India, Europe must engage at municipal level, says Kamal Nath

Kamal Nath became the first minister from the developing world to address a plenary session of Europe’s Committee of the Regions (CoR) in Brussels, as the urban development minister today proposed a deeper engagement between New Delhi and Europe at the municipal level.

CoR is a consultative body of the European Union focussed on regional and local level growth and governance.

Nath said that 70 per cent of India’s GDP would be generated from cities in the next decade as would the same percentage of of new job opportunities. India’s huge urban infrastructure deficit presented an opportunity for engagement with urban bodies in Europe, he told the Business Standard. “The experience and technology that Europe has in urban planning, waste management, and capacity building at the municipal levels would be very useful for us,” he said.

He made out the case for the economic opportunity presented by India´s urban development needs, saying that 25 billion dollars would be earmarked by the centre to support India’s next urban renewal mission to be unveiled next year.

Urban infrastructure development would generate $500 billion in India over the next five years, and $1.3 trillion over the next two decades, he said. “In India, it is not projects that are chasing investments, but investments that are chasing projects,” he added, saying what was needed was viable, environment-friendly and technology-savvy projects.

Although the level of development in Europe and India made the challenges of the cities in both very different, Nath said the economics of urbanisation in the two might differ, while the concepts had a mutual utility. “I want to understand and learn more about private-public partnerships in water management or waste recycling, for example.”

European assistance would also be “very helpful” in capacity building for skills like city planning and management at the municipal level, he added.

CoR President Mercedes Bresso agreed that the room for cooperation was substantial. “We in Europe can also learn from Indian solutions to urbanisation problems because you have challenges on such a large scale that it forces you to devise innovative solutions that are interesting for us.”