Er. Vinod Malhotra
On 5th Oct every year the world celebrates Habitat Day. The idea is to examine the present state of affairs in our cities and towns and suggest strategies which can improve quality of life in them. It is as such an opportunity to introspect the prevailing conditions in our own Jammu city and other towns in J&K State. The Govt of India has since last decade or so, laid emphasis on planned urbanisation in the country to lift millions of people out of abject poverty levels. It introduced various Centrally funded schemes like JNNURM (Jawahar Lal Nehru National Urban Renewel Mission) and UIDSSMT (Urban Infrastructure Development in Small and Medium Sized Towns) in 1905. Both the capital cities of Jammu and Srinagar were included in the first list of 63 cities to be developed under this scheme. Ambitious City Development plans for both these cities for approx Rs 4000 crores each were approved by Central Govt. But sadly excepting for sewerage project (that too for part of city) no other project was funded under this scheme in both our principal cities. Perhaps the State Govt/Municipal Corporation couldn’t fully avail financial assistance under this scheme primarily because of the reluctance and slow progress towards introducing suggested urban reforms in the State by the Govt which was the focus of this Central scheme. Now Govt. of India has announced another scheme under which in the first instance 98 cities all over the country would be developed as Smart cities. No city from J&K State as yet finds place in this list. Perhaps none of our cities/towns qualify for inclusion in this list as they don’t meet the requirements as specified in the guidelines notified by Central Govt for proposed development as Smart cities.
To make cities smarter in performing their day to day functions efficiently Govt. of India under Smart city scheme shall provide Rs 100 crores per year (for 5 yrs) to each of these identified cities and the balance bulk of funds have to be generated by Municipal Corporations/State Govts at their own level. Thus various infrastructure improvement plans would have to be funded under Private Public Sector participation or purely by private sector.When the private sector invests in any infrastructure scheme at city level, it needs to be ensured of some profit on their investment which means that residents have to pay the user charges to avail of various urban services. Experience tells that with private sector involvement, urban services usually become a little more expensive but they are efficient and dependable and pilferages get minimised. Are we ready to outsource various urban services being run inefficiently by State Government agencie to private operators in our State?
Another important condition as per guidelines for smart cities formulated by Central Govt is that every city eligible for inclusion in the list should not only have an approved Master Plan but its track record in its effective implementation should also be good. In our State, Master Plans are usually prepared under the provisions of J&K Development Act of 1970 and Development Authorities are constituted at city level to implement them after their approval by State Cabinet. The critical issue is that despite approved Master Plans for our principal cities of Jammu & Srinagar and other towns, these urban centres are experiencing poor urbanisation i.e. mostly unplanned growth. The prime reason for our Master Plan failure is our unresponsive and poor urban land management policies. To implement Master Plan proposals on ground either Development Authorities of the respective cities (a) acquire lands within Master Plan limits on bulk basis or (b) effectively regulate the private land owners/developers to ensure that their vacant urban lands are sub-divided (layout planning) as per planning norms and used strictly as per Master Plan proposals.
The first option i.e bulk acquisition of land in our cities /towns looks nearly impossible in the present scenario on account of prohibitive costs involved as well as other roadblocks like usual litigation as well as stiff opposition of land owners to acquisition under this model in our democratic set up. A cursory look at two major urban land development agencies i.e JDA & Housing Board in Jammu city indicates a sorry state of affairs. Big chunks of vacant Nazool lands were transfered to JDA in 1971 as a seed capital. JDA in its first two/three decades of existance (1970-2000) did a commendable job and developed many planned residential/commercial centres in Jammu city on these lands. Unfortunately JDA/State Government lost many chunks of transferred Nazool lands/Government lands under encroachment as well. These encroached colonies are later on usually regularised by State Govt. in power at a very nominal regularisation charge in our governance system as no party in power annoys low income communities (who usually comprise these encroached colonies) as they are their vote banks. The present land bank of both JDA & Housing Board is hardly anything and Jammu city is mostly expanding on private lands in an unregulated manner. It is now mostly private builders who dominate the urban land market in Jammu city.
The other option by the State Govt is to realize its limitation in light of ground reality and accordingly amend our present Urban Development Laws, so as to ensure that Urban Development on private lands is regularized strictly as per planning norms/Master plan proposals. Concepts like land pooling of private lands (as prevalent in Gujarat, Maharashtra and many other states) and registration of private Developers (as in Haryana, Punjab, UP & many other states) within Master Plan limits could be examined by an expert committee before their incorporation in our State Urban Development Acts. To encourage and regulate private developers in our urban areas, the State Govt needs to ease legal purchase of vacant lands by them in urban areas through direct negotiations with farmers. As things are at present, urban land market is operating in a most unorganised manner at present primarily because of the contradiction between the State Agrarian Act and Development Act of 1970. The State Agarian Act bans sale and purchase of more than 4 kanals of agricultural land under urban use. The spirit of this Act is to discourage unwanton conversion of agricultural lands under urbanisation. But in actual practice, unplanned urbanisation on agricultural land on the periphery of our cities is already occurring illegally to cater to the needs of expanding city. Unplanned urbanization in Jammu city along Tillo Talab and Akhnoor road as well as along R S Pura road on rich agricultural lands are testimony to this ground reality. In absence of proper regulations, private colonizers buy small land holdings (normally less than one kanal) from many farmers, consolidate these land parcels on one plan, prepare a layout plan of colony keeping narrow roads, no space for park and other common facilities and sell these plots. The registration of these lands in the Court of law is done in which the seller is usually the original farmer. The registration is done based on farad issued by Patwari and no where the role of Colonizer who is the main player comes under any scrutiny. In short JDA/Municipality usually do not approve layout plans, as they are not submitted to them by colonizer as he is not the legal owner of entire land on which he is developing the colony. Under these conditions when layout plans of new private colonies are not approved the quality of life in most of them is bound to be poor. Thus it is imperative that State Govt recognizes and accepts that urbanization is inevitable and it regulates and permits conversion of agricultural land into urban use but only within Master Plan limits of any city. The framers of Master Plan should also ensure that high density development is proposed to keep Master Plan limits within minimum desired expanded limits so as to minimise conversion of agricultural lands to an optimum level only. No conversion of agricultural land outside city limits should be permitted at any cost. Within Master Plan limits registered & licenced Developers could be allowed to buy larger chunks of agricultural lands (subject to strict regulations) for development under urban use strictly as per Master Plan proposals. They must prepare layout plans of plotted Development Scheme/Group Housing Scheme and submit the same for approval before Competent Authority. Only after approval of layout plan, work at site should begin. Besides it shall be the sole responsibility of the licences Developer to provide all internal infrastructure like Electric Supply/Water Supply /Sewarage/roads/drains/solid waste collection etc within his area of colony at his own cost. It would lessen the burden on Municipal Corporation/other state agencies. In addition each colony being developed by private developer should have 20 percent of plots to be reserved for EWS to be sold at rates to be fixed by Govt Developer who can recover this subsidized cost for EWS category from other higher income groups of buyers.
Many States/City Govts have recognized that a regulated private sector can contribute greatly in ensuring that our cities and towns expand along planned lines as envisaged in the Master Plans. It is hoped that our State Govt shall seriously introspect and intervene in the present urban land management system operating within or cities/towns. It should lay a future roadmap (with amendments in our present Urban Dev Acts) for orderly growth of our cities and towns with active and transparent participation of private sector right from initial land acquisition to final land development. The same shall ensure that our Master Plan prepared at a tremendous cost to the Govt get implemented on ground to usher in better quality of life to its citizens. These policies alongwith other urban reforms charges are also likely to help in ensuring that both Jammu & Srinagar cities and some other towns from J&K get included in the ‘Smart City’ scheme launched by Central Govt recently in coming future. Otherwise also it is important that planned urbanisation is made possible in coming years by visionary Government intervention so that our Master plans become meaningful & implementable on ground.
Follow our WhatsApp channel
