Sustainable and Inclusive Urban Development in Metropolitan Kolkata (Policy Reforms and Strategic Transformations: A Framework for Replicability)

Calcutta, not only the oldest but also one of the largest metropolises of India, has been a primate economic centre. Resultantly it attracted huge in-migration from places far and wide. Calcutta witnessed unregulated and unplanned urban growth and the same was aggravated by large-scale influx of refugees from then East Pakistan.

The urban scene took a grave turn in late 1950s with severe breakdown in public health. It was followed by economic decline since mid-1960s. Calcutta was in doldrums on many fronts and thus posed numerous challenges.

It was rightly realised that comprehensive long-term urban planning and implementation of plans and projects were sine qua non. For this, necessary organisations (CMPO and CMDA) and legislations were put in place.

The vision for planned development of metropolitan Calcutta, which housed considerable economically weaker sections of people, called for making the urban planning approaches and development strategies sustainable and inclusive and this book has captured evolution of such policies and strategies. This book would be of interest to urban development policy makers and practitioners, especially those in context similar to Calcutta’s.

Kalyan Roy, a post-graduate in Economics from Calcutta University, worked with Calcutta Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA) as an Urban Economist for more than 36 years and headed the Socio Economic Planning Directorate.

He is SPURS Fellow from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA.. He also undertook short-term courses on Social Cost Benefit Analysis at IIPA, New Delhi and on Public Private Partnership (PPP) at IIM, Ahmedabad.

Roy specialised in ‘project appraisal, monitoring and evaluation’; perspective planning exercise; drafting of various policy notes; and public private partnerships in infrastructure development. Roy had the privilege of working closely with CMDA’s senior level functionaries dealing with various policy issues. This had given Roy a good deal of insight into the evolving planning and development approaches and strategies.