Urbanising with care

The growing urbanisation in India seems to be nothing but an urban sprawl since the legal, institutional, and financial challenges have been causing scant implementation of the Town Plan (TP) Scheme of the country that was institutionalised more than 100 years ago. Economic development model and migration into the town are causing additional challenges. India has been implementing 'Smart City Projects' for the last few years for the creation of new townships, but the progress is very slow. Moreover, the project itself is not the answer to the scanty implementation of the TP Scheme in the country.

What is known as TP scheme in India is the land readjustment (LR) mechanism. Since land is a scarce resource, efficient land management techniques are critical for its procurement and development. Under this concept of replotting or reshaping a parcel of land to develop it with amenities and services such as roads, parks, social infrastructure and utilities is of utmost importance. However, this system is still languishing in terms of the approval process, land replotting techniques and financing that has been contributing to very slow, patchy, and disordered implementation.

TP scheme is not widely used in India yet. It has been predominant only in the state of Gujarat and Maharashtra, while few other states are endeavouring to catch up with them. More than half of the states have yet to initiate any practice for land pooling. In the last few years, the scheme has gained traction mostly because of the shortfalls of the LARR 2013, which had a compensation bias toward rural over urban land acquisition. This made acquiring lands from farmers an expensive proposition for authorities, forcing them to look for alternative frameworks, such as land pooling. The states endeavouring to use the TP Scheme for urban land expansion include Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Odisha. Recently, Tamil Nadu has passed a bill to amend the Tamil Nadu Town and Country Planning Act 1971 so that it can use the TP Scheme.

Among all states, Gujarat has most prominently used the TP Scheme for almost a century. It has developed the largest city of the state, Ahmedabad, approximately 95 per cent excluding the downtown area, using this land readjustment mechanism, and it is continuing to implement the TP Scheme for developing the outskirts or peri-urban areas of the city. Even a decade ago in 2010, Gujarat was implementing 1126 cases of the TP Scheme, and 600 more were in the pipeline by 2015. With long term application, the scheme has evolved through continuous improvements in the content of proposals and the implementation strategies and procedures.

Maharashtra was a pioneer in India in the use of land readjustment for urban development and has gained some success in implementing the TP Scheme but not to the same extent as Gujarat. Owing to reasons such as procedural delays and greater emphasis on development plans, Maharashtra discontinued the use of the Scheme in 1985.

The process of planning and executing the TP Scheme is comprehensive and long, involving many steps. For instance, it has 50 steps for Gujarat. It typically takes up to four years to implement the scheme, and completion should ideally take place within the stipulated time, as the act of the state determines. It is a three-stage process for drafting plans and seeking approval for preliminary and final drafts. The Town Planning Officer (TPO) eventually demarcates the final plot on the ground and hands it over to the owner. The TPO divides the sanctioned draft TP Scheme into two parts to enable better functioning: a preliminary TP Scheme to deal with the physical planning proposal and a final TP Scheme to deal with the financial proposal. The TPO hears the grievances and objections of each landowner on the physical and fiscal plans and revises the preliminary and the final scheme, respectively. For the finalisation of the preliminary scheme, the TPO can seek inputs from the state government, local authority, and development authority.

India adopted many development concepts and laws from the British including the reorganisation of land through the TP Scheme. The Bombay Town Planning Act, 1915 was one such piece of legislation which was amended in the New Bombay Town Planning Act, 1954. It was applied in both Maharashtra and Gujarat. However, implementing it was very difficult and time-consuming on one hand and its jurisdiction was limited only to the city. With the increasing pace of urbanisation and migration, pressure for development just outside the city limits began to arise. The periphery or the fringe began to experience unplanned development and could not remain unattended.

While the land-pooling mechanism had a historical background and presence, the enactment of laws and policies underwent a hiatus just before and after independence. This resulted in chaotic and haphazard growth of cities and towns and confusion over the sanctity and applicability of town planning laws and schemes in independent India. The Central Town and Country Planning Organisation (TCPO) drafted the Model Town and Regional Planning and Development Law in 1962, revising it later in 1985, which formed the basis for various states to endorse town and country planning acts, with modifications to suit the local conditions. However, our states are lagging in enacting comprehensive and effective laws. Challenges limiting the scaling up of TP Schemes remain in terms of conceptual, legal, institutional, procedural, and financial frameworks.

In this backdrop, a recently published working paper of ADBI, suggests that the way forward for India could be to scale up the use of TP Scheme by gathering skilled resources and drafting a competent financial framework for executing projects, learning from success stories, and self-evolving through continuous implementation in both small and large areas. All the states should adopt TP Scheme, ensure private sector engagement for financial and technical support aiming at capacity building and transparency in the process.

Views expressed are strictly personal