NEW DELHI: With massive urban migration posing a serious problem for both China and India, a high-level delegation from Beijing is here to understand the issues of urbanisation, slum management and slum reforms being carried out by the country.
The delegation headed by Xia Yong, China’s Vice Minister, the Legislative Affairs Office (LAO) of State Council, on Thursday held a meeting with senior officials of the Union Ministry of Urban Development led by Secretary Sudhir Krishna. According to Xia, China is facing the challenge of land acquisition, resettlement and rehabilitation related to urbanisation and it wants to understand the similar issues being dealt with in India.
“India and China are facing same rates of urbanisation in the post-1990 period and this process has been accompanied by important shifts in their economic and social structures. For this reason China would like to understand the Indian process of urbanisation and related policy issues,” he said. He said that about 300 million people in China are expected to migrate to cities in the coming years and the country has to arrange the infrastructure to accommodate them. Krishna pointed out that apart from land acquisition, better planning of the cities can help accommodate more people and measures such as high-rise buildings, Transit Oriented Development (TOD) and mixed land use can help in augmenting the urbanisation rate without the substantial need to acquire more land.
Krishna said an Act has been enacted to facilitate land acquisition, rehabilitation and resettlement. The states have also been given financial aid to carry out infrastructure development and slum reforms. Both sides expressed hope that the meeting will be a good palatfrom for future cooperation in urban development.