⇒ The Minister of Housing and Urban Affairs and Petroleum and Natural Gas Shri Hardeep Singh Puri addressed the inaugural session of ‘Connect Karo 2021 – Towards Equitable, Sustainable Indian Cities’ event on 13 September 2021.
The five-day event was organized by the World Resources Institute (WRI) from September 13 to 17, 2021.
Theme:
The theme of Connect Karo 2021 was ‘Clean, Green & Just’.
During the event, Connect Karo was focused on addressing critical challenges faced by Indian cities with an emphasis on our deep dive cities of Mumbai, Delhi, Kochi, Hyderabad and Bengaluru.
About:
Connect Karo is WRI India’s flagship event that brings together Indian and global leaders and policymakers committed to designing inclusive, sustainable and climate forward Indian cities.
Addressing the inaugural session, Shri Hardeep Singh Puri said:
» By 2030, almost 70% of the national GDP will come from our cities as rapid urbanisation facilitates efficiencies of agglomerations.
» By 2030, the urban population in India will almost double to 630 million.
» There is eight-fold increase the total expenditure on urban development as over the past six years (2015-2021), this figure is about Rs 11.83 lakh crore against the Rs 1.57 lakh crores from 2004 to 2014.
» Under AMRUT, 1,831 parks over 3,700 acres have been developed, and 85 lakh street lights have been replaced, resulting in energy savings of 185.33 crore units (kWh).
» Government will be launching the Jal Jeevan Mission (Urban), with an outlay of Rs 2.8 lakh crore to ensure universal water supply in all 4,378 urban local bodies in India.
» Government will be launching the Swachh Bharat Mission 2.0, with an outlay of Rs 1.41 lakh crores.