Dear Readers,

The HRIDAY Scheme has recently
been in news and could be crucial for your exams.

The Heritage City Development and
Augmentation Yojana, or HRIDAY, was launched early this year. This program will
be aimed specifically at the heritage sites of the country and will work towards
exploiting the potential of these cities. Targeted at twelve cities in
particular, HRIDAY will “preserve and revitalize soul of the heritage city to
reflect the city’s unique character by encouraging aesthetically appealing,
accessible, informative and secured environment.” This article will look at the
objectives, background and working framework of this program.

Objectives

·
To focus on holistic development and unify urban
planning, heritage conservation and economic growth for heritage cities.

·
According to Press Information Bureau, it “aims
to preserve and revitalize soul of the heritage city to reflect the city’s
unique character by encouraging aesthetically appealing, accessible,
informative & secured environment.”

·
To concentrate on livelihood, cleanliness,
skills, safety, security, faster service delivery and accessibility of heritage
cities, and also aim for beautification in an inclusive fashion.

·
To make last-mile connectivity heritage sites
better by conservation of areas, documentation, increased facilities for women,
senior citizens and differently abled citizens.

·
To design a Heritage Management Plan (HMP) and
use it for certain identified cities so as to outline heritage resources and
come up with strategies to plot their conservation, restoration, future use and
progress.

·
To develop and maintain a heritage asset
directory of cities, and use natural, cultural, living and built heritage as
the basis for urban planning, growth and service provision.

·
To construct effective links between cultural
and tourism facilities, with specific focus on sanitation services like water
taps, public washrooms, etc. with the latest technological developments.

·
To make the cities more informative and
connected with the help of modern equipment and security apparatus such as
CCTV.

·
To increase physical as well as intellectual
accessibility with the help of well-planned road designs and GIS mapping of
historical sites.

Background – What is HRIDAY?

·
HRIDAY was launched on 21 January 2015 by Mr. M.
Venkaiah Naidu, Union Urban Development Minister. He said, “No nation can move
forward ignoring its cultural heritage and legacy. India is a diverse land of
languages and religions and we need to preserve the legacy of all kinds. HRIDAY
is a step towards reviving the soul of cities hosting such rich heritage.”

·
Mr. Naidu said that India has thirty-two UNESCO
recognized natural and cultural heritage sites, and ranks second in Asia and
fifth in the world, and HRIDAY will help in harnessing the tourism potential of
the country to the fullest.

·
An allocation of INR 500 crore was made for this
scheme in the 2014 Union Budget.

·
Concluding in March 2018, the scheme will be
implemented in twelve cities – Ajmer, Amaravati, Amritsar, Badami, Dwarka,
Gaya, Kanchipuram, Mathura, Puri, Varanasi, Velankanni and Warangal.

·
HRIDAY will support development of heritage
infrastructure ventures which will include revival of urban infrastructure in
areas close to heritage sites and assets marked by the state governments and
the Ministry of Culture, Government of India.

·
Some of the areas covered under this will be
sanitation, drainage, waste management, street lights, roads, electricity,
tourism, water supply development and footpaths.

·
The focus of HRIDAY will broadly be on four
areas – physical infrastructure, institutional infrastructure, economic
infrastructure and social infrastructure – and assistance will be provided by
public sector undertakings as well as the private sector.

HRIDAY will be working on two
levels – national level and city level. Each level will have its own sub-organizations
which will together make sure that the objectives of the scheme are being
fulfilled.

National Level

1. National Advisory Committee (NAC) – It
is the main advisory body for HRIDAY. The Mission Director will serve as the
convener of this committee. NAC will aid in creating the implementation and
governance framework and the projects of heritage development will evolve under
this very body, with the help of advice and directions on all the constituents
of the program.

2. HRIDAY National Empowered Committee – This
will be jointly chaired by the Secretary of Ministry of Urban Development and Chief
Secretary of the respective state. The main function of HNEC is to grant
approval to all the operations and fund releases and keep track of the combined
performance of HRIDAY. It is also responsible for ensuring that there is no replication
in the approval of projects or activities under HRIDAY.

3. National Mission Directorate – The head
of this body is the Mission Director and it is backed by the National Institute
of Urban Affairs. NMD is mainly responsible for preparing HRIDAY guidelines,
model RFPs (Request For Proposal) and toolkits for executing different
components. It also has to facilitate selection of HRIDAY City Anchors and establishment
of City Mission Directorates.

4. National Technical Committee – This
will be chaired by the Director of National Institute of Urban Affairs. The
primary motive of NTC is to technically review and evaluate the framework of
implementation, Detailed Project Reports (DPR), City HRIDAY Plans and similar propositions
before presenting it at the HNEC meetings.

City Level

1. City Level Advisory and Monitoring
Committee (CLAMC) – The convener here would be the District Magistrate. The
major functions of the CLAMC are approving the City HRIDAY Plan, reviewing the DPRs
before sending it forth to the National Mission Directorate and monitoring and
assessing the timely progress of the program.

2. City Mission Directorate – This will
serve as the nodal organization for implementing the HRIDAY scheme at the city
level. Some of its main purposes are selecting agencies for DPR, reviewing City
HRIDAY Plans, Execution Works and DPRs and to check the overall coordination
and execution of the program at the city level.

3. HRIDAY City Anchors – For every city in
the scheme, the agency with substantial expertise in the area of heritage has
been chosen to serve as the HRIDAY City Anchor. Some of its functions are
prioritization of projects, preparation of City HRIDAY Plans and ensuring
quality control for all the selected projects by creating DPRs and executing
the work.

These are the major points about
the HRIDAY project. If you can understand these well, you will be able to
attempt the questions pertaining to this scheme with relative ease.

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