Urban in name, a burden to bear

MUMBAI: Maharashtra may be the most urbanised state in India, but ironically, it lacks an urban development policy. Though late, the state government has now woken up to the need for one, and is working on a policy framework that will govern almost half of Maharashtra. According to senior Mantralaya officials, the government has already made the first move in this direction and has sought help from the World Bank to formulate a holistic urban development policy on the lines of the one for rural development.

“Other than Mumbai, the state has around 230 municipal bodies — the highest number of urban and semi-urban local self-government bodies in any state. We need to have strategies for improvement of urban infrastructure in this huge area. We have sought a strategic partnership with the World Bank to help the state formulate an urban development policy,” state secretary for special projects Sanjay Ubale told ET.

According to the latest demographic estimates, about 45-50% of Maharashtra falls under the urban or semi-urban category. The government reckons that industrial growth, infrastructure development, and migration from agriculture would drive up the process of urbanisation at an even faster rate in the next decade. The government reckons that by 2015, between 55% and 60% of Maharashtra will be urbanised. The state has a ministry of urban development, headed by the chief minister.

“The emphasis on industrial and economic growth of regions beyond Mumbai, Pune, Nashik and Nagpur will have to be supplemented by proper strategies to develop urban townships, upgrade infrastructure, and lure investors to put their money in those parts. Civic bodies of the semi-urban towns have to be made aware of the challenges that the process of industrial growth and urbanisation would pose to their fragile infrastructure,” said another bureaucrat.

Lack of a policy framework has led to unplanned development of big cities, their satellite townships, and semi-urban areas, the government believes. Though the urban development ministry gets budgetary allocations, the money is spent in a project-specific manner without prioritisation and planning. “That is why the urban sprawl on the periphery of big cities does not look like full-fledged villages or proper urban townships. Towns served by municipal councils are even worse since their separation from villages in terms of the quality of infrastructure is hardly ideal,” explained an official.

Maharashtra has 22 municipal corporations, 222 municipal councils, and three Nagar Parishads, which will come on the radar of the proposed urban development policy. The state also has 33 Zilla Parishads, 351 Panchayat Samitis, and around 2,7900 Gram Panchayats, which are covered under the rural development policy.