NEW DELHI: There is a need to write the “intent” of policies, regulations and guidelines in brief while notifying them, a move that will bring clarity and communicate what it aims to achieve, suggested D Thara, secretary of newly created department of capital development under the housing and urban affairs ministry.Speaking at a conference of the real estate sector by Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), Thara said people making policies often assume a policy has been communicated clearly, only to find that it is interpreted in completely different ways by different stakeholders depending on their interests or perceived gains and losses.She said that communicating an intent is a “very big challenge” for policymakers. “For example, we write a single sentence and we are thinking we have communicated this and then later we found out that it had just the opposite interpretation in some other quarter… So I’m just wondering how do you bring out that clarity as to what is the intent? Intent is more important than what the sentence communicates.
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Thara said that henceforth her department will adopt the practice of writing a small intent before going on to the real policy prescription. “I think one reform we should all adopt in govt is this,” she addedThe official also urged the real estate developers to work closely with city municipalities to create necessary physical infrastructure for their residential and commercial projects. She also urged builders to focus on rain harvesting, water recycling and sewage treatment among other critical facilities.“Every development creates an interaction with the larger urban environment, and we need to understand and mitigate the externalities that construction can create for the city,” she said. Calling for a new public-private paradigm in urban development, Thara asked real estate developers to work more closely with municipal agencies and assess the impact of every project beyond its boundaries – from the water it displaces and the sewage it generates, to the energy it consumes and the infrastructure it requires.