India Smart Cities - A plan to fail

Our daily experience tells us that Indian cities are not well-planned. They are being designed to fail. I present to you a detailed analysis of development plan gone wrong. Totally WRONG!

Nov 25, 2022

In 2016, Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation Ltd. (MSRDC) declared their intent to develop 71 villages along the Mumbai-Pune Expressway into a Special Planning Area (SPA). Accordingly, MSRDC was designated as the planning authority, and it created a development plan (DP) for this SPA for 2021-2041. You may download it on the MRSRDC website.

Three village civic authorities approached me to help them evaluate this plan in 2019 to submit some suggestions. I was appalled by this plan. Now I have learned that the project is going for implementation. Here I reproduce an article I wrote for Moneylife analysing the plan. It is a classic case of a plan designed to fail.

Flawed planning process

The Draft Development Plan Report was ready in November 2018, but the same was uploaded in December 2018. MSRDC sent intimations to various village civic bodies by the end of December 2018. MSRDC wanted feedback on the Draft DP by 14/Jan/2019. In mere 18 days, all the villagers and experts were required to review the DP assumptions and submit their objections.

As we shall see below, the DP has so many shortcomings that it is bound to create a spate of litigations. It was impossible to review and file objections within 18 days to a 123-page DP with many assumptions built in. When these disputes reach the High Court, many judges will point out how no one objected when DP was released. This itself sets the stage for delays in execution. Today none of the Development plans, at least in Maharashtra, have been implemented as per their design and within the time frame contemplated in the plan.

The Draft DP, as per the plan, has been developed after consultations with the stakeholders. The stakeholders should be landowners, residents of the plan area, residents of adjacent areas, job creators, various infrastructure providers etc. No one was consulted except builders and developers. Even the Village civic bodies (Gram Panchayats) were not consulted. If MSRDC truly wants stakeholders’ input, they should upload the details of suggestions received for public scrutiny.

Nevertheless, let us turn to DP itself.

Planning must be in the proper context.

It is impossible to understand the Development plan without a proper context of what cities will look like in the future. So ideally, for DP plan for an Indian city should compare the plan area with statistics from tier I Indian cities such as Mumbai, Delhi-NCR, tier II cities from the same state such as Pune, Nashik, etc. AND developed cities in the world like New York, London, Paris and Asian developed cities like Singapore, Hong Kong, or Shanghai (which is a favourite comparison used by Government) etc. It may be desirable to compare it with the Development Plans of these cities (for future targets). On this count, the MSRDC DP fails the test. But we should not single out MSRDC as none of the DP plans for Indian cities give these figures.

Mistake in population estimation

The population data used for drafting the plan is based on Census data of 2011 ,which was collected between 2005-2009. To use this dated information to plan for 2041, it needs to be augmented with fresh surveys or advanced data collected for Census 2021. We also need comparable data from other areas with “induced growth”, such as experience in Navi Mumbai, NOIDA and Gurugram. A mere mathematical guesswork will not suffice unless it is augmented with scenario analysis (low-median-high estimates). The report severely underestimates the region's population growth, and thus, all other amenities are grossly under-planned. It is unacceptable how short the DP section on physical infrastructure is. It does not have enough detail and is not designed correctly. The problem with population projection percolates to the planning of ALL the amenities.

All amenities have been under-budgeted, and this will result in future constraints. For example, the proposed power requirement is 1.5 KW per HH for LIG (Low-Income Group), 3.0KW for MIG (Middle-Income Group) HH and 4.0 KW for HIG (High-Income Group) HH, but a shop which should be running air-conditioners and refrigerators etc. for most of working hours has power consumption equal to LIG house. That seems to be grossly inadequate. Further, comparable numbers for developed countries are higher - the US has a per capita requirement of 12KW, Switzerland of 5KW. Singapore has 2KW today. Globally, there is a plan to reduce power consumption to 2KW per household. We must note that Household size is also different in other countries.

Planning to be water scarce!

Water demand is estimated at 150 litres per capita per day (lpcd) which seems to be below the norms. Indian Bureau of Standards recommends 200 lpcd as the norm; realities are between 70 to 120 lpcd in various cities. The underestimation of the population may further affect the demand estimation. The supply, too, seems to be underestimated. It is estimated that supply and distribution losses will be at 28%, and recycling will be around 33%. If we consider non-revenue water (water supplied but not paid for), the figures vary from 7% to 15% in the developed world. The figures range from 35% to 80% in the developing world. A comparable analysis from various cities listed above should help. The global GOALS for recycled water as a percentage of demand are at around 50%. Assuming a 33% recycling rate at the planning stage itself seems to be highly optimistic.

Further, we need to look at comparable data of industrial and commercial water usage from other cities mentioned above to assess how effective this will be. To add to this, there are no identified sources of water in this DP that can achieve even the 150 lcpd demand even with 33% recycling. At this stage, DP is too ambitious, and the new city will be a great opportunity for water tanker operators.

Sanitation and drainage are based on hope!

The situation of Sanitation and Drainage is appalling. Sewage is estimated at 80% of water demand. So underestimating water demand will complicate sewage design too. The reading of DP does not tell us the storm-water drainage capacity. It merely states that storm-water drainage is a concern area because of topography. However, the DP plan has estimated storm-water drains and harvesting costs. Without a proper estimation of the capacity required, these figures seem to have come out of a hat. Even if a standard factor of safety is used in the design, it will not be able to meet the requirement of this planned area. We need to have max rainfall data for the past century, adjust it for global warming and then estimate the water evacuation capacity required. This capacity should help determine storm-water drainage capacity. The DP also needs to provide the means for disposing of this excess storm-water.

The problems of water supply and storm-water management have some complementary aspects. If there are provisions for water reservoirs that can accommodate rainwater run-off through storm-water drainage systems, it may offset the water supply. Leaving water harvesting to individual societies and buildings may not suffice.

The plan for waste management is a big blunder.

World bank municipal solid waste (MSW) estimates range from 1.2kg per capita to 1.5 kg per capita. The DP provides for 600gms per capita. The report clarifies that the calculations are based on the CPHEEO manual of 1999. The question is, WHY? We are in 2019, i.e. more than 20 years from the day this manual was written. We are planning for 2021 to 2041. The plan also assumes this figure of 600 gms will remain constant over the 20-year period. No wonder we have waste disposal problems! The next problem with waste disposal is reliance on landfills. There is no consideration for waste processing technology and recycling mechanisms. We need to identify appropriate technology for waste processing and reducing the landfill area.

Finally, let us come to Transportation Design.

MSRDC claims this is a Transport Oriented Development (TOD) scheme, and therefore transport section is well detailed. But the transportation design is flawed and without logic and thus wasteful AND inadequate. Transportation, including BRTS, metro etc., does not seem to connect population centres with industrial and commercial centres. Similarly, there is no workable description of the transportation connectivity of the industrial clusters in the DP. It appears that commercial transport will be routed through residential areas.

There is no map showing how the Low-Income Group housing, residential areas and areas of commercial activity will be connected using public transportation. The street design templates and road intersection templates have not been compared with those in other developed cities with adequate footpaths and street-level amenities. If such a design is implemented, it will cause massive inconvenience to the people travelling to their places of employment, i.e. industrial and commercial centres.

Thus, the Development plan is an exercise in wastage. There is no scientific approach to planning and development. There is no phasing of the development in relation in sync with the development of support infrastructure. How can our cities succeed if future cities are designed with this approach? We must remember that no smart city can survive dumb planning. Our cities are being designed to fail. It is time to set it right.

Note: This article first appeared in Moneylife in Jan 2019. Unfortunately, nothing has changed since then!