India keen to draw on UK know-how

India and the UK have agreed to work towards a memorandum of understanding (MoU) in areas related to urban development.

India is keen to benefit from experience of UK, said India’s minister of urban development Kamal Nath. The announcement was made following a meeting with UK minister for decentralisation and cities Greg Clark.

The MoU would be aimed at cooperation and deepening the engagement between India and UK in the areas such as land economics, sustainable masterplanning and transport planning. Another area of cooperation would be the sharing of knowledge in the formulation of Public private partnership models.

The challenges of urbanisation in India were huge, said Mr Nath, both in significance and scale. The government of India is keen on bridging the urban infrastructure deficit by benefiting from the wealth of experience of the UK government in the urban sector.

Mr Nath also participated in a meeting of the UK India Urban Infrastructure Group organized by the UK Business Council and UK Trade & Investment. The UK India Urban Infrastructure Group has proposed conducting an urban regeneration scoping study. The above group has also proposed to cooperate in the development of a regeneration masterplan, This could be demonstrated by adopting a satellite town to deploy UK expertise. The meeting was attended by UK companies including Arup, Biwater International, Clifford Chance, JCB, KPMG, Mott MacDonald and Serco.