CDP dream: Let city be info-hub

THE CITY is all set to become an info-hub and centre of medical tourism, projects the City Development Plan (CDP), which is being prepared by the World Bank-hired Feedback Ventures for the Jawahar Lal Neheru Urban Renewal Mission.  If the things go according to the vision document, Lucknow could be one of best IT and medical tourism destinations of the country.

The document also visualises Lucknow as a slum-free city with special planning to accommodate the poor. The agency preparing the plan has held several round of talks with the NGOs, representatives of residents’ welfare associations besides visiting the slum areas and talking to slum dwellers. If the CDP is approved then the city will have number of flyovers, besides a good metro rail for public transport.

In an exclusive talk with HT Live on Thursday, the consultant of Feedback Ventures Vinod Tewari,  who was in the city to give final touches to the nearly complete CDP, said, “ The City Development Programme (CDP) is almost complete, and we would be able to submit it to the government during the last week of this month.”

“Yes Lucknow can be developed as a knowledge-based city— a city which could be the hub of IT industry in northern India. We have also got the proposal of developing Lucknow as a centre of medical tourism in India as the city has leading medical institutions like SGPGI, KGMU and best scientific institutions, laboratories, drug research centres. As far as IT is concerned, the city has good knowledge base in the form of institutions preparing computer experts. We have included all these proposals in our vision document of city,” said Tewari. 

The city development plan has five stages and the first four stages are just about complete. The first stage was of assessment of city like collecting demographic data, economic base, and social structure besides other physical and environmental aspects. The collection of all data’s is complete claimed Tewari.  In the second stage the status of services and infrastructure was collected by the company for preparing CDP.

“We have collected all the data about the capacity of city water supply, sewer lines, sanitation services, drainage, traffic, transport, heritage conservation, according to that the detailed project report  will be prepared in the later stages,” said Tewari.

“In the third stage, we have collected all the details about the civic institutions like Lucknow Municipal Corporation,  LDA, SUDA, DUDA, Jal Sansthan, Jal Nigam, PWD, Housing Board. We have studied their strengths , weaknesses, financial strengths,” he added.

The vision plan calls for developing Lucknow as knowledge-based city.
The fifth stage is the formulation of strategy and prepare estimate investment requirement, which is under preparation. “We believe to complete the CDP within a week but before sending it to the government we will organise a public presentation of CDP before all the stakeholders like LMC, LDA, Housing Board, Jal Sansthan, along with the prominent NGO’s, members of residents’ welfare societies. We will invite the suggestions again before submitting the report to the government, for the preparation of Detailed Project Report (DPR),” said city coordinator of Feedback Ventures Akanksha Srivastava.