By TIOL News Service

NEW DELHI, OCT 22, 2014: THE Prime Minister, Mr Narendra Modi, yesterday said revamping urban governance should be at the core of the vision of the Ministry of Urban Development. He was chairing a high-level meeting on urban development issues.

In order to realize this mission, the Prime Minister emphasized the need to institutionalize special training programmes for urban administrators to systematically improve the quality of urban governance in India.

The Prime Minister also called for complete synergy between the Digital India Mission, and the urban renewal mission. This should include objectives such as mobile governance, e-governance, solid waste management, waste water management etc. There is need for extensive brainstorming on these issues, the Prime Minister said. He said a special module on urban governance should be a part of the IAS officers' training.

He said once these objectives were clear, the programmes should be implemented in close consultation and coordination with states, generally based on the PPP model. Corresponding human resource requirements should also be projected and suitably skilled for this purpose.

The Prime Minister outlined the details of his vision for solid waste management and waste water management in 500 towns across India. He said this would spur growth of organic farming, especially vegetables, in the area surrounding these towns, as organic fertilizer would be readily available. This would also lead to abundant supply of vegetables in the town, thereby reducing inflation, and corresponding spin-off benefits in health and tourism sectors.

The Prime Minister said the Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan should be linked to urban development in a big way, so that there is a demand from the grassroots for total sanitation in cities.

On Heritage cities, the Prime Minister spoke about HRIDAY – Heritage City Development and Augmentation Yojana. He said that while conserving the city's heritage, care should be taken that the people of heritage cities get access to modern facilities. In the name of conserving heritage, people of heritage cities should not be kept deprived of modern amenities, the Prime Minister said. The Prime Minister said cities with rich cultural heritage could act as magnets for tourism.

The Prime Minister called for a Clean Delhi, and said if this could be achieved, it would have a significant impact on the image of the country, as well as the success of the Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan.