13 June 2023

MAINS DAILY QUESTIONS & MODEL ANSWERS

Q1. shed some light on the improvements in infrastructure that the Smart Cities Mission has created. What obstacles stand in the way of the mission’s accomplishing its desired goals? (250 words

Paper & Topic: GS III – Indian Economy

Model Answer:

• Launched in 2015, the Smart Cities Mission (SCM) is a programme for urban revitalization and modernization. It intends to create 100 sustainable and citizen-friendly smart cities around the nation. The government is seeking for more intelligent ways to handle complexity, boost efficiency, and enhance quality of life as the urban population grows. In order to effectively utilise resources and increase services for citizens, cities now need to monitor and integrate their infrastructure.

The Smart City Mission has made progress in improving infrastructure:

• The mission has authorised 7,804 projects in 100 cities, according to the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs. The completion rate for projects in major cities is over 80%, compared to 66% in smaller cities.
• All 100 cities have Integrated Command and Control Centres for data-centric solutions and enhancing municipal services as part of the objective.
• Karnataka was the state with the most finished projects, with roughly 768, followed by Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu.
• The improvements were expected to be finished five years after the city was chosen, but in 2021 the completion date was pushed back to June 2023.
• 75% of the projects have been finished so far in 50 of the 100 cities. To complete the recording, dissemination, and institutionalisation of the best practises and innovations developed as part of the mission for the replication of the same in other cities across the nation, they would need more time. As a result, June 2024 has been added to the SCM deadline.
• Shillong has the fewest, or just one, completed projects, with Indore having the most across all cities. The latter was also the sole project that had been finished in Meghalaya as a whole, making it the state with the lowest ranking.

The following are some obstacles that prevent the mission from accomplishing its goals:

• Management: The mission’s special-purpose vehicles (SPVs) aren’t operating efficiently. For instance, a director of Ludhiana Smart City Company Ltd (LSCL) expressed unhappiness with the way projects were carried out, claiming that issues were brought about by a lack of cooperation between various government agencies.
• Finance: An review of the financial data shows that the centre, along with the majority of state and local governments, are having trouble raising money, transferring it to SPVs, and effectively utilising it. For instance, the CEO of Faridabad Smart City Ltd (FSCL) acknowledged that finding funding and selling land had been significant obstacles.
• Problems with the SPV public-private partnership (PPP) model: The SPV PPP model, on which the mission’s whole execution strategy is built, has been one of the main causes of delays in the completion of projects. Inadequate training in data processing and analysis as well as frequent administrative, technological, and financial challenges faced by SPVs make matters worse.
• Technical limitations and dated technology: The goal of the smart city mission is to use smart technologies to make the city smart. The majority of urban local authorities, however, do not have the necessary technical resources to guarantee the growth of smart cities. The timely and cost-effective deployment of intelligent measures is hampered by these technological restrictions.
• Urbanising public transportation: The key to making a city smart is to have a smart, dependable, sustainable, and cheap transportation infrastructure. However, zoning, poor urban planning, and high population density pose problems for urbanising public transportation.
• Coordinated three-tier governance: For the implementation of smart city solutions, effective horizontal and vertical coordination between the various institutions is essential. Duplication of effort, time overruns, and cost overruns are caused by a lack of cooperation between central, state, and local authorities.
• In the 100 cities and towns selected for the Smart Cities Mission, there has in fact been development on a wide range of smart initiatives. In particular, the underprivileged populations of these places are benefiting socially and economically from the finished initiatives. The mission can achieve its intended goals by taking additional actions like organising training courses, performing empirical studies for SPVs that are falling behind, facilitating quick and easy funding disbursements, and improving coordination at all levels.

Q2. In India, the pace of progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) appears to be slowing down. Consider the challenges the nation is facing in achieving its SDG ambitions.. (250 words)

Paper & Topic: GS III – Environmental Conservation

Model Answer:

• The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) framework establishes targets for 231 distinct indicators, spread among 17 goals pertaining to social welfare, environmental sustainability, and economic development, to be achieved by 2030. According to a research that looked at nine SDGs, India is on track to reach several benchmarks for neonatal and under-five mortality, complete vaccination, and access to electricity. However, some SDG metrics pertaining to gender inequality, women’s health, and other topics show a troubling image. Additionally, not all districts across the nation have had the same level of progress towards these goals.

Obstacles to the nation’s achievement of SDG targets:

• Obstacles to the localization of the SDGs: At the level of State and local governments, the process of creating policies and budgets, planning for them, and putting them into action does not clearly reflect the SDGs. Additionally, most States have not yet completed the devolution of money, functions, and functionaries (3Fs) to local governments. As a result, local governments in both rural and urban areas are unable to establish local budgets and plans for the people in their respective locations.
• The State Planning Departments/Boards in the States have been designated as nodal bodies to oversee the process of implementing the SDGs at the State level, similar to NITI Aayog. Given their capabilities in terms of the adequateness of their financial and human resources and the decentralised planning procedures they use, many states are now unprepared for the implementation of the SDGs.
• India will need 170 billion dollars year between 2015 and 2030 to reach the SDG targets. Investments are especially needed to achieve SDGs 3 and 4, which call for quality education and good health.
• Obstacles to achieving gender equality: In India, fulfilling SDG 5, which stands for gender equality, has proven to be the most difficult. A report claims that India won’t achieve the SDG for gender equality until 2090. The challenge in achieving gender equality is more in putting laws and programmes into practise and untying the nation’s cultural and patriarchal web.
• Challenges brought on by the pandemic: The impact on one of the 17 SDGs can hinder efforts to attain the others because they are all interconnected. The pandemic has impacted millions of people’s health and well-being, driven them into poverty, and increased inequality. Additionally, Covid has caused education disparities to worsen.
• Problems with SDG monitoring: The absence of development indicators at the State, district, and block levels has made tracking outcomes under the SDGs one of the most difficult tasks. Even though social inclusion is one of the three pillars of the SDGs, the framework for monitoring and measuring the development gains adopted at the national level does not place enough emphasis on including marginalised people.

Steps to Take:

• Increasing financial resources: The emphasis should be on raising the budgetary allotment for SDGs with low performance rates, such as gender equality, health, and education.
• Developing political will: Attention should be paid to developing effective political leadership that is backed by a flexible administrative framework at all levels, from the federal to the local.
• Using a data-driven strategy, India must combine all of its disparate, fragmented platforms into a single, integrated digital resource for district administrators, State and federal authorities, and the general public.
• Making a decadal plan: A time-driven approach is needed to design a new policy direction. For SDG indicators, creating a decadal plan can aid in proper monitoring and targeting.
• Linking current government programmes to the SDGs: In the current policy environment, there are frameworks and programmes in place that can be connected to the SDGs’ indicators. For instance, the Ujjwala Yojana 2.0, the Jal Jeevan Mission, and the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana are all pertinent for achieving SDG 1, which is to end poverty in all of its manifestations, globally.
• The alignment of India with the national development strategy, as shown in the slogan Sabka Saath Sabka Vikaas, demonstrates its commitment to the SDGs. A multi-national effort would be required to successfully achieve SDG targets, particularly those pertaining to population health and well-being, basic quality infrastructure, and gender equality.