In this Times of India article, Amitabh Kant, CEO of NITI Aayog, Government of India, argues that India needs to provide good systems for its cities in order for them to deliver growth and jobs. Excerpts below:

"Over the next three decades, India needs to sustain a high growth trajectory of over 7% GDP growth accompanied by massive job creation to deliver good quality of life to all citizens. Such a high economic growth rate and scale of job creation would necessarily depend on the manufacturing and services sectors. Global experience especially since the industrial revolution has been that job creation and growth in the manufacturing and services sectors heavily depend on cities...

In today’s world it is not countries but cities that compete for resources and investment...

This mega wave of urbanisation will need to be managed well so that cities can attract investments and create jobs on a large scale, become hubs of growth, talent, creativity and innovation and thereby vibrant habitats where millions of citizens can fulfil their dreams.

Principally, there are four systems that are key to good governance in our cities: urban planning and design, municipal finances and staffing (essentially capacities and resources), effective political leadership of a city and lastly transparency, accountability and citizen participation...

But the “how” has received relatively lesser attention compared to the “what”. How something can practically get done within the government is as important as what needs to be done, especially in a democracy with a federal makeup.

Firstly, our chief ministers need to recognise cities as a priority for their states. They need to draw up city blueprints which take into account the vision for a city for a 20-25 year timeframe, quantify sectoral objectives for a 3-5 year time period, draw up detailed roadmaps to achieving the objectives with well-defined milestones, fix clear ownership for delivery and publish quarterly performance reports to build trust among citizens...

Secondly, we need to recognise our cities as distinct units of governance and economy. We need to start tracking the performance of our cities in terms of GDP, job creation, private and public investments, consumption, etc...

Thirdly, states need to attract top of the line talent to manage and deliver on the city blueprints, especially from a project management standpoint. Our cities possess world class talent in financial services, information technology, infrastructure, etc but few of them work towards building our cities...

Lastly, we will need to urgently fix the municipal skills and staffing problem for the long-term. Short tenures of municipal commissioners, rolling stock of employees on deputation from the state resulting in lack of a coherent organisation culture, lack of specialised contemporary skills especially in respect of engineering, planning, financial management and revenue optimisation and human resource management, asymmetry in span of control with less than 5% of the employees in Grades A and B, large number of staff vacancies, etc are all big challenges...

All of the above is within the realm of the possible. The spirit of cooperative cum competitive federalism that this government is pioneering should extend to our cities too. City-systems and city blueprints need to find a place in our national lexicon."