Even the land acquisition bill remains hostage of the political parties, NITI aayog vice chairman Arvind Panagariya today said land acquisition is difficult in India.

“By all estimates that I have seen, it will easily take about up to 5 years for any acquisition of land to construct a city or something like that. That I am assuming that every step goes in smooth process without any challenges from NGOs, either judicial one or any kind of protest. So procedurally, it is a difficult Act,” Panagariya said at a conference in Delhi on sustainable and inclusive urbanisation.

 “If you want to build new cities, you need land and also large spaces are required for businesses to flourish and for that you need spaces within the existing cities,” he said. The horizontal space is also scarce, he said.  One way to overcome this space problem is to construct vertically but there are issues with that as well, the vice chairman of the government’s think tank said.

Panagariya said Indian cities have chosen a policy of low floor space index (FSI) and which have resulted in high rentals.

“You also need orderly urbanisation. Rapid moving transport and dense network of transport is needed so that people can reach desired place in a smooth manner. It also allows people to live in larger spaces outside the main city,” he added.

On growth prospect, he said India has the potential to hit double digit growth and this means faster transformation, faster urbanisation and greater prosperity and rapid elimination of poverty.