In India, there are 30 people migrating to the cities every minute. With 70% of India’s built environment for 2030 yet to take shape, there is a golden opportunity for Indian stakeholders to solve for basic amenities. Adequate & affordable housing, smooth transportation networks, availability of good jobs, great education & medical infrastructure are needed at minimum. Contrary to ideal scenario, there are increasing evidences that Indian cities are chocking up in providing basic delivery of public goods. Lack of planning is leading to higher automobile purchase - thus clogging our cities (18 kmph commute speed), annual flooding in the major cities, skewed (job growth)which leads to unbalanced demand for water, sanitation, drainage, housing units.
Fortunately, India has around 52 cities with more than 1 million population spread across the nation which could be nodes of development.
Urban centers are the lifeline of economy and are expected to generate 70% of new jobs. The focus on having at least 100 cities with $30 billion or more of GDP, spread throughout the country will lead on to forming massive cluster-wise growth, alluding to mega-regions akin to the China or US. China currently has 112 cities with 30 billion or more of GDP and they are seeing a good, balanced and connected growth (national high speed transport, communication, electric grid network).
In order to achieve above, I present below some of the most important areas which could be acted upon by stakeholders (state, central, local government, policymakers, corporates, start-ups, civil societies) first. Moreover, integrating artificially intelligence (AI) into public service delivery will go long way in increasing efficiency and scaling of the solutions.
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Transport Network - Within Indian dense cities, mass transit is the only option to move people fast, comfortable and in bulk. Fortunately, there are plans to have metro rail facilities in 50 cities in the near future. However, they are time intensive, expensive and route-constrained. Metro rail must be complemented by a massive fleet of (electric) buses that run on the network designed and developed based on population/employment and travel survey data.
As evident by figure above, buses available per 1000 people in Indian cities drastically fall behind other cities. As compared to Bengaluru, Shanghai has plenty of other mass transportation options available. The first mile and last mile should be served by E-rickshaw, rideshare, bikeshare partners. All of the transportation usages could be integrated on one nation one card (much like PayTM of travel), recently launched by GoI on a subscription model similar to Whim. Fortunately, Indians are already a heavy user of non-car mode for daily travel. Unlike 85% of Americans who travel by car to their work, Indian are travelling whooping 91% by non-car modes thus person based mobility is already prioritized. 
A premium on driving the automobiles will lead to less pollution and less congestion on road. A focus on fleet electrification and charging network development should follow concurrently. If possible, port access should be considered for these cities to enable international trade and exports. -
Water, Drainage Network, Waste Disposal, Urban Forestation- 54% of India is facing high to extremely high water stress and 100 million Indians live in area of poor water quality.
Moreover, shoddy drainage/sewage system, lack of solid waste management, lack of green cover inflict a vicious health hazard cycle. Metering, progressive water-billing, concrete tax/recharge credit for water permeability, rainwater harvesting, watershed renovation and development are few steps which should be taken for good water availability. Smart incentivized waste collection based on GPS enabled trash bins and optimally routed collection vehicles, waste to industrial usages such as road construction, decentralized waste management will help in Swachh Bharat Abhiyan. Completion of no-clogs extensive drainage network will help in clean neighborhood and help in preventive care. Geotagged afforestation drive like MillionTreeNYC will help in increasing the greenspace/parks/grounds and will lead in offsetting the carbon emissions. -
Empower the urban local bodies (ULBs) - Majority of the large global cities are run by empowered elected mayors and their team. Sadly, the Indian ULBs are in shambles, with a toothless financial, executive and regulatory powers. ULBs are crippled fiscally as they collect an average of 39% of fund they spend (it even went down further with GST subsuming octroi tax), leaving them at the mercy of state and central funds. The foremost priority is to Overhaul Municipal Corporation Acts to ensure elected mayors have five-year terms, have power for staffing-finances thus providing political incentive to perform better. Moreover, innovative financial vehicles such as issuance of municipal bond market to fulfil city-specific growth goals and execute policies should be normalized. Giving more power to bodies like DIMTS, MMRDA to draw up long term development plans such as higher FSI for cities, affordable housing, slum-redevelopment, integrated transport will increase the policy execution chances.
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Measure and mine Urban Data - ‘If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it’ - This could not be truer for Indian cities. Though government has set-up a nation wide portal for Open Data yet the granularity of the same is very rudimentary. Helping government digitizing their services and periodic release of datasets akin to some world class city (Chicago, New York) is a big business opportunity. A cohort of entrepreneurs could use, analyze, model and build Gov-Tech enterprise using the easily accessible open data.
In providing the services, the government should be working as an enabler rather a service provider. Open data will lead to data driven services in transportation, communicate, water, energy, waste management, business and citizen services. -
City Focused University - Effort should be made to either build a new multi-disciplinary independent university supported by industrial houses (deep financing) or massively fund one existing university in every city limit. The focus of this institution would be to treat the particular city as its laboratory for its research works, tech-incubators and new technologies. Importantly, the university should not be in a closed wall campus like the current IITs, NITs but integrated with the city such as Columbia at New York, Harvard at Boston or even BHU at Varanasi. This will foster growth on multiple levels as students will learn from the interactions with the city dwellers and work for the city specific problems in their academic/research pursuit. Simultaneously, the city will gain from their endeavors as well in terms of start-up ecosystem, business, innovative public delivery of services. For detailed context, please see the book India in the age of idea by Sanjeev Sanyal.
The impact of above mentioned sensible steps for each city will transform them as a nodal center to nearby regional villages and industries. Enabled with a national network of high speed rail stations, airports, logistic parks, modern cold storages will help in efficient supply of goods and human. A large AIIMS style state-of-the-art hospital will help in medical-related issues of the population nearby thus preventing medical migration. The budding ecosystem of entrepreneurship, Gov-Tech data enabled AI enterpises will provide better service to masses, spur the mega-regional growth, create huge employment opportunities and eventually make the country march towards $10tn economy.