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Twenty years into the first ADB–supported financing to revitalize Kolkata, this publication looks at the journey taken by the partnership of ADB and the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) since 1998 to transform Kolkata into a more livable city.

ADB started its partnership with the KMC in 1998, when it approved two technical assistance grants to strengthen the corporation’s accounting system and to prepare ADB’s first urban sector loan to the KMC, the Kolkata Environmental Improvement Project (KEIP). KEIP was approved in 2000. The KMC has come a long way since then and is currently implementing ADB’s fifth loan to improve the city’s urban services, livability, inclusiveness, and resilience. This book traverses that journey and tracks the outcomes achieved to date and the directions expected in future.

Transforming a city the size of Kolkata takes commitment spanning decades and multiple projects.

CHANGE FOR ALL. Much has been accomplished but more work is needed.

Transforming a city the size of Kolkata—with a permanent population of over 5 million and around 6 million floating residents—takes a commitment spanning decades and multiple projects. It takes capable project implementers, extensive funds, long-term planning, and steadfast leaders. The story isn’t finished. KMC and ADB will continue to work on their shared vision for Kolkata City, but 20 years in the making is a good time to pause and take inventory of what has worked, what hasn’t worked, what needs doing next, and where.

This book begins by telling the story of the shared vision for the city by the KMC and ADB in its first chapter. It references commitments spanning decades, a focused and phased approach to implementing common goals, and a determination to enact integrated and long-term planning for the city. It tells the story of a diverse and ambitious urban development agenda, the partnerships and innovations that made it work, and the professionals who have fueled and sustained it.

Kolkata was highlighted time and again as a city at risk of climate change.

MANY FRONTS. Transforming a mega city takes massive effort on parallel fronts, and includes large-scale projects and smaller one-on-one capacity building.

The second chapter examines the interventions that have raised and will raise the sustainability of the city’s core urban services, much of it invisible investments underground to ensure water and sanitation security for the city. The work includes expanding the sewerage and drainage systems and water supply improvements and optimization—new and improved treatment facilities, energy-efficient pumping networks and meters that reduce losses and provide accountability. In addition, planning and works are underway to make the city cleaner by managing its solid waste and building the KMC’s capacity to better sustain the services it provides.

The achievements of the past 20 years exemplify a phased and integrated urban planning, which is the core and true essence of making a city more livable.

The third chapter looks at the impacts of the investments in promoting inclusiveness and gender equity in the city and how they have made a visible difference in the lives of people, especially those who once lived on the margins of the city.

The fourth chapter outlines how the city has been systematically preparing plans and policies to build its resilience, to understand climate change impacts, and to invest in soft and hard infrastructure so that it is prepared for whatever the future has in store, especially in dealing with shocks and stresses.

Kolkata’s centralized system for underground sewerage and drainage was laid more than 150 years ago by the British empire. Kolkata at the time was only the second city to have an extensive centralized underground sewerage and drainage system in the world, after Hamburg in Germany. Before KEIP interventions, the city’s sewage and stormwater drained through 130 kilometers of canals before emptying into the city’s outskirts, where the city morphs into the countryside. Those canals had never been cleaned since they were built 150 years ago. The old combined sewerage system, built in 1859 and covering the city’s core areas, badly needed desilting and rehabilitation to alleviate the flooding that Kolkata experienced each monsoon season. The trunk sewers in central Kolkata, some silted by 80% over the years with almost solidified deposits, needed urgent attention.

As climate change experts began to study vulnerabilities that would be exposed by effects such as rising water levels and more frequent and intense storms, Kolkata was highlighted time and again as a city at risk. In 2011, a detailed study by the World Bank assessed Kolkata’s vulnerability to climate change and recommended investments in sewerage and drainage (S&D) systems, particularly in the peripheral areas previously uncovered. The KMC designed the Kolkata Environmental Improvement Investment Program (KEIIP) to increase its climate resilience and urban services by adopting the recommendations from the 2011 World Bank study, and following the KMC’s master plans and policies that were prepared with the help of KEIP.

Through KEIP and KEIIP support, the S&D systems have been rehabilitated and extended outside the core areas to almost double their original capacity. The canals for treated effluent have been cleaned and the sewage treatment plants rehabilitated. Flooding has been addressed to a large extent and fewer streets remain impassable during downpours. Through phased sequencing of investments under KEIP and KEIIP, the KMC is increasing its climate resilience by systematically achieving expansions in the S&D network in peripheral areas of Kolkata, including flood-prone areas; increasing sewage treatment capacity; improving water supply by reducing nonrevenue water (NRW); and increasing operational efficiency of services.

ALL ABOUT PEOPLE. Big infrastructure projects improve lives but real change comes from combining infrastructure with community development.

WORKING TOGETHER. Success in upgrading underground services of a 300-year-old, dense megacity takes focused planning, capable people, and technology.

Municipal finance has been strengthened, with the financial management systems now computerized and brought up to date. Every property in Kolkata now has a digital identification, and the city has introduced area-based property taxes, a modernized and digital system, so that citizens can pay online. Work is continuing to bring clean water to more people and for longer periods of the day. Plans and ongoing works are aimed at reducing water loss. A large number of slum dwellers who lived around canals and wetlands now reside in livable housing and have meaningful employment. Solid waste collection and recycling are being improved. A comprehensive master plan is finalized to cover the full solid waste management cycle and provide long-term sustainable solutions for the city.

The KMC and its dedicated program management unit (PMU) for KEIP, which continued subsequently for KEIIP, have come a long way from the project’s early days, when there was little progress and the partnership seemed in jeopardy. The initial results and the speed at which the project progressed from 2000 to 2004 were not promising at all. Both ADB and the KMC realized that things needed to change. In those early days, ADB realized it needed to boost its support so that the KMC could learn fast, adapt, and consider alternatives when implementing projects in one of the oldest and densest cities in the world. It took a few years before the partners began to see the way forward.

MODERNIZING KOLKATA. ADB projects used modern technologies to minimize disruption and improve implementation.

The scenario changed and the project began to succeed when, from 2005 onward, the KMC geared up for the task by assigning capable leaders as project directors. the KMC gave full authority to these leaders to build the right multidisciplinary cadre and provided training and the incentives that would ensure long-term involvement. It modernized the systems and structures in its PMU while also improving its own monitoring. These were necessary and missing parts of the jigsaw when implementing such a large-scale infrastructure project.

The PMU under the KMC is now a juggernaut project-implementing entity, with more than 100 full-time staff. Having such an entity within a local municipal body is rare, not only in India, but also in most of Asia. The PMU has become renowned for its extraordinary and consistent performance in handling complex engineering projects in India. It was awarded the best performing ADB-funded project in India in 2017, after a joint annual evaluation by the Ministry of Finance, the Government of India, and ADB during their tripartite review of projects. Some of the people involved in the projects—consultants, staff of KEIP, contractors—who helped bring efforts up to speed in those early days are now experts in urban rehabilitation.

The PMU under the KMC is now a juggernaut project-implementing entity, with more than 100 full-time staff. Having such an entity within a local municipal body is rare, not only in India, but also in most of Asia.

Administrative and management systems have been modernized and strengthened, maintenance systems have been digitized, and supervisory control for water supply services has been upgraded.

Key to implementing the ADB-funded projects have been measures to ensure that social interventions are focused and phased and that long-term master plans are prepared and diligently followed.

The success of KEIP and KEIIP to date can also be attributed to the use of high-level technology that started with microtunneling and e-measurement of works and now is growing to many aspects of the KMC’s urban services management support through the projects. Micro-tunneling to lay large sewerage and drainage pipes under the projects minimized the disruption to traffic and social costs usually entailed in such work. The KMC utilized remote sensing and geographic information systems (GIS) to put all its urban assets, properties and services on one digitized map, and is making it accessible to citizens an interactive e-platform to its citizens. Administrative and management systems have been modernized and strengthened, maintenance systems have been digitized, and supervisory control for water supply services has been upgraded using data acquisition for more efficient water systems management. A state-of-the-art flood forecasting and early flood warning system has been established. The KMC and ADB continue to partner with agencies such as the European Space Agency to utilize remote-sensing data and satellite imagery to analyze problems and improve urban services. All such tools aid the planning and designing that will make Kolkata more livable as the city continues to grow.

The achievements of the past 20 years exemplify a phased and integrated urban planning, which is the core and true essence of making a city more livable. In partnership, ADB and the KMC have overcome immense challenges by improving their own capacity to plan, design, and manage investments in a challenging urban environment. Their efforts are exemplary in South Asia where similar projects have often not been as successful. Along with strategic planning and persistent implementation, policy reforms have progressively continued to protect recent and future investments. The city’s leaders and citizens and development partners have remained focused on planning for the long term, phasing the interventions, while continuously building capacity for design, construction, and maintenance of the assets.

A MORE LIVABLE KOLKATA. Kolkata city is implementing and updating its service improvement plans to become a greener, cleaner, and more resilient city.

The tasks of making Kolkata greener with fully sustainable urban services, as well as more resilient and inclusive for all its citizens, are so enormous that gaps still remain. More work is needed on multiple fronts, including enforcing spatial land-use planning, restoring local water bodies, having nature-based solutions to control flooding, sustainably collecting and treating solid waste, and making Kolkata greener and more resilient to face the growing climate change threats. Two decades of engagement later, Kolkata City is on the path toward achieving the shared vision of becoming more livable, greener, more sustainable, inclusive, and resilient.