Dear Honorable Prime Minister Mr. Modi,
The Govt. has proposed in its budget speech to establish 100
smart cities across the nation, which is a very welcome step, however, the proposed
100 smart cities presented by finance minister seems like a political eyewash
rather than actually serving the purpose of reducing large-scale rural
migration to existing cities.
The budget of your Govt. describes that “The
Prime Minister’s vision of developing 100 smart cities as satellite towns of
larger cities by modernizing the existing mid-sized cities…unless new cities
are developed to accommodate the burgeoning number of people, the existing
cities would soon become unlivable.”
Further, the Govt. very well realizes that increasing
population burden on existing cities has been a major challenge and criticizes previous
Government’s lack of proper vision on how to provide a better quality of life
to the urban population. It adds migration of large number of job seekers
from rural India, especially from northern and eastern States, highlights the
gravity of situation. The influx of heavy population is absorbed mainly by a
few mega cities like Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai, Pune, Chennai and Bangalore.
Nevertheless, when one looks at the list of 100 smart cities,
the list indeed includes Kolkata, Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune,
Ahmadabad, etc. many of which are existing metro or trier II cities.
It is confusing when the prime minister claim to modernize mid-size
cities but in actual the Govt. has selected large size cities, some of which
are among the largest cities in the world and are the actual reasons of
existing problems.
Though your Govt’s budget claims to reduce large-scale
migration to major cities from rural area, none of the 100 proposed cities
exist in any of the rural area. In fact all of them are in state capitals or
existing commercial cities like Pune, Indore, Nagpur, Kochi, Cuttack, Rourkela
etc.
The Government admits large-scale migration from eastern and
northern India, at the same time the Govt. forgets those eastern regions that
suffer from rural migration. KBK region in Odisha is well known nationally for
large-scale labor and rural migration to various cities in India. Often KBK
region has been in news, unfortunately, not a single town in KBK region has
been included among the proposed 100 smart cities when the state capital,
Bhubaneswar, is located above 400 km from many parts of KBK region.
Bhawanipatna is located centrally among the KBK districts; at least one town
from KBK region could be included in the list.
On the other hand twin cities like Ahmedabad –Gandhi nagar,
Cuttack-Bhubaneswar, etc. is included separately for the proposed smart cities.
Such twin cities could be very well developed together as a large single
conglomerate with metro facilities rather than separate entities.
Unless the Govt. takes a corrective step, the present identification
of the proposed smart cities is clear eyewash to improve infrastructure of
existing metro, state capitals, and trier II and III cities for the benefit of
real estate mafia in those cities across the nation. Such proposal may help in few
extent to improve infrastructure of the existing cities, however, it will at
the same time increase further large-scale migration to the same cities without
meeting the actual objectives of the proposed smart cities.
Anticipating your appropriate correction in this matter
Thank you and best regards
Digambara Patra
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