HMDA depriving local town planners a chance by cartelizing projects

That the HMDA has cartelized urban planning is evident from ‘Calling for Request for Proposals' (RFP) for ‘Revising the Cyberabad Master Plan’ and ‘preparing the Master Plan for the ITIR’ with the last date of Feb 16, with very very high requirements.

It is now a common knowledge in urban planning professional circles as to who has dictated these requirements to qualify for undertaking these two Master Planning exercises. And surprisingly both are issued by the Chief Engineer of HMDA, who has nothing to do with urban planning or preparation of Master Plans! Again in the past RFPs of HMDA too it was the chief Engineer, HMDA who issued the Notifications (and clarifications).That this is to benefit a single multi-national firm who has its strangle hold on HMDA since 2011 wherein it has bagged all such similar projects numbering more than 6 till date - again engineered by the Chief Engineer of HMDA is, to say the least, shocking!

Is this a Notification for EPC? This is leading to the suspicion that the Chief Engineer is hand in glove in the matter. Otherwise, where is the necessity for the firm to have a minimum annual turnover of Rs. 40 crores in the past 5 years in both the RFPs (one is for an area of about 50 sq.km and another is for 200 sq km and yet, the terms and conditions are identical) – that means a firm should have at least Rs 200 Crores turnover since past 5 years– which planning consultancy firm can qualify such a requirement, excepting for the said multi-national firm?

The conditions and requirements are so tailor-made that only this particular multi-national firm would qualify for these, throwing up questions of ethics, unfair and unhealthy trends in urban planning and development. And with 6 projects already under its bag, can one expect to do justice to these two new projects. However big or multi national the said firm may be? And wonder of wonders, the said multi national firm does not have a single senior local urban planner! One can conclude what type of plans they will be able to dish out. What a sad commentary on how urban planning is being corporatized and cartelized in HMDA, at the cost of local planners in general and urban planning responsibilities of HMDA in particular.

And what is the task required to be undertaken - Revising and updating the Master Plan of Cyberabad which is barely 50 sq km and which was prepared barely 14 years back and due to pressures of the corporate, more than 60 Master Plan roads have already been deleted! So what is left of the Cyberabad Master Plan required to be integrated with is anybody’s guess (other than regularizing the land use violations)!

This would be similar to the exercise undertaken by the HMDA in the name of Metropolitan development Plan through another Consultant wherein the ORR Growth Corridor master plan was tagged in the last minute to ‘correct some very crucial lands road approaches-all in the name of ‘integration’. And finally what do we get? A stupid Plan devoid of local realities and full of errors and howlers which the HMDA is still trying to correct in the name of ‘Base map corrections’.

The local talent and domain knowledge of planners in the State have not been encouraged by HMDA in any of its so called planning consultancy projects. Instead, conditions in the RFPs have been deliberately been put by HMDA to eliminate any local competition, and in ensuring that only this multi national Corporate entity qualifies and undertake the Studies and planning.

Are we expecting any engineering product or what? How can local planners compete since they do not have such an annual turnover, although they have the experience)? After all, what is required under the Urban Areas Development Act or the HMDA Act is having physical planning expertise and knowledge with broad proposals. All the above planning 8 Planning RFPs (6 already given to this firm and currently these 2 in question) brought out is a recipe for disaster. Another Rs. 100-odd Crores of public money, by way of ‘Consultancy Studies’ would go to this said multi national firm. And has this firm delivered the goods in the given time? Far from it, and nobody questions the same. They think bringing in outside consultants will solve the problems of our cities and towns. They think, these Consultants will bring in the money for implementation of the Master plans.

If this were so, then all our previous master plans should have been implemented successfully long back-whether it is the Cyberabad Master Plan or the recent ‘Hyderabad Vision Plan’ the story is the same: outside Consultants come, draw fancy plans, pocket Crores of rupees as fees and disappear. The local and home-grown planner or GHMC or HMDA staff are then required to suggest innovative methods for implementation of these fancy plans.

Time that there is a Technical and Development Audit by the AG Office, so that such stellar agencies like HMDA do not go astray and squander public money in the name of importing Consultants to draw up its plans despite having an in-house Master Plan Unit with a full-time Master Plan consultant who is paid monthly more than any planner in the State.

The Government should look into the matter, put on hold these two RFPs and investigate the above murky going ons in HMDA in the name of ‘Consultancy’. Home-grown town planners have not been given the opportunity to plan and design for our cities and towns. Are they lacking in talent? Not at all! Somebody who is external to the city or town comes and plans, imposing the alien concepts and cultures, and in the process killing the home-grown talent and domain knowledge. This is leading to home grown planners becoming only drafting and errand boys for the Corporate consultants. If the same trend continues, then we will be able to find the home grown town planners only in the Salar Jung Museum.

By architect AB Reddy

The views expressed in the article are those of the author and doesn't reflect that of the organization.