PM: Treat urbanisation as opportunity, not calamity

SMART CITY PROJECTS LAUNCHED

Electricity lines to go underground in Guwahati

Pune/ Guwahati, June 25: Prime Minister rendra Modi on Saturday urged city planners not to treat urbanization as a "calamity" but as an "opportunity" to enrich and improve the lives of the people in an all-inclusive manner.

Iugurating 84 varied Smart City Projects for 20 selected Indian cities under the Smart Cities Mission, Modi said until now the trend was to treat urbanization as some kind of a bane instead of grabbing the opportunity to plan ahead for the future.

"Cities have the strength to 'digest' poverty and provide economic opportunities for the poorest coming from other less-developed areas. We must further strengthen the cities to increase this 'digestive' ability, make it faster and wider... economic prosperity will automatically follow," he said.

Terming the Smart City Mission as not just a concept or allocation of funds, but a public-based movement, Modi said that the experiment has worked successfully.

"These cities were selected out of a contest with public participation to avoid problems and opposition. We received over 2.5 million workable ideas from the people which the government will have to take note of. This has resulted in a participatory approach in development and will lead to a huge transformation in future," he said.

Dismissing apprehensions about Smart Cities, the prime minister said that it entailed providing sufficient water, electricity, cleanliness, traffic magement, decent housing for all, solid and liquid waste magement, emergency services, couple with technology to make life easy and comfortable for all.

In Guwahati, as part of the Smart City Mission launch, MP Bijoya Chakraborty and Mayor Mrigen Sarania flagged off a Rs 80 crore beautification project of the Borsola Beel. The MP said a project has been launched to put electricity lines in the city underground. (IANS & Our Bureau)