Why construction should be banned in Delhi

FDI in construction-development projects fell by over 38 per cent during the year ending March 2015 to $ 758 million compared to $ 1,226 million in FY14.

FDI flow has remained weak this year with just $34 million of investments in the April-June quarter of this fiscal. The poor pick-up in the inflow is owing to the slow approval process.

Despite the ‘ease of doing business’ initiative, even the CM of Maharashtra is struggling to break the mafia impasse that stonewalls the approval process and runs an extortion racket under his nose. Even the Environment Ministry approvals have not improved and remain contentious. In a way this is good as cities barely have any capacity to carry the weight of high-rise towers. Ideally, construction in cities with a population over 5 million should be banned until and unless the municipal corporation can provide proof of the capacity per capita in terms of ability of the city to handle traffic, sewerage, and provide water and power.

These cut-off capacities should be published on their websites permanently and should be sacrosanct in implementation or else all—Pune, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Chennai, Bengaluru, Kolkata and Mumbai—will follow Delhi in becoming dangerous cities (Already, 13 of the world’s 20 most polluted cities are in India).

Delhi is bathing in dust as construction debris and dust are contributing to 45 per cent of the pollution in the city. So while the CM of Delhi is at his wits’ end over the odd-even car scheme, the real culprit goes unchecked. A city administration must develop city infra projects to raise the capacities of services before giving a nod to growth.

As metro projects progress in a dozen Indian cities, as roads projects accelerate to reach 30 km per day, and as real-estate construction gathers momentum to build even higher towers dotting the skyline, we need to set a framework so that the growth of a city is not at the cost of the life of its citizens.

(The article is authored by Pratap Padode, Founder & Director of Smart Cities Council India, an international consortium of smart cities expert practitioners, academicians and solution providers with over 7500 case studies across the world. Please visit www.India.SmartCitiesCouncil.com)

(Image: Reuters)