Dvara Research BlogDvara Research Blog
Dvara Research Blog
Doorway to Financial Access
  • Home
  • Our Work
  • Themes
  • Subscribe
    • Email Subscription
    • Feed
  • Contact Us
Menu back  

Workshop on Urban Infrastructure & Service Delivery

October 3, 2011Leave a commentRegulation Viewed : 4159

By Shweta Aggarwal, IFMR Rural Finance & Deepti George, IFMR Finance Foundation

The High Powered Expert Committee, chaired by Dr. Isher Ahluwalia submitted its Report on Indian Urban Infrastructure and Service Delivery. The report lays out the infrastructure investment needs for urban India in the next twenty years and makes recommendations for mechanisms to finance such a magnitude of investments.

Having contributed to the drafting of the report, IFMR Finance Foundation and the Centre for Development Finance (CDF) invited Dr. Ahluwalia to speak about the report in a workshop on Urban Infrastructure and Service Delivery. Held on 8th September 2011, this workshop had participation from a small but diverse mix of people actively engaged in shaping the urban agenda, from practitioners, representatives from Government bodies, to academicians. The workshop commenced with a session by Dr. Ahluwalia, followed by a session by Mr. Vikram Kapur, IAS (who previously held the position of CEO of TN Urban Development Fund) and concluded with panel discussions by the participants.

The Sessions:

Dr. Isher Ahluwalia presented the report’s findings and shared experiences from the process of writing the report. While she spoke about the need for planning, financing, creating and maintaining urban infrastructure, she also specified that standards of service delivery must be available to all including the poor.  All efforts must be made towards consciously building rural-urban synergies in policy and planning. To this end, reforming governance at all levels of government, from the Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) to the Centre, as well as investing in capacity building of the ULBs should be the need of the hour. She stated that municipal entities need to be strengthened with ‘own’ sources of revenue and predictable transfers from state governments, to help them discharge the larger responsibilities assigned to them by the 74th Constitutional Amendment.

Dr. Ahluwalia also noted that having a ‘local bodies’ list in the Constitution and making devolution mandatory would empower ULBs by giving them opportunities to collect specific local body taxes and charges (such as motor vehicle tax, entertainment tax, advertisement fee). Policies will need to be altered to incentivise states that devolve more powers to the ULBs. Dr. Ahluwalia conveyed best practices that she had opportunity to see during the course of her work, which she regularly writes about in her monthly columns in the Indian Express.

Mr. Vikram Kapur shared experiences from Tamil Nadu while addressing Long Term Infrastructure Financing needs of Urban Local Bodies (ULBs), especially small and medium cities in India. He stressed that investment needs for small and medium cities over the next 20 years was 65 times the current level of investments. Mr. Kapur stressed that given India’s phenomenal growth rate of 8% and a record of healthy savings rates, the government should tap domestic capital markets to finance these needs. He stated that the key today is to shift the way government funds are used, to leverage government funds rather than looking at them purely as grants.

The below video contains some excerpts of the two sessions. The full video of the two sessions can be accessed here: Dr Isher Ahluwalia – Mr Vikram Kapur.

Excerpts from the two sessions:

Workshop:

The group discussions that ensued were based on critical themes such as decentralisation and governance, political economy and institutional fragmentation, revenue generation and infrastructure financing, water and sanitation, capacity building, and land and city growth. Many interesting ideas and themes were generated in this workshop. We will be carrying these in a subsequent post.

Share Via :Tweet about this on Twitter
Twitter
Share on Facebook
Facebook
Share on LinkedIn
Linkedin
Email this to someone
email
IFMR Finance Foundationinfrastructure
Leave Comment

Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

eighteen + fifteen =

clear formSubmit

Related posts
Let’s stop kicking the can down the road: Highlighting important and unaddressed gaps in microcredit regulations
October 24, 2019
The RBI’s proposed Public Credit Registry and its implications for the credit reporting system in India
June 18, 2019
Our Response to the Reserve Bank of India on the Draft Enabling Framework for Regulatory Sandbox
May 8, 2019
RBI’s Financial Stability Reports – A Commentary on its Purpose and Contents
November 2, 2018
Our response to the draft Personal Data Protection Bill, 2018
October 10, 2018
Directed Credit: How can banks become more efficient at delivery?
March 18, 2018
Search
Recent Comments
  • Srikara Prasad on Artificial Intelligence in Digital Credit in India: “Thank you for the feedback and for sharing these resources, Mr Rathi. They will definitely be helpful in our work.”
  • Harshit Rathi on Artificial Intelligence in Digital Credit in India: “Hi, Wonderful article on the use of AI/ML for digital credit in India. As rightly mentioned in the article, many…”
  • Srikara Prasad on Artificial Intelligence in Digital Credit in India: “Thank you, Bindu. Our upcoming posts on regulation of AI in finance will benefit from these pointers. It will be…”
Subscribe and Follow Us

Popular Post

Popular Post
  • Making Grievances Matter: Unpacking Exclusion, Grievance Redress, and the Role of Civil Society Organisations
    March 2, 2021
  • Access, Redressal & Finance in Uttar Pradesh: The Farmers in Rural Uttar Pradesh
    February 19, 2021
  • Consumer Grievance Redress in Financial Disputes in India
    February 18, 2021

Categories

Categories
  • Channels(88)
  • Consumer Protection(33)
  • Events(30)
  • Featured(31)
  • Field Reports(6)
  • From the field(9)
  • General(22)
  • Guest(29)
  • Household Research(75)
  • Long Term Debt Markets(9)
  • News(45)
  • Origination(30)
  • Products(42)
  • Regulation(112)
  • Research(176)
  • Risk Aggregation(26)
  • Risk transmission(63)
  • Small Cities(21)
  • Technology(25)
  • Uncategorized(105)
  • Unemployment Support(5)

Archives

Archives
  • March 2021 (1)
  • February 2021 (8)
  • January 2021 (4)
  • December 2020 (7)
  • November 2020 (7)
  • October 2020 (11)
  • September 2020 (10)
  • August 2020 (12)
  • July 2020 (3)
  • June 2020 (5)
  • May 2020 (8)
  • April 2020 (4)
  • March 2020 (8)
  • February 2020 (3)
  • January 2020 (9)
  • December 2019 (4)
  • November 2019 (3)
  • October 2019 (7)
  • September 2019 (3)
  • August 2019 (2)
  • July 2019 (4)
  • June 2019 (4)
  • May 2019 (4)
  • April 2019 (7)
  • March 2019 (2)
  • February 2019 (3)
  • January 2019 (3)
  • December 2018 (5)
  • November 2018 (2)
  • October 2018 (5)
  • September 2018 (2)
  • August 2018 (2)
  • July 2018 (2)
  • June 2018 (2)
  • May 2018 (1)
  • April 2018 (1)
  • March 2018 (5)
  • February 2018 (2)
  • January 2018 (2)
  • December 2017 (5)
  • November 2017 (4)
  • October 2017 (3)
  • September 2017 (1)
  • August 2017 (3)
  • July 2017 (1)
  • June 2017 (3)
  • May 2017 (4)
  • April 2017 (3)
  • March 2017 (4)
  • February 2017 (3)
  • January 2017 (6)
  • December 2016 (5)
  • November 2016 (2)
  • October 2016 (3)
  • September 2016 (5)
  • August 2016 (4)
  • July 2016 (4)
  • June 2016 (8)
  • May 2016 (4)
  • April 2016 (5)
  • March 2016 (4)
  • February 2016 (3)
  • January 2016 (3)
  • December 2015 (3)
  • November 2015 (1)
  • October 2015 (2)
  • September 2015 (3)
  • August 2015 (5)
  • July 2015 (3)
  • June 2015 (3)
  • May 2015 (3)
  • April 2015 (2)
  • March 2015 (3)
  • February 2015 (1)
  • January 2015 (1)
  • December 2014 (5)
  • November 2014 (4)
  • October 2014 (3)
  • September 2014 (4)
  • August 2014 (4)
  • July 2014 (4)
  • June 2014 (8)
  • May 2014 (1)
  • April 2014 (4)
  • March 2014 (5)
  • February 2014 (6)
  • January 2014 (8)
  • December 2013 (7)
  • November 2013 (8)
  • October 2013 (7)
  • September 2013 (7)
  • August 2013 (5)
  • July 2013 (6)
  • June 2013 (7)
  • May 2013 (6)
  • April 2013 (8)
  • March 2013 (9)
  • February 2013 (6)
  • January 2013 (9)
  • December 2012 (8)
  • November 2012 (7)
  • October 2012 (5)
  • September 2012 (5)
  • August 2012 (5)
  • July 2012 (7)
  • June 2012 (4)
  • May 2012 (6)
  • April 2012 (4)
  • March 2012 (7)
  • February 2012 (6)
  • January 2012 (8)
  • December 2011 (8)
  • November 2011 (7)
  • October 2011 (8)
  • September 2011 (7)
  • August 2011 (3)
  • July 2011 (6)
  • June 2011 (11)
  • May 2011 (8)
  • April 2011 (9)
  • March 2011 (13)
  • February 2011 (10)
  • January 2011 (8)
  • December 2010 (10)
  • November 2010 (10)
  • October 2010 (10)
  • September 2010 (7)
  • August 2010 (13)
  • July 2010 (10)
  • June 2010 (6)
  • May 2010 (13)
  • April 2010 (7)
  • March 2010 (10)
  • February 2010 (5)
  • January 2010 (4)
  • December 2009 (3)
  • November 2009 (1)
  • October 2009 (6)
  • August 2009 (1)
  • July 2009 (2)
  • June 2009 (1)
  • May 2009 (1)
  • April 2009 (1)
  • March 2009 (1)
Share Via :Tweet about this on Twitter
Twitter
Share on Facebook
Facebook
Share on LinkedIn
Linkedin
Email this to someone
email
Site Map

www.dvara.com