Urban infrastructure report submitted to Kamal Nath

March 7th, 2011 - 8:24 pm ICT by ANI  

New Delhi, Mar 7 (ANI): The High Powered Expert Committee on Urban Infrastructure submitted its report to Urban Development Minister Kamal Nath and the Minister of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation Kumari Selja here today.

Commending the report, Kamal Nath said that the Ministry would study the report and operationalise it.

He further invited the committee to engage with the Working Group of the NDC Sub Committee on Urbanisation for suggesting a way forward in a time bound manner.

Selja while commending report stated that financing the required funds will be a challenge and that capacity building for our cities is our biggest challenge.

The committee, which was chaired by Dr Isher Ahluwalia and included as members, Nasser Munjee, Dr Nachiket Mor, Dr M Vijayanunni, Sudhir Mankad, Dr Rajiv Lall, Hari Sankaran, Ramesh Ramanathan, Prof Om Prakash Mathur and P.K. Srivastava, made a presentation to the two Ministers here at Nirman Bhavan.

The committee has emphasized that India’s economic growth momentum cannot be sustained if urbanisation is not actively facilitated nor can urban poverty be effectively addressed if the needs of the urban poor are isolated from the broader challenges of managing urbanisation.

The committee has stated that cities will have to become the engines of national development. The fortunes of the agricultural sector are also crucially linked to the development of markets for agriculture which will be enhanced by urban expansion.

The committee has emphasised the importance of maintaining these assets if the investments are to make a durable impact on service delivery.

The committee believes that municipal entities need to be strengthened as local governments with ?own’ sources of revenue and predictable formula-based transfers from state governments. (ANI)

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