Cleaning up the Garden City

States are involved in upgrading the creaking infrastructure of their cities as they grapple with rapid urbanisation. fe’s state correspondents report
Cleaning up the Garden City

Financial Express

Karnataka is one of the rapidly urbanising states in the country, as nearly 1.8 crore people—one-third of the state’s population—live in urban areas, 40% of whom are in Bangalore.

The state expects to fund infrastructure development on its own once revenue from its current projects, to be completed in two to five years, start flowing. Most of these projects are partially funded by the Union government and foreign banks. Karnataka’s urban local body (ULB) structure comprises seven corporations, 43 city municipal councils (CMCs), 79 town municipal councils (TMCs) and 93 town panchayats (TPs). The government has started creating industrial clusters across the state in a bid to decongest Bangalore, opening the doors for various infrastructure projects in all ULBs.

Under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM), the Centre had already approved a Rs 22,536-crore capital investment plan to take up various infrastructure projects in Greater Bangalore, which includes Bangalore city, seven CMCs and one TMC.

The JNNRUM projects, for which a 35% contribution comes from the Centre, 15% from the state and the remaining 50% from ULBs, will be implemented in the next five years in Bangalore and Mysore.

In the current fiscal, the state has submitted 22 detailed project reports (DPRs) to the Centre for sanction of funds through JNNURM. The Centre has given its nod for 13 DPRs, with an outlay of Rs 1,152 crore, while nine DPRs worth Rs 513 crore are pending approval, sources said, adding the state had prepared another 13 DPRs with an outlay of Rs 950 crore to get the Centre’s nod before this fiscal end.

• The National Highway Authority of India has been implementing a ten-lane, mixed corridor-elevated highway project, the first of its kind in the country, in Bangalore city at an estimated cost of Rs 450 crore
For 2007-08, the state planned to get Centre’s approval for 40 DPRs worth Rs 7,614 crore. These JNNRUM projects will focus mainly on roads, water, drainage, solid waste management, storm water drainage in Bangalore, its suburban areas, and Mysore.

The National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) has been implementing a ten-lane, mixed corridor-elevated highway project, the first of its kind in the country, in Bangalore city at an estimated cost of Rs 450 crore. The elevated highway, which is aimed at solving the traffic woes of India’s popular IT stretch on the Bangalore-Hosur national highway, would be opened for traffic in 2008. The first phase of the much-awaited Rs 6,395-crore Bangalore Metro Rail project, which aims to ease traffic on city roads caused by 2.5 million vehicles would be ready by 2009.