The opportunity for a seamless NCR

It is a region that spans 55,144 square kilometre and is home to some of the country’s largest and most important cities, including Delhi, Gurugram, Noida, Ghaziabad, and Faridabad, as well as a population of 46 million people. But, for roughly four decades, the ambitious project of building a seamless National Capital Region (NCR) has proceeded at a snail’s pace, hobbled by a mixture of poor planning, clashing administrative mandates and lack of political will. At the heart of the problem that afflicted this region and exacerbated already grave problems (think of the blanket of poisonous air that hangs over the Capital or the toxic water that now flows through the once life-affirming Yamuna) was the patchwork of five governments that controlled various aspects of the NCR — Delhi, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and the Centre. Under successive governments of all political shades, proposals often fell victim to competition in electoral politics.

This could change now. The results of the Delhi assembly elections on Saturday ushered in a BJP government with a handsome majority. Importantly, with this result, all five governments with stakes in the NCR are now under the political umbrella of one party, something that has not happened in nearly 40 years. This political alignment offers an opportunity to planners and policymakers alike to imagine a better model for the NCR and ensure that the project achieves its potential.

The problem areas are obvious. The NCR might be among the world’s largest contiguous urban regions but it suffers from stark problems of income inequality and living conditions. Over the last decade, pollution has proven to be an impossible problem because governments haven’t been able to work together to create policy and implement it uniformly. Cleaning the Yamuna also needs multi-state effort, as does building social protections, boosting manufacturing and creating long-term employment. The BJP governments, therefore, have an opportunity as well as the responsibility to make the NCR realise its true potential.

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