Alternative models of land assembly and disposal for developing new towns in India

Abstract

New Towns were developed in the United Kingdoms as post war reconstruction efforts to combat urban diseases. The concept is not new to India. Jaipur and Fatehpur Sikri are historical examples of New Towns in India while the seven capital cities of Delhi including Lutyon’s New Delhi are the oldest and continuous exercisein New Town building in India. These cities were well-designed, exclusive and made for the privileged sections of society whereas now New Towns are made as homes of displaced people, campuses of education, seats of governments, and bases of industry. Various New Towns of India including Chandigarh, Bhubaneshwar, Navi Mumbai, New Town Kolkata, Nava Raipur, and Amaravati were studied to understand the process of new town development in modern India. Land assembly is the most critical aspect of any major Greenfield project. Therefore various land assembly and development mechanisms adopted in India were also studied and their challenges understood. It was also realized through literature review that land disposal mechanism is highly dependent on the way the land was acquired and assembled. Therefore, it becomes important to study both these aspects of New Town development if we are to construct better, affordable and more inclusive cities in the future. Recently, the 15th Finance Commission suggested an endowment of INR 8000 Crore to develop 8 new-towns in eight different states. MoHUA will be starting work on a new framework to develop these new cities. It will come up with detailed guidelines and development framework for the Greenfield project in a year or so as such a framework is presently absent in India. This is the first initiative by central government, of this scale to evelop new towns in India making the study relevant.The research attempts to answer the question- How can equitable land assembly & disposal models be evolved for New Town Development in India? For this, the case of Nava Raipur was identified as the primary case study. The aim of the research is, therefore, to derive an equitable land assembly & disposal structure for development of future new towns in India. The objectives are to understand the new town development models globally and in India, to assess land assembly models in India, to understand the development process adopted in Nava Raipur and its impact on the population through empirical study, to propose a conceptual structure of land assembly for developing New Towns in India. Focus Group discussions, primary survey and semi-structured interviews have been conducted with the stakeholders involved in or affected by the land assembly, compensation and resettlements aspects of the development following an inductive approach to examine causative variables. The study is limited to the domains of Land Assembly, Land Sales and Disposal and touching upon associated fields. Due to time constraints and restrictions imposed due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, only one case of New Town could be undertaken for primary survey while other cases were referred to through secondary sources and existing literature. The research has led to the formation of a framework for landassembly and disposal, a model procedure that the government can follow to ease and streamline the entire development process and some recommendations to make the process more equitable and efficient. The study will help future researchers and policy makers in formulating a national framework for developing New Towns in India.