By Hardeep S. Puri
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 19 2018 (IPS)

It is with great pleasure and pride that I interact with you this afternoon as India’s Minister of Housing and Urban Affairs, to share some thoughts on India’s extremely ambitious, and arguably the world’s largest planned urbanization programme under the leadership of our Prime Minister, Narendra Modi.

Hardeep S. Puri

By 2030, when we complete work of the 2030 Development Agenda, nearly 600 million Indians, or 40% of our population, will reside in urban spaces. To lay further emphasis on India’s urban prospects – from now till 2030, India has to build 700 to 900 million square meters of urban space every year.

In other words, India will have to build a new Chicago every year from now till 2030 to meet its urban demand. More importantly, the new urban infrastructure India builds for 2030, 70% of which still needs to be constructed, will have to be green and resilient.

India has been in the vanguard of the sustainable development agenda even prior to 2015. By promoting cooperative federalism, ensuring integrated planning through convergence, and focusing on an outcome-based approach compared to a project-based approach, we have embarked upon the most ambitious and comprehensive programme of planned urbanisation ever undertaken in the world.

With these principles as the backbone, India is implementing some of the world’s largest and most ambitious national schemes for social inclusion, economic growth, and environmental sustainability, through silo-breaking approaches.

In the words of Prime Minister Modi at the UN summit for post-2015 development agenda, “Just as our vision behind Agenda 2030 is lofty, our goals are comprehensive. It gives priority to the problems that have endured through the past decades. And, it reflects our evolving understanding of the social, economic and environmental linkages that define our lives”.

India has consistently achieved a growth rate of over 7% year on year through bold economic reforms, and has strong prospects for an even higher growth rate in the near future. Given our size and scale, India is fast becoming a pillar of global growth and stability.

SDG 11: Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable

As President of the Governing Council of UN-Habitat, it gives me great pleasure to note international efforts towards inclusive, resilient, and sustainable human settlements and SDG 11 have been greatly strengthened in the last few years by the New Urban Agenda signed at Habitat III, the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction and the Quito Declaration on Sustainable Cities and Human Settlements.

Today, more than 90% of the global urban growth is occurring in the developing world. India, China, and Nigeria together will account for 35 % of the growth in the world’s urban population between 2018 and 2050. It would not be an overstatement to say that India’s urban agenda will constitute one of the defining projects of the 21st century.

Urban areas in India face multi-pronged challenges. We remain confronted by a complex ecosystem of urban challenges through and in ensuring housing for all, technology based solutions to enhance service delivery, better mobility and greener transport, smart governance, and in doing more with less.

Mahatma Gandhi had famously said, “Freedom from insanitary practices is even more important than political freedom”.

As a tribute to the father of the nation, India launched the largest sanitation and hygiene program in the world – the Swachh Bharat Mission, with the objective of make India open defecation free and achieve scientific waste management by October 2nd 2019, the 150th birth anniversary of the Mahatma, well ahead of the deadline for SDG 6.

The Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) and the National Rural Drinking Water Program (NRDWP) seek to provide urban and rural areas with universal drinking water supply and sewage treatment respectively. Both these missions have been making steady progress and are on track to achieve their goals.

The Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana or the Prime Minister’s scheme on Affordable Housing for All is the world’s largest housing programme for the poor. The government aims to build 11 million affordable homes for urban Indians by the year 2022.

We have already sanctioned over 5 million and are confident of meeting the targets by middle of 2019. Giving a fillip to gender empowerment, the title of each home under the Mission is under the lady of the house, or co-jointly.

The mission also encompasses a Technology Sub-Mission to facilitate adoption of green, disaster resistant building materials and construction techniques for ensuring faster and cost- effective construction.

This not only addresses SDG 11 directly but also aims to effectuate, SDG 1 by ending spatial poverty of homeless people; SDG 3 by giving access to all-weather protected living environment; SDG 7 through increased usage of sustainable, affordable construction practices; and SDG 10 by reducing inequalities of access to basic minimum standard of living.

India is in the process of creating 100 Smart Cities to strengthen urban infrastructure by applying smart solutions and giving a decent quality of life to citizens. Improving the urban governance reforms through creation of Integrated Command and Control Centre has made city management efficient and effective resulting in savings of city revenues.

This has made a significant impact on India’s promise to create inclusive and sustainable cities under the SDG 11 by building institutional capabilities through efficient administrative processes and strengthening grassroots democracy.

Smart Cities Mission also focuses on SDG 12 by reducing the pressure on resources through promotion of sustainable consumption and production pattern which again is promoted by sustainable practices being adopted by cities in reducing the carbon footprint, leveraging vertical expansion and reducing the overall burden on infrastructural resources by switching to cleaner substitutes.

India has ensured that all its international commitments are mirrored in the national development goals. With India striving to meet its national socio-economic development targets, achieving the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the 169 targets linked to them will be a major success story of the millennium affecting more than a billion persons all at once.

India’s national development goals and its “Sab Ka Saath, Sab Ka Vikas” or “development with all, and for all,” policy initiatives for inclusive development converge well with the SDGs, and India will play a leading role in determining the success of the SDGs, globally.

As Prime Minister Narendra Modi noted, “The sustainable development of one-sixth of humanity will be of great consequence to the world and our beautiful planet.” India stands truly committed to achieving an equitable and sustainable future for all its citizens, and in working with the global community to achieve the SDGs together.

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By Hardeep S. Puri
NEW YORK, Jun 5 2015 (IPS)

Seventy years since its inception, the United Nations remains at the core of the multilateral system. The world body, together with the Bretton Woods institutions, was conceived in the mid-1940s by the architects of the postwar order with the central aim of saving succeeding generations from the scourge of war on the one hand, and the need to reconstruct and revive the global economy on the other.

Ambassador Hardeep S. Puri. UN Photo/Evan Schneider

This was a Westphalian model based on the principle of the sovereign equality of states and a defined concept of inter-state relations. With marginal changes, the system has survived, displaying a remarkable endurance to different geopolitical contexts and crises: from the bipolarity of the Cold War to the decolonisation process.

Despite the resilience shown – and despite its unparalleled convening power – the United Nations continues to face multiple challenges and grapple with the fast-evolving and unprecedented complexity of the current global landscape. In fairness, the speed and nature of change would be hard to handle for any decision-making process.

The fact that the decision making space is occupied both by the Secretary-General and a large bureaucracy and 193 member states does not make it any easier. Very often this creates a sprawling gap between the manifestation of a crisis and the time needed for a response.

Indeed, ever so often global governance structures are perceived to be out of step with emerging needs and the systemic challenges of globalisation. The inter-connectedness of economies and societies means that risks are more contagious and crises reverberate across issues and borders, whether they relate to health, refugees, violence or – more often – all three at the same time.

This being the case, it stands to reason that responses to crises also have to be global requiring the cooperation, consent and co-ordination of a large number of independent, sovereign member states.As agents of chaos continue to challenge the forces of order, the international system finds itself at a crossroads that calls for a serious re-evaluation of the bedrock of today’s so-called multilateral environment.

The system itself is not alone at fault. Its central constituents – member states – have rendered the system increasingly contested, unused and thus of limited capacity to deal with the emerging threats to world peace, stability and security.

Such a trend is epitomised by the breakdown of consensus and decision-making at the highest political level: the Security Council, has invited criticism when it authorised the use of force in Libya and when consensus could not be achieved resulting in inaction in Syria, Yemen and Ukraine.

As agents of chaos continue to challenge the forces of order, the international system finds itself at a crossroads that calls for a serious re-evaluation of the bedrock of today’s so-called multilateral environment.

How can faith be restored in the value of collective engagement? What innovative policy options can emerge from an increasingly complex and confusing backdrop? Can crisis be the mother of opportunity?

A number of major reviews and intergovernmental discussions are taking place this year on a broad range of topics including peace operations, peacebuilding, the Sustainable Development Goals, financing for development, climate change, humanitarian affairs, the future of the European security architecture, and the implementation of Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security, among others.

As these review processes develop on related but separate tracks, it remains important to reflect upon the connections among them. More importantly, member states will need to step up their effort when it comes to implementing these reforms.

As Secretary General of the Independent Commission on Multilateralism (ICM), an independent audit of the U.N. and wider multilateral system by former and serving statesmen, Ambassadors, and other eminent persons, I see the ICM not only as one part of this continuing process of reform but also a key vehicle to consider how said reform initiatives can be best implemented.

This is not designed to produce a 21st century utopia. It is a more practical exercise than that. The ICM seeks to provide the international community with a range of options on how the U.N. best remains “fit for purpose” against the new challenges confronting the system.

It is clear that only incremental approaches to reform will work. Those couched in humility and with a clear purpose and acceptability are more likely to succeed. The suggestion that all is well with the system and that there is no need in fact to fix it has very few takers.

In other words, where and to what extent does the system need to be tweaked to make it genuinely ‘fit for purpose’? A system that has evolved over seven decades must have many qualities. The cliché that if you did not have the U.N., you would need to invent one is equally true.

Looking back 70 years, more specifically, the closing session of the United Nations Conference in San Francisco on June 26, 1945, we should keep President Truman’s words close to us when he asserted that “the Charter….will be expanded and improved as time goes on…changing world conditions will require readjustments”. In other words, the mandate for reform lies in the act of creation itself.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

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