People’s participation in city development - Prog by Corp
National Technical Advisory Group Chairman Ramesh Ramanathan (left) greets a City Technical Advisory Group member at the Coimbatore Corporation’s meeting on Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission in the city on Thursday.A meeting of the City Technical Advisory Groups convened by the Coimbatore Corporation on Thursday stressed people’s participation in city development.It was also pointed out that while the Government would draw up schemes and partly fund them, raising the rest of the resources and also planning and implementation needed the total involvement of the people. This concept is being promoted under the Union Urban Development Ministry’s infrastructure development programme, the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission. Coimbatore is among the 63 cities chosen under the mission for infrastructure development.The mission stresses people’s participation. A National Technical Advisory Group has been formed with architects, engineers, chartered accountants and also infrastructure and waste management experts as members.Similar groups for the cities have also been formed. Their task is to work closely with the civic body in planning and implementing the schemes. In the process, they will pass on to the civic body and the Central and State Governments the needs of the city and people’s expectations.
In his keynote address at the meeting, Chairman of the national-level group Ramesh Ramanathan pointed out that the mission was only a catalyst and should not be used as a crutch for development. Explaining the mission’s objective, he said it underlined people’s participation in a large way.“People’s involvement is an in-built component of the mission. We must remember that the action [the schemes] is in the cities and not in New Delhi where the mission had been drawn up,” he told the city-level group members at the meeting.“We are going to various mission cities to sell this concept. Madurai has done an excellent job on this front. Some cities have done well so far and some have not. It will go on well if the groups involved want it to,” he pointed out. “Going by the introduction of the members at the start of the meeting, I can see that there is unbelievable talent and experience in this city. Yet, if you cannot change the destiny of Coimbatore, we have only ourselves to blame,” he cautioned.
Referring to the Rs.3,186 crore mentioned by other speakers as the outlay for the schemes for Coimbatore, Mr. Ramanathan said that the city would actually need Rs.7,500 crore to have what its people would need for the next 20 years.But, only a part of the funds would come from the Governments. The city would have to identify the source for the rest.Mr. Ramanathan said the mission was a complicated programme. There were tough questions on various components, but no easy answers. “The mission is an obligation on the part of our generation. Therefore, public involvement should be deep and media coverage continuous,” he said.
Presiding over the inaugural, Mayor R. Venkatachalam said the mission schemes were eagerly awaited by the people and their elected representatives. But, many people thought that the funds had already come. These had only been allocated and would reach the Corporation only when it started implementing the schemes.With the peripheral areas set to merge with the Corporation, the city might even grow to the size of a metropolis in the years to come. Therefore, people must work with the Corporation to say what the city in which they lived needed in terms of development and to make it liveable.The Mayor said at least 200 more staff members were needed for the Corporation so that one section could handle the mission scheme and the other the routine work.Mr. Venkatachalam endorsed Deputy Mayor N. Karthik’s view that councillors should also be made members of the advisory groups as they were elected by the people. Mr. Karthik felt that implementation would be better if the elected representatives were also involved.
