India is a strong country on many terms. Large Human resources bases, intellectual capital, sound financial policies etc. I am a city boy and from my observations the biggest threat to India in terms of Human Development Index (HDI) is the coming up of unplanned cities. This is a grave threat to both people living in such cities as well as the micro environment surrounding that area.
Though it’s almost impossible to control nature’s fury like floods or earthquakes preparing for it can be ideal thing to do. The age old saying prevention is better than cure still holds true. Mumbai floods would not have happened if proper planning had gone into the setting up of the infrastructure. Here is where we need a course on City Planning & management. I am not too sure if a course on this exists elsewhere but I am sure it’s a much needed course in India.
I am neither academician nor an expert on how city planning should go about. But I believe it can be add on to the current MBA course as it covers the elemental Human Resource Management, operations & finance. A civil engineer or Architectural engineers are not the only people who can do this course. But we need people who are creative so as to plan the landscape, Bio Marine experts who can manage the water bodies and various other experts form diverse domains. We need marketing people to find out what the needs of the users are and also for their negotiating and communication skills.
Yes there are a number of private players building their townships but the need of the hour is the participation of the Government and the Public Hand in Hand. Yes there is a huge cost involved in rebuilding but an opportunity exists to work on the smaller towns and municipalities. As the saying goes, “Rome was not built in a day”.
