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PEARL Workshop Proceedings 2012

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Overview

The introduction of Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal

Mission (JNNURM) in 2005 as a flagship Project of the Ministry of

urban Development (MoUD), Government of India, aimed at planned

development of the cities and towns with focus on renewal of urban

infrastructure and services and improving governance has been one

of the major initiatives in the urban sector since independence.

Effective management of cities through augmentation of

infrastructure and governance under JNNURM demands cross

learning and sharing of experiences and hence an initiative of “Peer

Experience and Reflective Learning”, (PEARL) was launched on

January 31, 2007 to support cities to actively pursue activities in

implementation of projects and reforms by learning and experience

sharing. The JNNURM cities have been divided into following groups:

a) Mega cities;

b) Industrial cities;

c) Mixed economy;

d) Cities of cultural and Religious Significance

e) Hill cities

The main objective of pearl is to create manageable networks

between JNNURM cities put in different groups (as below) for cross

learning and sharing knowledge on urban reforms to make cities

more livable, economically vibrant and environmentally sustainable.

Table 1: Cities of Different Groups

Group A- Mega Cities,

with Global Character

in Socio- Economic

Profile

Delhi, Greater Mumbai, Ahmadabad,

Bangalore, Chennai, Kolkata,

Hyderabad, Pune, Surat

Group B- Industrial

Mega cities

Faridabad, Ludhiana, Cochin,

Vishakhapatnam, Kanpur, Coimbatore,

Jamshedpur, Asansol, Dharwad, Indore,

Nasik, Vadodra, Nagpur, Rajkot

Group C- Mixed

Economy Cities

Service/ Trade/

Institutional

functions

Patna, Bhopal, Jaipur, Lucknow,

Meerut, Jabalpur, Vijayawada,

Guwahati, Jammu, Raipur, Ranchi,

Thiruvanthapuram, Bhubaneswar,

Chandigarh

Group D- Cities of

cultural and Religious

Significance

Madurai, Varanasi, Agra, Amritsar,

Allahabad, Panaji, Bodhgaya, Ujjain,

Puri, Ajmer-Pushkar, Mysore,

Pondicherry, Mathur, Haridwar,

Nanded, Porbender, Tirupathi

Group E- Hill Cities Srinagar, Dehradun, Nainital, Shimla

Group E- Hill Cities Itanagar, Imphal, Shilong, Aizawal,

Kohima, Gangtok, Agartala


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MoUD has nominated the National Institute of Urban

Affairs (NIUA) as the national Coordinator to Coordinate

overall Pearl activities and has identified Network

Convener and knowledge Managers (KMs) for the city

groups. Following potential KMs have been identified:

Table 2: Knowledge Managers

The activities that are being carried out under the PEARL

programme are:

• Help the KMs/partners to document various best

practices related with project development, financing

and construction as well as reforms under JNNURM.

• Set up a website and publish periodic newsletters for

exchange of information, innovation and initiatives.

• Help KMs/partners organize three group workshops

of participating ULBs and Knowledge Managers to

exchange experiences and lessons learned.

• Organize a national workshop on the status and

experience of PEARL network.

To achieve the objectives it is envisaged to form groups and

strengthen networks amongst JNNURM cities having similar

socio- economic profile, complexities of urban problems and

issues, size and urban growth patterns along with natural

affinity to peer city. Therefore cities with similar urban issues

and character have been put together in the same group.

Knowledge Manager Network

Convener

Mega cities Association Mega cities

Forum

AIILSG, Mumbai Nagpur

City Managers Association of MP (CMAMP),

Bhopal

Agra

CEPT, Ahmadabad Agra

UAA, Nainital Nainital

CRRID Chandigarh


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From L to R – Mr. M.P. Singh, Prof. Vijay Dhar,

Mr. Manoj K. Teotia, Prof. Ranvinder Sandhu

at the Opening Session of the PEARL

Workshop held at CRRID Campus, Sector 19,

Chandigarh

Workshop on Industrial Group Cities- Peer Experience and

Reflective Learning (PEARL) Programme under JNNURM

Introduction

In the series of experience sharing workshops

Centre for Research in Rural and Industrial

Development (CRRID) and National Institute of

Urban Affairs (NIUA) organized a “National

Workshop on Industrial Group Cities-Peer

Experience and Reflective Learning (PEARL)

Programme under JNNURM” on 8th June 2012 at

CRRID, Chandigarh. It was sponsored by the

Ministry of Urban Development, Government of

India under PEARL, Jawaharlal Nehru National

Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM). The agenda of

the programme is enclosed (Annexure A).

The workshop was attended by 26 participants

representing Kanpur Municipal Corporation,

Chandigarh Municipal Corporation, Municipal

Corporations of Ambala, Panipat, Yamunanagar,

Chandigarh Housing Board (CHB), Directorate of

Urban Development, Himachal Pradesh, Centre for

Research in Rural and Industrial Development (CRRID), Chandigarh, National Institute

of Urban Affairs (NIUA), New Delhi, Guru Nanak Dev University (GNDU), Amritsar and

others. List of the participants is attached (Annexure B).

The workshop was divided into five sessions.


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The Objective of the PEARL Workshop: The Objective of the PEARL Workshop: The Objective of the PEARL Workshop: The Objective of the PEARL Workshop:

An important objective of the workshop was to bring together urban managers,

practitioners, civil society and academic organizations working in the industrial group cities

under JNNURM to promote learning of best practices and failures in implementing JNNURM

projects. Another objective was to enable the cities to learn from each other and strengthen

the PEARL network of industrial group cities.

Inaugural Plenary:Inaugural Plenary:Inaugural Plenary:Inaugural Plenary:

Welcome Address

In the inaugural session Mr. Manoj Kumar Teotia, Assistant Professor (HUDCO Chair

Coordinator), CRRID started the proceedings of the day and gave welcome address with

introductory remarks about the panel of speakers and the invitees from various states. He

appreciated deeply Mr. M.P Singh, IAS, Secretary to Governor, Punjab for his presence and

noted his contributions to the field of local urban affairs over the past years. He said such

types of Peer Experience and Reflective Learning workshop are important at this juncture as

half of our population is going to be urbanized by 2050. Hence, the thrust must be on

sharing and replicating our best practices. Mr. J.P. Gupta, IAS (Retd), Former Chairman, First

Punjab Finance Commission chaired the inaugural session; Prof. Vijay Dhar, NIUA, New Delhi

set the context; Dr. R.S. Ghuman, Professor Nehru SAIL Chair, CRRID gave vote of thanks.

Mr. J. P. Gupta followed with a brief background

of the JNNURM in the light of the state of urban

affairs prior to the introduction of the scheme.

He stressed on the great possibility provided by

the JNNURM for cities to undertake major urban

development works. He spoke briefly about

innovative taxation policies (such as parking fee)

and also the difficulties of completing urban

infrastructure development projects prior to

JNNURM when no direct assistance was available

from the Government of India to the municipalities. The introduction of the JNNURM in

2005 was a tremendous step towards making massive reform based assistance available for

Source: Daily Post, June 9, 2012, Chandigarh


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urban development and renewal of degenerated areas. He re-iterated that though the

progress was initially poor but due modifications and policy checks were introduced with

time and some of the states have benefitted tremendously from the mission. At the same

time, he mentioned that North India has not benefitted much so far due to certain taxation

loopholes, political reasons and poor implementation of reforms agreed by the states with

the Central Government. He also referred to the report of Ahluwalia committee huge need

of funds for urban infrastructure and need of extending JNNURM for next 20 years with

suitable modifications.

Inaugural Address:

Mr. M.P. Singh started his inaugural address with the message of the need of persistent

efforts in the field of local governance on a daily basis and involvement of the highest order.

He said that urban sector has been facing crucial challenges due to the constant growth in

urban population and the resulting complexities.

Giving an example of Abohar town where the sewerage system had collapsed many years

back and needed to be re-laid at a huge cost. He spoke of the extreme difficulty in funding

of that order which would be required for such a big project undertaking. Here, the

JNNURM provides a window where state governments and urban local bodies can

undertake major projects easily by implementing reforms. Also, he explained that there are

no hidden stakeholders in the scheme and the benefits are solely for the residents of the

city. Yet, he remembered an initial reluctance on the part of Mayors, Ministers, etc towards

city development plans which; when finally introduced, benefitted the people in general and

officers in particular by increasing their knowledge about their own cities which is crucial for

the success of any programme or activity in urban sector. In this way, JNNURM changed

mindsets.


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Above: Mr. M.P. Singh, IAS, Secretary to

Governor, Punjab addressing the

participants in inaugural session.

Below: Participants at the workshop

Some states benefited greatly from JNNURM. Here, he

cited the example of Indore city bus service which makes

the experience of travelling within the city comfortable

and pleasant improving the lifestyle of the residents and

giving ease to visitors. In the seven years that JNNURM

has been in operation, there has been varying degree of

success in different cities as modifications are needed as

per local conditions. He pointed out that wherever there

has been maximum involvement of the residents, the

success rate has been higher. In conclusion, he strongly

stood with the belief that although urban governance is a

tough business and giving up would be an easy option, it

is possible to make a difference and become change

agents together.

After self introduction, Professor Vijay Dhar elaborated

that "Peer Experience and Reflective Learning" (PEARL) is

an initiative under JNNURM to support cities to actively

pursue activities in implementation of projects and reforms. NIUA conducts such workshops

at state level across the country so that peer experience and reflective learning can be

documented and shared at a common place i.e. India Urban Portal. Documenting best

practices will certainly be a readymade capsule for the others to adopt and replicate it. He

said the reason why NIUA is holding such consultation at micro level is so that awareness

can be created for documentation of best practices. He shared that NIUA also conducts

workshop on reflective learning by involving developed and developing economies of the

world in Latin America, Middle East and Asia etc.

He thanked CRRID team and Asst. Professor Teotia for providing local support in mobilizing

and liaisoning with participating ULBs and also in being a local partner in the one day

workshop. He thanked the representatives of ULBs for sparing their precious time in the one

day workshop.


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Participants during the National Workshop on



Participants during the National Workshop on Industrial Group

Industrial Group

Industrial Group

Industrial Group Cities

Cities

Cities

Cities

under PEARL, JNNURM

under PEARL, JNNURM

under PEARL, JNNURM

under PEARL, JNNURM

Shri J P Gupta welcomed and introduced the

presenters. Shri Gupta before opening presentations

said that PEARL has proven to be an excellent in

monitoring & evaluation of JNNURM and

documentation of best practices and urban

innovations. It has also build capacity of ULBs in

sharing the best practices. He said Chandigarh has fairly done in terms of

providing housing and basic services to urban poor.

Presentation 1: PEARL Background and Objectives

Presenter: Prof. Vijay Dhar, NIUA

Prof. Dhar in his presentation on PEARL first classified cities into six

categories viz. Mega Cities, Industrial Mega cities, Mixed Economy cities,

Cultural/religious cities, Hill cities, North East Hill cities.

Further he elaborated about documenting the best

practices and innovations at local level. In his

presentation, he intended to explain the ways of

documentation in a specified format developed by

NIUA and its submission to the India Urban Portal. He

said, the main objective of NIUA is to bridge the

knowledge gap between the diverse ULBs in the country.

Prof. Dhar highlighted the objective of Knowledge sharing and cross-

learning among JNNURM cities through effective knowledge networking as

the heart of the PEARL workshop. He also informed the participants of

related activities being carried out for the same purpose. These were:

� The PEARL website (India Urban Portal)

� Documentation of Urban Initiatives

� Quarterly Newsletter - PEARL Update


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� National and Group Workshops

� Exposure Visits and Twinning of Cities

� Capacity Building Programmes

He mentioned that a documentation of best practices and creation of archive resources

was a vital exercise in facilitating cross-learning and also gave examples of exposure

visits and discussion forums as being effective tools used successfully in the past.

Specifically for the Industrial group cities, he outlined the following points of

consideration:

� Issues and constraints faced in implementing JNNURM in Industrial

Cities.

� Identifying Knowledge Needs of Mission Cities and Strengthening of City-

to-City learning modes: people, ideas, institutions & resources

� Institutional and technical Capacity Building of ULBs

� Scaling-up to make PEARL website an Urban India Knowledge Hub

� Document urban initiatives from Industrial Cities for PEARL report

Session II City Presentations: Urban Initiatives and Reform Implementation

Session Chair: Professor Ranvinder Singh Sandhu,GNDU, Amritsar

Prof. Sandhu welcomed and introduced the presenters. He said lack

of capacity has played an important role in lowering the status of

Punjab. It needs a comprehensive revamp of the whole system and

simultaneously have to learn from other states who have carried

out development works under JNNURM. He invited Mr U N Tiwari

to speak on Integrated Solid Waste Management in Kanpur.


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Presentation 1: Integrated Solid Waste Management in Kanpur

Presenter: Shri UN Tiwari, Additional Commissioner, MC, Kanpur

Establishing effective Solid Waste Management as one of the major issues

facing urban areas in the country, Shri Tiwari mentioned the crucial aspect

of envisioning and executing an integrated project keeping in mind-

• Synergy of operation

• Optimizations of Resources recovery

• Total Accountability

• Sustainability of operation

• Landfill burden reduction

• Cross subsidizations of operational costs

He highlighted the following key questions to be kept in consideration while

establishing a sustainable solid waste management program:

� Collection, Transportation and disposal involves cost

� How to make it sustainable?

� Harness resources to subsidies the cost

� Adopt appropriate technologies and operational practices

� Introduce the concept of “Polluters to PAY”

The Solid waste management Project for Kanpur Nagar Nigam has been

approved by Govt. of India and was carried out in collaboration with A2Z

infrastructure Pvt. Ltd. inclusive of Door to Door Collection, Primary

Transportation, Transfer Station, Secondary Transportation, Recourse

Recovery, Disposal of Remnants In SLF, Power Generation from Refused

Derived Fuel.

� The approved cost of the project is 5624.00 lacs.

� Per capita quantity of solid waste generated in the town is 0.464 kg/day

� Total quantity of solid waste generated in the town as per DPR-1447

tons/day


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Various products from Waste: - Compost 40-50%

Refused derived fuel 30-35%

Plastic seat 10 to 35%

Interlocking tiles 2%

This has resulted in the total and timely removal of MSW, recovery of resources,

generation of compost to improve agricultural productivity & sustainability,

reduction of air and water pollution, reduction of land requirement to 10% and up

gradation of sanitation system in Kanpur city.

Session III City Presentations: Urban Initiatives and Reform Implementation

Session Chair: Professor Ranvinder Singh Sandhu,GNDU, Amritsar

Presentation: Challenges in Managing Urban Service Delivery: Sharing the HP

Experience

Presenter: Dr. Purnima Chauhan, IAS, Director, Urban Development, Government

of Himachal Pradesh

Dr Purnima Chauhan spoke extensively of the Global economic

shift which has fuelled urban growth in India too. Further, she

highlighted that without adequate investment in public health,

the human development index of India cannot be improved in

a real way. Here, she mentioned that bottlenecks in both

urban and rural infrastructure have been eroding the country’s

competitiveness. She gave the example of Japan in the case of

water supply innovations regarding health safety wherein double piping was avoided

and one quality of water was supplied for all purposes. The users in this case were

charged in full but were entitled to recycle water at their own level. She also explained

the case of Rajasthan and Gujarat where transferrable development rights for eg. Extra

FAR were introduced in addition to cross-subsidization measures. She outlined the

following measures for urban service delivery and quality of local governance:

• Financing


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• Standardising,

Enforcing policy, statutes, Regulations, reliable databases

• Capacity Building of Elected reps /officials for grassroots level ownership

• Citizen centric emphasis on efficient equitable, accessible, inclusive service

delivery

The Operational Challenges for ULBs were stressed upon in specific

relation to mountain areas. Mr. Chaudhary, Executive Officer,

Municipal Council, Parwanoo further elaborated upon some of the

measures taken by Himachal state towards sustainable and health

preserving reforms in the urban sector. He pointed that the state had

won many awards for plastic waste management measures as well as

other critical urban issues where innovative practices were adopted such as: w.e.f.

January, 1999 incorporating Rain Water Harvesting Systems in all buildings was made

compulsory. A ‘State Level Task Force’ monitors compliance. Also, Innovative sanitation

through the root zone of Phragmatis cumminus plant in a natural way and Ward Level

Solid waste management were talked about. The road map for the future challenges

was centered around –

� Converge

� Conserve

� Capacity augmentation

� Cost Benefit

� Cut Flab

Since, the issue of climate change is much more sensitive to hilly areas and the

pressure on land is far more, these measures and reforms are criticallimportant to

preserve the city fabric for the future.


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Session IV: City Presentations

Presentation: GIS based Property Tax reforms, Kanpur

Presenter: Shri UN Tiwari, Additional Commissioner, MC, Kanpur

Shri Tiwari elaborated on the Objective of the KMC On-line Property Tax Management

System Using Geospatial Technology as:

Developing required infrastructure, software, property tax Assessment List, online

property tax calculation, information & payment system based on Geographical

Information System (GIS). He explained the following key features of the policy:

1. For the first time the e-governance is GIS enabled and forms a Spatial decision

support system in a local government.

2. The system has resulted in enhancing the coverage by more than 50% & property

based tax revenue to two times as compared to the system that existed prior to the

introduction of the GIS based application.

3. The other positive fallouts of this Endeavour have been:

• Transparency in governance

• Reduction in delays in government processing of grievances

• Online tax payment and status verification facility removes intermediary agents

facilitating the same.

• Better revenues for investments into civic facilities

Presentation: Urban Reforms (A Case of Rajkot Municipal Corporation)

Presenter: Professor Vijay K Dhar

Prof. Dhar introduced the urban initiatives carried out in the city of

Rajkot in the following sectors, stressing upon replication, scalability

and sustainability of the practices adopted.

� Solid Waste Management

� Transport

� m-Governance

He outlined the following lessons learnt from the case study of Rajkot city initiatives:


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• Reduction in human dependency and lesser human intervention leads to

error free administration

• mGovernance reduces gap between organization and citizen

• Service delivery mechanism becomes more effective

• Effectiveness of payment reminder service shows that most of the citizens

are ready to pay their dues if proper follow up is taken.

• Vaccination alert resulted in decrease in drop out ratio of vaccination and

VPD has become almost nil

• Trust on local government system has increased drastically

• It is a win-win situation for both citizens and organization

Presentation: Integrated water and waste water management

practices, Chandigarh

Presenter: Mr. Rajender, Executive Engineer, Municipal

Corporation Chandigarh

Mr. Rajender spoke about the city beautiful Chandigarh which

was originally planned to be developed in three phases for a population of 5.00 lacs

only with 40% built up area, 40% green area and 20% for road network whereas

the population has increased manifold and there is a growing pressure for water

supply and waste management. The main points outlined in the presentation were:

The main points outlined in the presentation were:

• Chandigarh has a vision to make the water supply 24 X 7.

• To reduce Unaccounted for Water by identifying losses.

• Better surveillance and monitoring of Water received and pumped from

different water works.

• Better surveillance and efficient operation and maintenance of pumping

machinery.

• Generation of data for MIS for cost effective decision making.

• Reduction in manpower

• Reduction in recurring cost

• More reliable water supply system


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Presentation: Housing for the Urban Poor: A case of Chandigarh

Presenter: Manoj K Teotia, Assistant Professor (HUDCO Chair

Coordinator), CRRID

Mr Manoj K Teotia, in his presentation talked about the initiatives

taken for housing for the urban poor in Chandigarh under BSUP of

JNNURM. He said that increasing urbanization is aggravating

housing problem and resulting in increase in the land prices. Developed land is not

supplied according to the demand which results in mushrooming growth of slums

and squatter settlements. He spoke of rapid urbanization that has given rise to the

excessive demand for basic amenities resulting in deterioration in the physical

environment like excessive density without adequate streets, lights, drainage, parks

etc, inadequate livelihood options in slums, over crowded private schools in slums,

poor housing conditions and inadequate water supply, waste management. He

stressed on an inclusive urban agenda to counter some of these issues.

He stated that Chandigarh has experienced urban explosion during last three

decades. According to 2011 Census, Chandigarh had an urban population of 10.25

lakhs. But the urban demographic transition in Chandigarh has not accompanied by

the corresponding improvement in housing, basic services and livelihood. Slums

and poverty have emerged two major problems due to rapid urbanization in

Chandigarh and there has been a multifold increase in the population of slum

dwellers and households living in unauthorized colonies. The Census of India

indicated that population in ‘jhuggi/jhopri’ colonies of Chandigarh grew to 0.58

lakh persons in 1991 and further to 1.07 lakh persons (13.24% of the total urban

population) in 2001. In a Biometric Survey conducted by Chandigarh

Administration, 23841 slum families in 18 slum colonies were identified for

providing housing to the poor.

Chandigarh Administration through Chandigarh Housing Board (CHB) has been

making efforts from time to time to provide housing and basic services to the poor.

The Administration has been providing land to the Board at the concessional rate of

Rs.40/- per sq. yard although the development cost is Rs.55/-per sq. yard. The land

is on a 99 years lease; same as in the case of auctioned plots. The period for paying

for the dwellings through monthly installments vary from 18 years from

economically bear sections to 10 years for middle income group. Till March 2011,

the CHB has constructed a total of 49713 houses of various categories. About 46%

of these were meant for the economically weaker section (EWS), primarily in

peripheral colonies, for re-settling of un-authorized settlements. Another 19% were

for the Low Income Group (LIG), 22% for the Middle Income Group (MIG) and 13%

for the High Income Group (HIG).


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He cited many completed works under this project such as Sector 38 (west), Ram

Darbar, Sector 49 while construction on 12864 Flats is in progress and 1653 Slum

families have already been rehabilitated in Pre-fab shelters at Sector-52 (1613)

and Sector 56(40), and 1318 Slum families are already rehabilitated in Flats at

Industrial Area Ph-I (103) , sector 56 (708) and Sector-38(W) (507 families). He

cited the success of Chandigarh by enumerating the awards received by the city in

recent years such as: Award for providing quality sanitation in 2010, Best City for

Planned Habitat for Urban Poor in 2009-10. Chandigarh also ranks first in India in

the Human Development Index (HDI).

Valedictory Address:

Shri. Nitin Kumar Yadav, IAS, Joint Secretary, Finance Development,

Government of Haryana

Shri. Nitin Kr. Yadav elaborated on the fiscal challenges of urban local

bodies and the need for better fiscal management systems, devolution of

funds and powers and collection of taxes. He spoke about innovative reforms that

have taken place in the urban sector in terms of eGovernance, mGovernance,

Human Resource management, Infrastructure etc. and at the same time mentioned

the challenges and hindrances faced by ULBs especially in terms of taxation and

resource mobilization. He stressed on the need for incentivizing rather than

creating grants as well as the necessity for ULBs to raise capital citing the example

of Ahmedabad. He re-iterated the need for urban reform proposals to be grounded

in reality, and aimed towards improving the fiscal state of urban local bodies by

being bankable and efficient solutions.

Prof. S.K.Mangal concluded the session by thanking Shri. Nitin Yadav for his

remarks and stressed upon the need for capacity building of MCs. He also expressed

concern about the proper execution of bankable solutions as mentioned but was

optimistic for future innovations and urban reforms.

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