000-tobecategorised
Urban Infrastructure Financing in India – What has changed? https://www.cenfa.org/urban-infrastructure-financing-in-india-what-has-changed/
The urban areas have seen a few national missions being implemented to improve the state of infrastructure as well as bring in conditionalities with funds for reforms to privatise delivery of services and implementation of projects by the ULBs. Private sector participation through PPPs and private investments in urban projects have been advocated in urban projects for the past several years including by institutions like the World Bank.
.. Risk allocation between public and private agencies has been a contentious issue in PPP projects since private sector wishes the public sector to take on majority of risks like investments, tariffs, social and environmental impacts, guarantees, etc leaving it free to earn risk free profits.
...The argument about the potential to increase user charges and other taxes to improve the economic base and creditworthiness of the city corporations and hence raise the private financing for infrastructure projects. However, this crucially misses the very important point about the prevailing economic conditions of the larger sections of the population, especially in the post covid years.
... implementation of private projects and reforms in the Indian context in urban areas have not been a success over a period of the past couple of decades. The previous missions like Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM), Urban Infrastructure Development Scheme for Small and Medium Towns (UIDSSMT), Smart Cities Mission and Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) have attempted to implement these measures without much success. These missions had mandates to implement privatised PPP projects with reforms in hundreds of large and medium cities included in these missions. The lack of success of these missions shows that there needs to be a change in the national policies to implement urban projects and their financing, however it seems that the lessons from the past experiences have not been learnt.
https://twitter.com/ndtv/status/1625778327943356418
Dalit IIT Student, Who Died By Suicide, Was Humiliated By Friends: Family https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/dalit-iit-student-who-died-by-suicide-was-humiliated-by-friends-family-3783976 Sohit Rakesh MishraUpdated: February 15, 2023 IIT Bombay has refuted charges that Darshan Solanki faced systemic discrimination and said his death is being probed. Police registered a case of accidental death after Darshan died, apparently after he jumped off the seventh floor of the hostel building on Sunday. They haven't found a suicide note yet, but a student group is alleging that he was driven to suicide due to discrimination against Dalit students on the campus.
While authorities at IIT Bombay have said there was no discrimination on the campus, Darshan Solanki's family claimed he was ostracised by friends.
Communal Statements by Muslim Maulanas come to the rescue of Modi & Mohan Bhagwat https://countercurrents.org/2023/02/communal-statements-by-muslim-maulanas-come-to-the-rescue-of-modi-mohan-bhagwat/ By Feroze Mithiborwala 16.03.2023
It’s clearly not a coincidence that at the recent 3 day convention organised by the Jamiat-i-Ulema-i-Hind at the Ramlila grounds in Delhi, has degenerated into another national round of competitive communalism & petty bickering. A convention where religious leaders from the Hindu, Sikh, Jain & Christian communities were invited by the Jamiat to further the cause of communal harmony, was reduced to a spectacle of trenchant disharmony.
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