Government of India's ministry of Housing and urban affairs is implementing which scheme for urban planning and heritage conservation ?

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — option (4), HRIDAY Programme. HRIDAY stands for the Heritage City Development and Augmentation Yojana, and it is the only one of the four schemes named here whose stated purpose joins urban planning to heritage conservation, which is exactly what the stem asks for. It was launched on 21 January 2015 by the Ministry of Urban Development, since merged into the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, with an outlay of about Rs 500 crore and a duration of four years. Its aim was to bring together urban planning, economic growth and heritage conservation in an inclusive way, and its work covered heritage-sensitive infrastructure, the preservation of cultural assets, the preparation of heritage inventories, and improvements to sanitation, tourism amenities and the areas around monuments and pilgrimage sites. Thirteen cities took part: Ajmer, Amaravati, Amritsar, Badami, Dwarka, Gaya, Kanchipuram, Mathura, Puri, Varanasi, Velankanni, Vellore and Warangal — a list worth learning, because questions are set on which cities were and were not included, and Varanasi received the largest allocation. The scheme was fully funded by the Centre, ran to November 2018 and was subsequently merged into the PRASHAD scheme for pilgrimage and heritage development. The distinguishing word in the stem is 'heritage conservation'. Each of the other three options is a real and large urban scheme of the same ministry, but each is directed at something else — smart infrastructure, sanitation, or water and sewerage — and none of them is a heritage programme.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) The Smart Cities Mission was launched on 25 June 2015 by the Ministry of Urban Development, later part of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, and covers one hundred cities selected through a competition among proposals. Its object is to make cities citizen-friendly and sustainable through retrofitting and renewal, usually concentrated in a model area of each city, with a Special Purpose Vehicle set up to carry out the projects. Heritage may feature in a particular city's smart city proposal, but conservation is not the mission's purpose and no part of its design is built around it. This is the most attractive of the wrong options because it is the best known of the urban missions, and a candidate who cannot recall HRIDAY will reach for the scheme they have heard of most often.  (b) The Swachh Bharat Mission is a sanitation programme, not an urban planning or heritage one. Launched on 2 October 2014, it runs in two parts — an urban component under the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs and a rural component under a separate ministry — and its targets are the elimination of open defecation, the construction of household and community toilets and the management of solid waste. It does touch heritage cities incidentally, since cleanliness around monuments and pilgrimage sites is part of urban sanitation, and that incidental overlap is what makes it usable as a distractor here. But a scheme is identified by its object, and the object of the Swachh Bharat Mission is sanitation.  (c) Atal Mission is short for the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation, known as AMRUT, launched on 25 June 2015 — the same day as the Smart Cities Mission — by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs and covering about five hundred cities. Its purpose is basic urban infrastructure: a tap water and sewerage connection for every household, the development of green spaces and parks, and the reduction of pollution through public and non-motorised transport. It is the water-and-sewerage mission of the group, and nothing in its design concerns heritage. The option is worth attention because 'Atal Mission' is printed here without its expansion, and a candidate who does not connect the short name to AMRUT may not know what they are being offered.

Concept: The urban missions launched in the mid-2010s divide the work of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs into distinct programmes, and questions turn on telling them apart by their objects. HRIDAY, the Heritage City Development and Augmentation Yojana, was launched on 21 January 2015 with about Rs 500 crore and a four-year life, entirely funded by the Centre, to combine urban planning with heritage conservation in thirteen cities — Ajmer, Amaravati, Amritsar, Badami, Dwarka, Gaya, Kanchipuram, Mathura, Puri, Varanasi, Velankanni, Vellore and Warangal — and it was merged after 2019 into the PRASHAD scheme for pilgrimage and heritage development. The Smart Cities Mission, of 25 June 2015, covers a hundred competitively selected cities and works through Special Purpose Vehicles on retrofitting, redevelopment and area-based renewal. AMRUT, launched the same day, covers about five hundred cities and funds water supply, sewerage, green spaces and transport that reduces pollution. The Swachh Bharat Mission, of 2 October 2014, is the sanitation programme, split into urban and rural components. Alongside these run the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana for housing, the Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana for urban livelihoods and, in the culture ministry, PRASHAD for pilgrimage sites.

State PCS 2021 Q40 — Economy PYQ with Answer

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