World Bank recipe for urban infrastructure: Sell off public land, collect Rs 54,000 crore in Ahmedabad

The World Bank has advised the Gujarat government to begin raising resources for building urban infrastructure in major cities by selling off public land to private developers. In a recent policy research study, “Inventory of Public Land in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India”, it has said in Ahmedabad alone huge financial resources “could be generated by monetizing public land” to the tune of Rs 54,000 crore which implies per capita availability of fiscal resources amounting to Rs 97,000. This is double the amount estimated by the state government’s High Powered Expert Committee (HPEC) at 2009-10 prices – Rs 43,386 “for the entire range of physical urban infrastructure for the next twenty years”.

Though it does not say so, the study implies, it would mean, even the metro transport facility, costing Rs 22,000 crore, could be triggered by this method. Carried out by a group of scholar, Shirley Ballaney, Marie-Agnes Bertaud, Patricia Clarke Annez, Bindu Nair, Bimal Patel, Vidyadhar Phatak and Vasudha Thawakar, and a celebrated ex-bureaucrat, CK Koshy, the study says, the huge amount that could be raised is in sharp contrast to the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation’s City Development Plan under Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JnNURM), under which the “capital investment needs projected in the plan for a seven-year period were about Rs 9,000 crore.”
The study claims to “clearly demonstrate that monetizing public land could significantly contribute to investments in infrastructure and other high priority government goals”, adding, the model could be replicated in other major urban centres, too. Insisting that “unlocking the value of public land has been recognized as a potentially highly significant source of finance for urban infrastructure”, the authors underline, for all this, there is no need to vacate the slum areas, which are usually made the target for developing public land.
The study emphasises, “Though it might be possible to realize the value of public land in selected cases by relocating slums, in practice it would not to be desirable. Indeed the slums provide an important share of located well-low-income housing that would be very difficult to replace. Moreover, slums on public land occupy a very small portion of public land under study, only 4 percent. Yet they house close to 4,00,000 people or 20 percent of the total estimated population in slums and chawls in Ahmedabad.”
Indicating the need to revalue land in order to bring in the necessary resources for infrastructure, the study says, the Jantri rates, which are used by “government authorities for the purposes of stamp duty levied at the time of transaction in land or property”, are do not tell the real value of the public land. It says, “The Jantri rates are known to be lower than the real market values.” Giving examples of different parts of Ahmedabad, the study says, the difference between Jantri rate and market value has a deviation factor of anywhere between 1.33 (Gota) to 4.64 (Sola). In Sola’s TP scheme No 43, the Jantri rate is Rs 14,000 per sq metre, while the market rate is Rs 65,000.
The study says,” The land values using Jantri and market rates vary greatly, between Rs 1,650 to Rs.54,500 per square meter and Rs. 2750 to Rs. 100,000 per square meter. It adds, “The most valuable parcels are along the bank of the Sabarmati River called “Riverfront”, where the land was evaluated at Rs 54,500 per m2 by Jantri rate and Rs 100,000 per m2 by Market rate.” Suggesting the land prices may further rise, the study says, “The Metro Lines (Phases 1 and 2), not immediately planned, in the Western part of Ahmedabad, may have some impact on land values in the future. The areas more affected will be the former Greenbelt area localized next the Phase 2 Metro corridor.”

Jantri rate vs market rate in Ahmedabad

The study is based an on-the-spot assessment of 6,850 hectares (ha) of public land, out of which close to 52% is not marketable, 21% is vacant land and 31% is developed with construction at different levels of consumed floor space index (FSI). “Vacant land including TPS appropriations represents 20.73% of the total public land and 43% of the total Potentially Marketable Land”, it points out.
Wanting the government authorities to come up with “new valuations” for marketable land, the study says, “Revising land use and FSI regulations in the context of raising resources for infrastructure investments through monetizing public land after due public consultation and consideration of environmental and social issues could be a sound policy.” It regrets, “Oftentimes public land is identified as surplus precisely because the current use is out of date.”
The study wants the authorities to overcome a major hurdle – of multiple ownership of public land. “Although Central Government, State Government and the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation are identified as the three land-owning public agencies, within each of these there are many authorities that are in possession of land and decide use of land. Within Central Government, the Ministry of Defense is involved in case of Cantonment; the Ministry of Civil Aviation is involved in Airport etc.”
It adds, “In case of State Government too there are various departments such as Food and Civil Supplies Department in case of warehouses for food grains, the HomeDepartment for police stations and police housing, jails and narcotics stores etc. Each of these authorities possesses this land without any compulsion or obligation for optimal utilization of the land. Consequently data are not readily available to develop well informed policies and programs for monetizing excess land and adapting public use to current needs.”

Comments

Ahmedabad's civic chaos: Drainage woes, waterlogging, and the illusion of Olympic dreams

In response to my blog on overflowing gutter lines at several spots in Ahmedabad's Vejalpur, a heavily populated area, a close acquaintance informed me that it's not just the middle-class housing societies that are affected by the nuisance. Preeti Das, who lives in a posh locality in what is fashionably called the SoBo area, tells me, "Things are worse in our society, Applewood."

RP Gupta a scapegoat to help Govt of India manage fallout of Adani case in US court?

RP Gupta, a retired 1987-batch IAS officer from the Gujarat cadre, has found himself at the center of a growing controversy. During my tenure as the Times of India correspondent in Gandhinagar (1997–2012), I often interacted with him. He struck me as a straightforward officer, though I never quite understood why he was never appointed to what are supposed to be top-tier departments like industries, energy and petrochemicals, finance, or revenue.

PharmEasy: The only online medical store which revises prices upwards after confirming the order

For senior citizens — especially those without a family support system — ordering medicines online can be a great relief. Shruti and I have been doing this for the last couple of years, and with considerable success. We upload a prescription, receive a verification call from a doctor, and within two or three days, the medicines are delivered to our doorstep.

Powering pollution, heating homes: Why are Delhi residents opposing incineration-based waste management

While going through the 50-odd-page report Burning Waste, Warming Cities? Waste-to-Energy (WTE) Incineration and Urban Heat in Delhi , authored by Chythenyen Devika Kulasekaran of the well-known advocacy group Centre for Financial Accountability, I came across a reference to Sukhdev Vihar — a place where I lived for almost a decade before moving to Moscow in 1986 as the foreign correspondent of the daily Patriot and weekly Link .

Environmental report raises alarm: Sabarmati one of four rivers with nonylphenol contamination

A new report by Toxics Link , an Indian environmental research and advocacy organisation based in New Delhi, in collaboration with the Environmental Defense Fund , a global non-profit headquartered in New York, has raised the alarm that Sabarmati is one of five rivers across India found to contain unacceptable levels of nonylphenol (NP), a chemical linked to "exposure to carcinogenic outcomes, including prostate cancer in men and breast cancer in women."

Dalit rights and political tensions: Why is Mevani at odds with Congress leadership?

While I have known Jignesh Mevani, one of the dozen-odd Congress MLAs from Gujarat, ever since my Gandhinagar days—when he was a young activist aligned with well-known human rights lawyer Mukul Sinha’s organisation, Jan Sangharsh Manch—he became famous following the July 2016 Una Dalit atrocity, in which seven members of a family were brutally assaulted by self-proclaimed cow vigilantes while skinning a dead cow, a traditional occupation among Dalits.

Tracking a lost link: Soviet-era legacy of Gujarati translator Atul Sawani

The other day, I received a message from a well-known activist, Raju Dipti, who runs an NGO called Jeevan Teerth in Koba village, near Gujarat’s capital, Gandhinagar. He was seeking the contact information of Atul Sawani, a translator of Russian books—mainly political and economic—into Gujarati for Progress Publishers during the Soviet era. He wanted to collect and hand over scanned soft copies, or if possible, hard copies, of Soviet books translated into Gujarati to Arvind Gupta, who currently lives in Pune and is undertaking the herculean task of collecting and making public soft copies of Soviet books that are no longer available in the market, both in English and Indian languages.

Boeing 787 under scrutiny again after Ahmedabad crash: Whistleblower warnings resurface

A heart-wrenching tragedy has taken place in Ahmedabad. As widely reported, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner plane crashed shortly after taking off from the city’s airport, currently operated by India’s top tycoon, Gautam Adani. The aircraft was carrying 230 passengers and 12 crew members. As expected, the crash has led to an outpouring of grief across the country. At the same time, there have been demands for the resignation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, and Civil Aviation Minister Venkaiah Naidu. The most striking comment came from BJP MP Subramanian Swamy, who stated : "When a train derailed in the 1950s, Lal Bahadur Shastri resigned. On the same morality, I demand PM Modi, HM Amit Shah, and Civil Aviation Minister Naidu resign so that a free and fair inquiry can be held. All that Modi and his associates have been doing so far is gallivanting, which must stop." Amidst widespread mourning, some fringe elements sought to communalize the tragedy. One post ...

Revisiting Gijubhai: Pioneer of child-centric education and the caste debate

It was Krishna Kumar, the well-known educationist, who I believe first introduced me to the name — Gijubhai Badheka (1885–1939). Hailing from Bhavnagar, known as the cultural capital of the Saurashtra region of Gujarat, Gijubhai, Kumar told me during my student days, made significant contributions to the field of pedagogy — something that hasn't received much attention from India's education mandarins. At that time, Kumar was my tutorial teacher at Kirorimal College, Delhi University.

Search This Blog