India Inc on Thursday hailed the smart cities projects launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying that the move will create business opportunities and contribute to employment generation.
“This is an extremely progressive step which will positively help in proper planning and development of our cities. The citizens’ role has also been prominently highlighted which is commendable,” Ficci president Jyotsna Suri said.
“The industry is very optimistic, and sincerely hopes that isolated successful urban initiatives across the country would now be scaled up to the national level through these dedicated missions,” according to CII.
“The launch of the Smart Cities and the Atal Mission for Rejuvination and Urban Transformation mission, in essence, will change the face of India’s municipal and social infrastructure,” Anil Chaudhry, Country President and Managing Director, Schneider Electric said.
“To address the current urbanisation challenge, these schemes are a step in the right direction and the need of the hour is to bring a hold on sporadic development and implement a focused plan of action,” said Getamber Anand, President, CREDAI.
“It is empowering to see that the decision to make cities smart will be taken by the people of the city and the local administration. This clearly indicates that there will be lot of inclusive planning,” Sumit Jain, CEO, CommonFloor.com, said.
“As I see it, the Smart Cities and AMRUT Mission initiative’s biggest challenge would come from mindset change among the bureaucracy,” Ajit Gulabchand, CMD, Hindustan Construction Company (HCC), said.
CII members to give up LPG subsidy
Industry chamber CII on Thursday appealed to all its members to pledge and give up their cooking gas subsidies.
The Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas launched the scheme ‘PAHAL’ on November 15, 2014, encompassing more than 150 million consumers spread across 676 districts of India, under which, the LPG customers get subsidy directly transferred to their respective bank accounts. The step was taken after Prime Minister Narendra Modi appealed to citizens to give up their LPG subsidies on a voluntary basis under the ‘Give It Up’ campaign for the benefit of the poor families, around 6.5 lakh consumers complied resulting in savings of about Rs 300 crore.