Context: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday laid the foundation stone of Light House Projects (LHP) under Global Housing Technology Challenge-India (GHTC-India) at six sites across six States. In this episode we will discuss and analyse the importance of technology in urban transformation.Key 

Key highlights

• The Prime Minister will also announce winners under Affordable Sustainable Housing Accelerators (ASHA) - India and give out annual awards for excellence in implementation of Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana - Urban (PMAY-U) Mission.
• The Prime Minister will also release a certificate course on innovative construction technologies named NAVARITIH (New, Affordable, Validated, Research Innovation Technologies for Indian Housing).

About Global Housing Technology Challenge (GHTC)-India

• It is conceptualized by the Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs.
• It aims to identify and mainstream a basket of innovative technologies from across the globe that is sustainable and disaster-resilient.
• The GHTC-India platform aspires to provide an eco-system for the adoption of innovative technologies in the housing construction sector in a holistic manner.
• The GHTC-India leverages the scale and successes of the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (Urban) and its Technology Sub-Mission.
• Additional Information

Light House Projects (LHPs)

• It showcases the best of new-age alternate global technologies, materials and processes in the construction sector for the first time in the country at such a large scale.
• The light-houses are being constructed under GHTC-India, which envisages to provide an ecosystem for adoption of innovative technologies in the housing construction sector in a holistic manner.
• The LHPs are being constructed at Indore in Madhya Pradesh, Rajkot in Gujarat, Chennai in Tamil Nadu, Ranchi in Jharkhand, Agartala in Tripura and Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh.
• The projects will demonstrate and deliver ready to live houses at an expedited pace within twelve months, as compared to conventional brick and mortar construction.
• The LHPs will serve as live laboratories for facilitating transfer of technology to the field and its further replication.

ASHA-India

• It aims to promote domestic research and entrepreneurship by providing incubation and acceleration support to potential future technologies.
• Under ASHA-India initiative, five ASHA-India Centers have been set up for providing incubation and acceleration support.
• The technologies, processes and materials identified through this initiative will provide a major fillip to young creative minds, start-ups, innovators and entrepreneurs.

PMAY-U Mission
It has been designed to achieve the vision of Housing For All by 2022.
In order to recognize the outstanding contribution by States, UTs, Urban Local Bodies and beneficiaries, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs has introduced annual awards for excellence in implementation of PMAY-Urban.

What is Urbanisation?
The Census of India, 2011 defines urban settlement as, all the places which have municipality, corporation and cantonment board or notified town area committee. Additionally, all the other places which satisfy following criteria:

• A minimum population of 5000 persons ;
• At least 75 % of male main working population engaged in non-agricultural pursuits ; and
• A density of population of at least 400 persons per square kilometre

Urbanisation: A transformative force

• By 2030, 600 million Indians, or 40 per cent of the country’s population, would be residing in urban areas. If this urbanisation is to happen in a planned manner, we will need to build 700 to 900 million square meters of properly designed residential and commercial space in urban areas every year from now to 2030. It is imperative that the country moves from being a “reluctant urbaniser” to one that embraces urbanisation as a transformative force that can deliver an improved quality of life for all its citizens.

India’s cities need to address five systemic challenges in order to deliver better quality of life to citizens in a sustainable manner –

• Lack of viable spatial planning and design standards for public utilities: India has 1 urban planner per 400,000 people compared to UK’s 148 for the same
• Weak finances, both in terms of financial sustainability and accountability: more than half of the municipalities do not generate enough money to pay their salaries, 70% of the cities’ budget vary by 30%
• Poor human resource management: 35% average staff vacancy
• Powerless mayors and city councils, severe fragmentation of governance: multiple civic bodies, parastatals – multiple civic bodies with frequent change of toothless mayors, commissioners. Local government has the least amount of capability, quality of delivery and poor processes that are being followed. Most of the laws and policies that they are following are archaic.
• Total absence of systematic citizen participation and transparency: Only two cities have ward committees

Road Ahead

• Finally, there is a need to frame a systemic policy to deal with urban migration. India has been among the fastest-growing economies in the world for more than two decades. This has brought about the structural transformation of the economy such that the share of agriculture in GDP has declined to 14% and that of services has increased to 58%. But this structural transformation must involve spatial transformation.