Five Ideas That Can Change Quality of Infrastructure in India

In this article

Enormous growth of big and small towns in India is causing pains to its citizens and governments alike. While it is important to achieve economic growth for prosperity of its members, adverse effects of improperly managed growth is posing serious challenges of all kinds. This article discusses few policy changes that are likely to have significant positive impact on overall quality of infrastructure in India.

Ideas for change
1. Standard town model
2. Special purpose zones for efficient infrastructure
3. Plan by government, execution by private entities
4. One agency responsible for all public works
5. Minimum floor space index

Standard town model

One idea is to conceptualize a standard town model across the nation. We can simply build a drawing for a town of specific size (say 3km x 3km) and use that as a template to create multiple towns across the nation.

Advantage of this approach is that a master plan ensures that all towns have same basic lifestyle commitments. This also ensures that there is no undesired effect of over utilization or under utilization of the land resource in question.

This has some drawbacks too. While flexibility for specific designs is compromised, it also raises the question of how to update these standards when new requirements arise. This can be addressed by allowing some space for expansion and future requirements in the plan.

Special purpose zones for efficient infrastructure

It is well understood that any infrastructure built for specific usage is more efficient than a generic all purpose infrastructure. Latter seems to be chaotic while trying to address all needs at the same time. Former is efficient while imposing some additional costs on overall system.

We can establish special purpose zones that allow a specific category of users only. Some such examples are listed below:

(a) Residential zone
This zone would allow only housing projects. A simple housing plan with all required utilities for residential usage must be available in this zone. These zones may have small roads, many one ways and good pedestrian paths, parks, etc.

(b) Industrial zone
This zone houses small and big industries. This zone must address requirements for heavy industrial transportation and constructions.

(c) School zone
This zone is restricted to schools and colleges only. It would serve as a large hub exclusively for academic activity.

(d) Green zone
This zone would host mini forests, parks, lakes, etc. It would act as a lung space to provide oxygen to rest of the zones. As the name suggests, this zone must be carbon free.

(e) Commercial zone
This zone would house small and big shops, malls and other commercial establishments.

(f) Sports zone
This zone would house many sporting complexes. Each zone must provide facility for all major sports along with facility for sports persons, trainers, etc. Each of these zones can be conceived like a national games village that can also host a major sports event.

(g) Research zone
Just like sports, we also need an exclusive environment for research. This zone would provide a hub for research activities.

(h) Government zone
Government establishments are huge and often occupy large spaces in various places. This zone can consolidate all government establishments and provide a secure infrastructure.

(i) Hospital zone
Residential zones must house preventive and normal health clinics within it. Hospital zone could house large hospitals for special care.

(j) Entertainment zone
This zone can house all entertainment houses.
 

Plan by government, execution by private entities

One of the major concerns of recent growth is that it is not managed for efficiency. In many cases, this is caused by private parties planning infrastructure in small pockets of the city. While these entities do plan an individual infrastructure very well, they may not have incentive to address needs of the large community around them.

Here we can evaluate whether government should still continue to plan infrastructure (as it did in the past), but allow private parties to execute those projects. When a government plans for infrastructure, larger community issues can be addressed.

For example, a major office complex builder may not build a fly over to de-congest traffic flow from the complex since he does not have the right incentive to do so. If the plans were drawn from a public entity, this would have been a major requirement in the plan.

One agency responsible for all public works

This concept may sound like a counterproductive idea as it is against specialization. However, one just needs to visit work done by different entities in India to get a grasp of the problem.

Issue here is not just accountability, which exists in any case, but also about transactional data sharing and comprehensive planning. This is a challenge for anyone dealing with multiple public entities.

Here the suggestion is to define one entity that manages all public works in a specific zone. This way, entity can be trusted with greater accountability. Since entity is small, it can engage local citizens actively for all critical decisions. This would help citizens to not only participate in the decision making process, but also demand a better service.

Minimum floor space index

Land is a natural resource that needs special attention. Just like any other natural resource, it is limited in supply and hence demands better efficiency in its usage.

Land usage is often erratic and inefficient in India. There is still the concept of independent villas that take away precious land to house just single, often small, families. This inefficient usage leads to conversion of fertile agriculture land into concrete pockets which then results in deforestation for replenishing lost agriculture land. This vicious chain has resulted in heavy loss of green resource.

In combination with earlier suggestion of special purpose zones, we should also aim at increasing overall land utilization. One way to do this is to address the issue using floor space index. We can setup norms so that for each land usage, we could define a minimum floor space index and utilization ratios.

Conclusion

This article just touches upon few ideas to improve quality of infrastructure in India. It must be read with a clear understanding of other constraints on resources. Hope this article serves to initiate a healthy debate for a better future.