K'taka needs Rs 93,000 cr over five years for 350 ULBs

Bangalore city would require Rs 93,000 crore to meet the needs of its denizens. The amount is the capital that will be required by the city to provide water to the people living in the city; build sewerage network; roads and also storm water drains.

The Karnataka government made a presentation before the 14th finance commission about two months ago and sought central funds to upgrade Bangalore's infrastructure.

"We have told the commission that we require Rs 93,000 crore over a period of five years between 2015 and 2020 to upgrade the infrastructure across eight sectors in the state," said L V Nagarajan, chairman, Karnataka Urban Infrastructure Development and Finance Corporation (KUIDFC).

Speaking at a panel discussion on the second day of the two-day Karnataka Economic Summit, organised by the Bangalore Chamber of Industry and Commerce (BCIC), he said, raising money would be a difficult task for the government.

"We can raise around Rs 42,000 crore and there will be a shortfall of Rs 51,000 crore. Raising this much money should not be difficult for the government or government bodies," he said.

The cost of delivering the services is prohibitive, he said.

The per capita cost of providing water connections Rs 5,200, while in the case of sewerage network it is Rs 4,700 per capita and for roads it's Rs 23,000 per capita, he explained.

Nagarajan said the operations and maintenance costs are also very high.

For water pipelines, operations and maintenance costs is Rs 300 per capita per annum, sewerage lines Rs 286 per capita per annum.

"All these are required because of the rapid urbanisation happening in the state while the investments on infrastructure have not been keeping pace with the growth," says Natarajan.

From 2001 to 2011, the rate of urbanisation has been at a CAGR of 2.8 per cent.

"But, the number of urban local bodies has remained more or less the same. Hence, there's been a call for more investments on infrastructure," added Nagarajan.

He said that by 2047 India would need some 600 cities to sustain growth.

Averring with him is Naresh Narasimhan, managing director, Venkataramanan Associates, architecture firm, who said in the last 110 years, the number of urban centres in India have grown from just 201 to 235.

Since 1947, only two cities have been created - Navi Mumbai and Chandigarh, he said. The reasons for the lack of urban development in the country was the systematic emasculation of power of the urban local bodies, which now number 43 in Bangalore.

They do not communicate with each other, he said.

Narasimhan added the agencies are all opaque and the only elected body is the BBMP.

Hence, there was the need for a single authority to manage affairs of the city.