India shouldn't replicate China's urbanisation models: NITI Aayog VC

Given India's diversity, it cannot afford "inequitable and unbalanced urbanisation, said Niti Aayog VC Rajiv Kumar

Instead of replicating foreign models that may lead to inequitable and unbalanced urbanisation, India needs to create growth hubs across the country, NITI Aayog Vice Chairman Rajiv Kumar said on Thursday.

Given India's diversity, it cannot afford "inequitable and unbalanced urbanisation", he said.

"It's unfortunate that we continuously look for foreign models... We cannot let India replicate what China has done," Rajiv Kumar said during the national workshop on "Municipal Finance and Effective & Accelerated Implementation of Smart Cities" here.

He said that development in China had happened only along the coastline whereas other areas had remained backward, forcing millions of people to move inward to their homelands during the Chinese New Year and India cannot have millions of people moving from one part of the nation to the other on festivals like Diwali or Holi.

"To minimise the presence of dualistic structure and to connect villages with all the urban facilities, we need to introduce the concept of 'rurban'," he said.

"In order to empower our cities, we need economic-political legitimacy, technologically smart solutions and intellectual legitimacy," he added.

"Unless we make our cities generators of India, we won't get intellectual legitimacy."