly lack the mentality of planning for a Metro city. Small tinkering here and there. No big/bold projects for solving key issues. Existing projects grossly lack in scale and implementation too slow. No proper implementation of the CDP. No urgency seen to tackle any of the key issues like water, traffic, drainage, pollution etc. The latest CDP was also more like Copy paste of previous version with all numbers scaled up but no real change.
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Re: Indian Urban Development and Public Policy Discussion

Post by Vasu »

India's urban local bodies are thoroughly ill-equipped to do things differently, so it is no surprise that something so forward-looking and technology-intensive as Smart Cities is sputtering in their hands. I believe the extreme level of politicization is also huge part of the problem.

Lack of funding remains a huge issue, and for a country that is staring at unprecended urbanization, its a matter of grave concern that its urban local bodies remain unable to raise funds and manage their finances. Apart from a Pune or Hyderabad which have managed to raise a few hundred crores between them, no investor would perhaps buy a single bond of anyone else.

Better Disclosures Key To Developing Municipal Bond Market In India: Moody’s
Yet another attempt to kick-start India’s municipal bond market has sputtered. After Pune raised funds via municipal bonds in June 2017, the market has seen little action. Since then, Hyderabad is the only other municipal corporation to tap the markets to raise Rs 200 crore in February 2018.

Rating agency Moody’s Investors Service says this is a consequence of limited information available on the finances of these municipalities.

Lack of publicly available information on indicators including fiscal performance, debt and contingent liabilities is preventing proper credit assessment of these bodies, Moody’s said in a report dated May 9. The rating agency added that weak governance continues to be a concern as well. Together these factors are preventing a pick-up in issuances.

In 2015, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) eased rules for the issue of municipal bonds but also sought more timely disclosure of financial information. Typically, municipal corporations tend to release financial information with a significant lag, which leads to uncertainty among potential investors.

With the exception of the larger capital cities that are interested in accessing capital markets, most municipal corporations do not make their accounts public, said Moody’s while adding that Indian urban local bodies continue to lag behind their global peers in terms of disclosure standards.

Apart from the lack of adequate information, some regulator roadblocks also persist, said Moody’s. This includes restrictions on the maximum interest rates that municipal corporations can offer, and unfavourable rules regarding income tax on interest earned by bondholders.

The rating agency added that municipal bodies also typically have a weak track record of timely project implementation and completion, which in turn weakens projected cash flows. This lowers the perceived credibility of municipal bonds, said Moody’s.
JayS
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Re: Indian Urban Development and Public Policy Discussion

Post by JayS »

Vasu wrote:India's urban local bodies are thoroughly ill-equipped to do things differently, so it is no surprise that something so forward-looking and technology-intensive as Smart Cities is sputtering in their hands. I believe the extreme level of politicization is also huge part of the problem.

Lack of funding remains a huge issue, and for a country that is staring at unprecended urbanization, its a matter of grave concern that its urban local bodies remain unable to raise funds and manage their finances. Apart from a Pune or Hyderabad which have managed to raise a few hundred crores between them, no investor would perhaps buy a single bond of anyone else.

Better Disclosures Key To Developing Municipal Bond Market In India: Moody’s
Yet another attempt to kick-start India’s municipal bond market has sputtered. .
Who in their sane mind will buy bonds from MunCorps..? In India these local bodies are the most corrupt form of governances. First they will need to build credibility through transparency and performance (which I do not see happening). Otherwise we might end up with the kind of problems that Chinese local bodies are dealing with, with excessive debts. I personally have zero trust that local admin bodies in our cities can use the money raised through bonds properly. Most likely they will use the money to fund more scams like garbage collection, shabby road construction, building unnecessary flyovers etc and finally end up broke, only to have to be bailed out by State and Central governments. Just look at the utilization of money received through schemes like JNNURM.
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Re: Indian Urban Development and Public Policy Discussion

Post by Suraj »

Vasu wrote:India's urban local bodies are thoroughly ill-equipped to do things differently, so it is no surprise that something so forward-looking and technology-intensive as Smart Cities is sputtering in their hands. I believe the extreme level of politicization is also huge part of the problem.

Lack of funding remains a huge issue, and for a country that is staring at unprecended urbanization, its a matter of grave concern that its urban local bodies remain unable to raise funds and manage their finances. Apart from a Pune or Hyderabad which have managed to raise a few hundred crores between them, no investor would perhaps buy a single bond of anyone else.
Funding and governance are interrelated. Cities can fund their needs using municipal bonds, but they cannot offer competitive coupon rates if their perceived risk levels are too high, and higher coupons simply result in high interest rate burden if cities can't implement what they spend the money on, in time and under budget.

Barely 1% of funding needs are currently met by muni bonds. Retail investors cannot purchase them. While central government bonds are in extremely high demand, the muni bond market has a long way to go. Foreign investment is restricted to central, state and corporate bonds, and it's not clear investment in local muni bonds is available to foreign investors.
Foreign bond investors get access to $16 bn of additional debt in India
Municipal bonds of Indian cities
India's central bank lifts key restriction on foreign investors in bond market
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Re: Indian Urban Development and Public Policy Discussion

Post by chetak »

Centre unlikely to introduce National Education Policy soon



Centre unlikely to introduce National Education Policy soon

Kundan Jha
June 16, 2018,

‘The Ministry of Human Resources Development does not want to attract controversy ahead of the 2019 general elections’.


The nation will have to wait till the next term of the government for getting a new National Education Policy (NEP) as the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) is unlikely to introduce the NEP during the remaining tenure of its government, sources close to the MHRD have said.

According to sources, with the general elections round the corner, the Centre is unlikely to take any risk by introducing the NEP, as several provisions in it, particularly related to the role of private players in the education sector and the stress on traditional forms of knowledge, might attract unnecessary controversy.

A source in the MHRD told The Sunday Guardian: “The MHRD is unlikely to introduce the NEP this year as several provisions in it could be contentious and might lead to protests against the government. Therefore, the Ministry is unlikely to take any risk of getting into such a situation ahead of the 2019 elections.”

A committee headed by former ISRO chief K. Kasturirangan was supposed to submit its report in December 2017, but since its inception, the committee assigned to draft the NEP has been given many extensions and the last one was given in March this year. The committee’s last three-month extension expired this month (June), but it has not presented the draft yet.

Though the government claims that the drafting committee is still working on the NEP, sources in the MHRD said that the viewpoints of all stakeholders have already been received and the draft is almost completed. “Due to fear of controversy ahead of 2019 general elections, the MHRD is using diversionary tactics to escape the implementation of the NEP,” the same source cited above said.

Earlier, the HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar’s predecessor Smriti Irani had appointed the first panel headed by former Cabinet Secretary T.S.R. Subramaniam to draft the NEP. The Subramanian panel submitted a 200-page report in November 2016 containing about 90 recommendations to uplift the standards of the primary and higher education sector. However, the report attracted wide criticism and protests against the MHRD ministry. Later, the Subramanian committee was replaced by the Kasturirangan committee.

“In the NEP, the focus is on girls’ education, strengthening public institutions and promotion of traditional knowledge. Also, special attention is given on technical and skill-based education,” the source said.

The Sunday Guardian has learnt that school education could see a paradigm shift after the implementation of the NEP which stresses on the need for affordable education.

Implementation of a new NEP was part of the BJP’s 2014 election manifesto. The existing NEP is two decades old as it was framed in 1986 and revised in 1992.
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Re: Indian Urban Development and Public Policy Discussion

Post by Prasad »

What an effing mammoth of a waste MHRD has been in this govt.
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Nov 27 2017

Post by Singha »

Image
Simon Kuestenmacher


@simongerman600
Sep 7
More
#India 101: #Map shows all cities with over 100,000 residents. Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/commen ... h=6d4fa0c1
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Nov 27 2017

Post by Gus »

blr area has more pop than chn area?
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Nov 27 2017

Post by arshyam »

Gus wrote:blr area has more pop than chn area?
No, they are roughly the same. This is the result of Chennai 'District' being smaller than the city limits itself and 10% the size of BLR urban district (@2196 sq km). Even the recently expanded size of this district to bring it in line with the corporation limits will only bring it up to 426 sq km.

Most of greater Chennai anyway falls under the neighbouring Kanchipuram and Tiruvallur districts, so that's anyway not counted.
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Nov 27 2017

Post by Singha »

Its hellish to get out of cbd to sriperumbudur and beyond
Plus there exist no proper entry and exit underpass/flyover into the industry areas at sriperumbudur
Even a truck taking uturn blocks the road

Elevated roads to get out of chennai east west needed
Sriperumbudur area must be 8 lane with underpasses and uturn aystems
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Re: Indian Urban Development and Public Policy Discussion

Post by arshyam »

^^ True that. Pathetic roads when driving into the city, given the sheer volume of industrial traffic. Good thing is that Gadkari and Pon R have worked with GoTN to revive the stalled Port elevated expressway, and have extended it to Sriperumbudur. It's going to be a 40-km long 6-lane elevated road right from the Chennai port all the way to Sriperumbudur, where it will connect with the BLR expressway. This apart, the NH is being expanded to 10 lanes on the surface, IIRC. Construction to start later this year or early next.

NHAI is also looking to build wider surface + elevated roads in the southern (GST) and northern (GNT) approach highways into the city. While the northern one is like the BLR e-city way and will be around 10km long, the GST one in the south will also be quite long - airport to Chengalpet, 30-odd kms.

That apart, the 4th ring road around the city is under works - the 162km long Peripheral ring road between Mahabs and Ennore crossing NH-4 at Sriperumbudur.

If done properly with interchanges, Chennai is all set for the next 3-4 decades. Let's see.
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Re: Indian Urban Development and Public Policy Discussion

Post by Supratik »

Karthik S
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Re: India-US relations: News and Discussions IV

Post by Karthik S »

Supratik wrote:I have done the maths. At current rate it is going to be 1.9 billion plus. Just look up wiki to see latest numbers. Even if absolute numbers decline by 20 million each decade it will be 1.9 billion. Unfortunately it is still showing near 180 million this decade instead of the required less than 160 million. I still am hoping that a squeeze will come soon and it will peter out at 1.7 billion.
:lol: Dude, that's way too high. I don't know how you calculated it, currect TFR is 2.4, which is .3 more than replacement rate. Taken into account our IMR is not upto western standards as well we need look into that 2.4 net of Infant Mortality Rate. In the south, except for one community, most people have 2 or single child. Going forward, in next decade it will hover around 2.1 which is the actual replacement ratio.
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Re: India-US relations: News and Discussions IV

Post by Suraj »

OT but TFR figures are falling pretty much every year. This is available data:
2010: 2.62
2011: 2.59
2012: 2.51
2013: 2.46
2014: 2.43
2015: 2.40

A simple forecasting experiment yields:
2016: 2.34
2017: 2.3
2018: 2.25 <--- Present day
2019: 2.20
2020: 2.15
2021: 2.11
2022: 2.06

In other words, we are at the threshold of replacement level TFR right now, and will reach replacement level (~2.1) by turn of this decade.
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Re: India-US relations: News and Discussions IV

Post by Supratik »

Do the math. 1210 million 2011. Decade (2001-2011) added 180 million. Projected without decrease in rate roughly 200 million. Net reduction about 20 million. 2021 projection from SRS data of 2016 is again about 180 million. Numbers if rate remained unchanged 215 million. Thus absolute reduction for 2021 35 million. So it is going down but not fast enough. That is why I said "at current rate". Just to reach 1.9 billion absolute numbers have to reduce by 20 million each decade i.e. 160 million for 2021, 140 million for 2031 and so forth. Bottom-line we are not there yet inspite of low TFR in most parts of the country. And that is due to population momentum. But UP/BH is 300 million. At 20-25% growth they are adding 60-75 million by themselves every decade.
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Re: India-US relations: News and Discussions IV

Post by Supratik »

OT but the other major group Muslims are adding about 30 million every decade.
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Re: India-US relations: News and Discussions IV

Post by Shanmukh »

Suraj wrote:OT but TFR figures are falling pretty much every year. This is available data:
2010: 2.62
2011: 2.59
2012: 2.51
2013: 2.46
2014: 2.43
2015: 2.40

A simple forecasting experiment yields:
2016: 2.34
2017: 2.3
2018: 2.25 <--- Present day
2019: 2.20
2020: 2.15
2021: 2.11
2022: 2.06

In other words, we are at the threshold of replacement level TFR right now, and will reach replacement level (~2.1) by turn of this decade.
Suraj-saar,
We were already at 2.2 TFR this February, according to a National Family Health Survey.

https://www.theweek.in/health/more/2018 ... gures.html

Also given that India's infant mortaiity rate is a touch higher, I wouldn't be surprised if we need 2.13-2.14 for a replacement rate. Of course, IMR is also going to come down in the coming years, but we aren't far from the replacement rates and will hit replacement probably next year itself.
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Re: Indian Urban Development and Public Policy Discussion

Post by Suraj »

Thanks Shanmukh! That's definitely a sign that the fall in TFR is trending close to the lower confidence interval bound.

I'd like to point out that the 'at current rate' assumption tends not to fit this situation. The reason is that the current TFR distribution is heavily skewed by a few states, and a change the has a large impact on overall numbers:
Image
Source
The main contributors - UP and Bihar - will both fall below 3.0 soon - just a decade ago they were both around 4.3 each!
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Re: Indian Urban Development and Public Policy Discussion

Post by Prasad »

There are demographic dangers though with differential fall in TFR's though. That is something such reports do not dwell on however.
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Re: Indian Urban Development and Public Policy Discussion

Post by Suraj »

That is not a subject for this thread . Please don’t derail the conversation .
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Re: Indian Urban Development and Public Policy Discussion

Post by Supratik »

Ahmedabad's CBD - GIFT city development.

https://youtu.be/pOh3kNxsTOc

https://youtu.be/GUVCMG91StM
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Re: India-US relations: News and Discussions IV

Post by darshhan »

Deleted. It's already been explained once that religious matters are not pertinent to this thread.
Last edited by Suraj on 11 Feb 2019 23:03, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Removed religio-political discussion
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Re: Indian Urban Development and Public Policy Discussion

Post by Supratik »

Supratik
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Re: Indian Urban Development and Public Policy Discussion

Post by Supratik »

Emerging Mumbai skyline.

https://youtu.be/XmN5TD3AjMY
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Re: Indian Urban Development and Public Policy Discussion

Post by disha »

On public policy, this is a news item on government trying to tame bureaucracy

https://theprint.in/politics/why-ias-of ... al/198464/

Of course the usual rona-dhona by the media, but excellent nuggets of information.
Giving a specific example of the minister’s “disregard for bureaucrats”, the official cited a July 2018 meeting of the GST Council, where Goyal overruled the objections of senior ministry officials and proposed certain rate cuts even though he had not included them in the agenda circulated to state governments.

“Goyal announced rate cuts even though they were not on the agenda. According to rules, the agenda has to be circulated seven days in advance. He did so [announced the cuts] despite officials having advised him against it,” the official added.
If an agenda is circulated 7 days in advance, it *will* be leaked. The information on which items will go through GST rate cut is gold mine. Several thousand crores of rupees will be in play based on just that information!
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Re: Indian Urban Development and Public Policy Discussion

Post by Supratik »

Ahmedabad redevelopment along tendersure bangalore line.

https://youtu.be/SuvDS6C5qMw
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Re: Indian Urban Development and Public Policy Discussion

Post by Karan M »

My respect for Goyal just went up several notches. I'd prefer a guy who gets things done with the ossified bureaucracy in the Dilli establishment which polishes knobs for their masters and puts notations here, there, everywhere to delay things.
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Re: Indian Urban Development and Public Policy Discussion

Post by Supratik »

arshyam
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Re: Indian Urban Development and Public Policy Discussion

Post by arshyam »

^^ The irony is that namma Bengaluru itself seems to have given up on TenderSure. A nearby road is under upgradation for two years now and is not close to being complete. The entire stretch looks listless. The outgoing congress government announced more roads in a phase II, but that hasn't taken off. In the meantime, the chalak BBMP has come up with a monumental achievement called TenderSure lite, which simply makes the roads look like the real upgraded ones, but without doing the hard work of moving utilities to ducts, etc. A typical jugaad to do something and pray no one shows up to dig some part of the road. OTOH, another wing of the said org is concreting many roads with a vengeance, leading to traffic snarls. Here too, "just run the concrete paver on top of the existing surface as fast as possible" seems to be the mantra. All in all, full policymaking without a plan onlee, baki swalpa adjust maadi onlee.
Last edited by arshyam on 06 May 2019 23:07, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Indian Urban Development and Public Policy Discussion

Post by Karan M »

Bangalore is slowly and steadily becoming a gone case.
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Re: Indian Urban Development and Public Policy Discussion

Post by Supratik »

Political instability and need for corruption. Digging and relaying roads every 6 mnths to 1 yr is a great way to make money for everyone.
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Re: Indian Urban Development and Public Policy Discussion

Post by tandav »

I propose a hybrid public private model to run Urban areas. Implementation of Municipal function be privatized by following protocol.

1) All municipal employees are employees of private ltd company
2) Board of directors are elected Corporators
3) Board chooses a CEO who has corporate powers
4) Revenue generation is via monetizing public spaces such as charging for parking, fines for not obeying law such as littering, parking in no parking zones, billing citizens for water, electricity etc.
5) Board gets paid a fixed % of municipal revenue ~1%
6) CEO has hire and fire rights over all employees

Elections constitute performance review.
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Re: Indian Urban Development and Public Policy Discussion

Post by tandav »

Vriksh wrote:One key idea of Indian smart cities could be to implement decentralized waste treatment, recycling and food production. Solid waste and liquid waste should be processed sanitarily within short distance of those producing it ~300m. This encourages the concept of point of generation pollution control, reduces investments (CAPEX and OPEX) in transport of materials to central locations where currently the waste is landfilled or simply left untreated into environment.

I envisage the following concepts
1. decentralized sewage treatment plants (no connections to sewers to be provided)... reduces water requirement by 50% to 90% (if we can engineer Singapore type NeWater concept.
2. Vermicomposting of Biodegradable solid waste (reduces need for transport of wastes to landfills)
3. Roof gardens and vertical green walls on facades to improve greenery. This could improve food security by growing vegetables in combination of 1 and 2
4. Rain water harvesting and permeable pavements

Some numbers below
USA in contrast allocates 2,000sqft/person for roads/pavement
Typical residential space requires 100 sqft/person
Soil Bio Technology (SBT) based Sewage water recycling requires 1.2 sqft/person at ground level (source IITB)
Vermiculture/Aerobic composting of Biodegradable solid waste requires 1 sqft/person can be done on terraces (source IITB)
Growing Food for complete self sufficiency requires about 500 sqft/person and full time staff may be improbable in an urban setting unless this is provided in the urban planning masterplans. Still if the facades and terraces are farmed then atleast 5-10% of food especially herbs and veggies can be locally sourced. source : John Jeavons (How To Raise More Vegetables) and Jim Wilson (Victory Garden South)

It appears that if we can use less land for transport networks we will have more land available for all activities. Therefore concepts like aerial ropeways/bridges to connect people from building to building directly without using land must be seriously considered.
Posting some links on decentralized waste water recycling technologies

Soil Bio Technology for Decentralized Waste Water Recycling Plants can Residential Colonies...most STP in Bangalore are non functional due to high operating costs. Natural technologies are more robust and can deliver superior results.
http://www.visionearthcare.com/home/soil-bio-technology

DEWATS system for Septic Tank Sludge managment has been demonstrated in Devanhalli near Bangalore
https://www.cddindia.org/
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Re: Indian Urban Development and Public Policy Discussion

Post by Supratik »

President gives nod to Gujarat old housing redevelopment bill. 75% consent. Similar to Mumbai (don't know if it is for whole of MH).

https://swarajyamag.com/insta/gujarat-s ... apartments
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Re: Indian Urban Development and Public Policy Discussion

Post by khatvaanga »

I am not sure if this was already discussed here, but I was talking to someone about urban infra in India, and he made a comment on why India doesnt look at hub-and-spoke model for all its metros? The biggest challenges in second rung cities as opposed to metros are
1. Education
2. Employment Opportunities
3. Healthcare
4. Amenities

with infra getting better, accessibility to metros from 2nd rung towns / cities are getting better. in other words, the time it takes to get to a metro from a town is reducing and will reduce further. So this would more or less take care of point 3 - healthcare.

with high speed internet available now-a-days almost all over the country, at least some IT kinda jobs can be moved out of metros. will reduce the stress on them at the same time improve the towns. This will have a ripple effect on 1 & 4 above. Then again the State Govts should encourage more investment in all of these to make it work. I dont know if GoI is even thinking in these lines or if that is beyond its purview. AP has / had an excellent chance to make it happen with no capital or major city to talk of but lost 5 years in search of Singapore / Shanghai.
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Re: Indian Urban Development and Public Policy Discussion

Post by tandav »

As indicated in videos below I would like to see most of Urban India people mobility system start to be replaced by Human + Battery operated system. There is a fundamental leapfrog that is possible. If we look at data for energy consumption it is obvious that for people transport the energy cost of a aerodynamic bicycle (velomobile: recumbent / reclining shrouded bicycle) is an order of magnitude smaller than any competing system around 18 KJ/KM/person compared to a Metro which is closer to 200 KJ/KM/person.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_ef ... _transport

There are new concepts in human powered transport such as Shweeb funded by google as of now with a mandate to see if they can utilize this as a people mover, P2P people transit. Systems such as these can also be coupled with electric motors fed from the track itself to create a hybrid system to increase speed.

Shweeb

Skyride


Given the fact that Shweeb is aerodynamically shrouded recumbent bicycle on rail, it should have even lower energy cost per km since the system is on a rail like and not a more energy inefficient inflated tyre system. Also critically due to its light construction we can have shweeb paths along all major road and create a P2P system that can potentially replace roads for people movement. If the government can showcase a pilot in a smart city which is substantial (100+ KM of shweeb track) then I believe we can showcase and leapfrog Urban mobility.
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Re: Indian Urban Development and Public Policy Discussion

Post by Suraj »

xposting from pol strat thread:

An article The Atlantic that is surprisingly balanced (by Western globalist media standards) regarding Modi. Ironically it is by a Bangladeshi-American Muslim, Reihan Salam.

The reason I'm posting here (in full) is that he seems to be championing certain policy proposals by a think-tank called IDFC, pushing what they call an agenda of "urbanization".

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi ... ia/590506/

Modi's New Challenge Is Embracing Urbanization

This is the part where he talks about the "urbanization" business...
But all the latrines in the world won’t make India an economic dynamo. To pull off that feat, Modi must persuade Indians to embrace an urban future. Reuben Abraham and Pritika Hingorani, both of India’s IDFC Institute, a small but enormously influential :?: think tank based in Mumbai, have made a convincing case that at present India’s state governments—which are each empowered to decide what qualifies as urban—systematically underestimate the urban share of their populations. According to the Indian Census, only 31 percent of the country’s population resides in urban areas. If, however, you were to adopt Ghana’s or Lebanon’s definition for what amounts to an urban area, India is almost 50 percent urbanized.

This definitional game has consequences—classifying an area as urban completely shifts the statutory responsibilities of local governments. Urban governments must do the important work of funding fire departments, building sewage lines, and drafting building standards. India’s current policy of closing its eyes to emerging cities is helping to ensure that its cities are filthier, more chaotic, and less economically productive than they would be otherwise.

And if India’s growth strategy is going to be defined by high-value services rather than labor-intensive, low-wage manufacturing, it ought to heed the lessons of the world’s most successful postindustrial metropolises. Abraham and Shashi Verma, the chief technology officer of London’s transportation office, have argued that India should recast Mumbai, India’s financial capital, in the mold of New York or London, primarily by converting its shrinking port into a sleek new business district offering a high quality of life. Trivial though this effort might sound, the rise of Shenzhen, and the creation of Shanghai’s Pudong financial district, did a great deal to spur China’s urban development.

Ideally, Abraham and Verma’s Mumbai project would demonstrate that educated Indians needn’t move abroad to enjoy decent services or to build successful businesses. In The Other One Percent, a comprehensive analysis of the Indian-origin population of the U.S., the social scientists Sanjoy Chakravorty, Devesh Kapur, and Nirvikar Singh posit that “controlling for quality, it will take decades for India’s system of higher education to simply match the stock of India-born doctorate-degree holders in the science and technology disciplines.” Only by building attractive global cities of its own can India hope to compete with the San Franciscos and Singapores in its efforts to attract and retain intellectual and entrepreneurial talent. And in doing so, Modi might finally deliver the accelerated growth that he has promised his voters.
NRao
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Re: Indian Urban Development and Public Policy Discussion

Post by NRao »

An article The Atlantic that is surprisingly balanced (by Western globalist media standards) regarding Modi. Ironically it is by a Bangladeshi-American Muslim, Reihan Salam
The "West" is fond of huge urban areas and therefore small rural areas. They are well structured in every way (suburban, transportation systems, finance, etc) to support this thinking. Which is reflected in:
the chief technology officer of London’s transportation office, have argued that India should recast Mumbai, India’s financial capital, in the mold of New York or London, primarily by converting its shrinking port into a sleek new business district offering a high quality of life
Translation:
1) Get into debt (housing, business and credit cards)
2) Buy insurance
3) You do not save. we will save for you, but you must pay us for that service

And, since India has an inferior structure to the west, they will impose these structures on India. Check out what Trump said in London: the British health care system must be on the table for a phenomenal trade deal. :). I think the Brits should be thankful that Trump did not ask for the crown itself.


Some 50 years ago, Indian architects/planners had advised GoI, to provide cheap, but very well designed housing (along with other amenities - shopping, industrial areas, etc) for the disadvantaged (in urban areas). Architects such as Charles Corea, actually designed a few "societies". But, ...............................




BTW, Mumbai, just like New York, needs a ton of funds for rebuilding old infrastructure. Both cities (and many others) are crumbling inside out.
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