Minister of State for Housing and Urban Development Minister of State for Housing and Urban Development on Sunday said that said that India has undertaken the most comprehensive and planned urbanization planned anywhere in the world.

He was addressing the CII Annual Session 2018. He stated that between now and 2030, 700-900 million sq. mt. of urban space is to be developed every year in order to accommodate 40% of the total Indian population that is expected to be based out of the urban areas by 2030.

Highlighting the growing significance of cities he noted that by 2030, cities will contribute to around 66% of the country’s GDP and close to 90% of tax collection.

In this light, he insisted that we have a huge task ahead of us since for the past 67 years we have subjected our urban infrastructure to "criminal" neglect.  He was of the view that the kind of planned urbanization which is sought will not solely be decided by the Centre but the urban local bodies also need to be included in the planning and development.

Vinayak Chatterjee, Chairman, CII Economic Affairs Council and Chairman, Feedback Infra Pvt. Ltd. was the moderator to this discussion and he raised some pertinent issues and questions to the panellists regarding the qualifiers of a SMART city and why the 74th constitutional amendment, which empowered the cities to make their own decisions, has not been able to bear fruit?

Hari Sankaran, Chairman, CII National Committee on Infrastructure & PPP and Vice Chairman  and Managing Director, Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services Limited, noted that in India there is significant amount of momentum in urban areas but things don’t work out either due to design or implementation issues.

According to him there are three main qualifiers of a SMART city : liveability, employability and productive use of public spaces.

He noted that the CII committee on SMART cities has made some progress at the level of government and local bodies in order to pursue cities to become smart.