The New Urban

Context: Centre’s flagship missions have made urban governance people-centred.

Three major flagship missions of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs –

• The Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (Urban):
• Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT)
• Smart Cities Mission.

Other programmatic interventions in urban housing –

• Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016,
• The Model Tenancy Act, 2021.

Significance of PMAY (U) -

• Spirit of cooperative federalism: Each of the missions delegated the powers to appraise and approve projects to the states.
  • 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.
• Unprecedented expenditure: Between 2014 to 2021, that figure is approximately Rs 11,83,000 crore.
  • Since the launch of the PMAY(U), the government has already sanctioned more than 1.12 crore houses, completed and handed over nearly 49 lakh houses — the rest will be completed well before March 2022.
• Plugged leakages:
  • Through geo-tagging, the progress of construction of houses is being monitored and tied to the release of funds through the involvement of ISRO; all missions use GIS-based tools.
  • Money from the Centre is being released through the Public Financial Management System. This electronic mode ensures that central funds seamlessly flow to the state treasury, improving efficiency and preventing fraud.
  • Aadhaar is another formidable weapon that ensures that every beneficiary gets the house for which he/she was registered. Biometrics will help in that.
• Women empowerment: A house built under PMAY(U) is in the name of the woman of the household or joint ownership and mandatorily has a toilet.

Significance of AMRUT:

• Addresses creaky civic infrastructure: That plagues our urban local bodies (ULBs) — electricity, water supply, sewerage, etc. - Nearly 6,000 projects worth Rs 81,000 crore have been approved.
  • The push for sustainable ULBs is yielding results, with 10 ULBs having already raised Rs 3,840 crore through municipal bonds.
  • The Urban Learning Internship Programme (TULIP), in partnership with the Ministry of Education, provides a push to strengthen ULBs.

Significance of Smart Cities Mission

• People-centred process: Envisaged investments to the tune of Rs 2,05,000 crore, the Smart Cities Mission is a people-centred process
• Real-time information dissipation: During the Covid-19 pandemic, the Integrated Command and Control Centres 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.