When I first tried the Daily Tech News show with Tom Merritt and his insightful commentary It was so good I told two friends about it and they told two friends and so on and so on and so on and Believe me. It's so easy to donate to DTNS head over to patreon.com slash A C E D T E C T then tell your friends about it and they'll tell two friends and so on and so on and so This is the Daily Tech News for Tuesday, June 2nd 2015 I'm Tom Merritt joining me from Finland this time Patrick Beja Independent podcaster and DTNS contributor. How fares the world of Finland? So, you know, it's it's good. I try to only join DTNS when I'm in countries that begin with an F So I was in Russia last week and you know, I didn't know I couldn't do it Although it's the federation of Russia Technically you could have I suppose so. Yeah Don't it Merritt get your time machine out. We have to redo the episode. How was it? How was Russia? It was very interesting. I was in St. Petersburg Which is probably the most Western city in all senses of the word and it was very interesting technologically it was a little bit more a Little bit more advanced than I thought it would be they had Wi-Fi everywhere everyone had phones including lots of iPhones but the biggest technological surprise actually came from Finland where we were looking for a Wireless connection and one of the easiest solution was actually mobile subscriptions and even Data prepaid data cards if I'm correct where for the subscription, for example, you can get an unlimited 100 megabits connection for about $20 a month. So there you go Unlimited to unlimited no data cap and and my brother-in-law and my brother-in-law was really pissed because on his plan That was a little bit cheaper. They limited the data that he has a data cap of about 70 gigabytes a month and he was really angry. That was unacceptable. So 70 gigabytes How can I live with just 70 gigabytes? Oh my gosh I had a gig I had a gigabyte cap on my prepaid card in Italy for a week And I felt like I was living in the luxury. That's been meant for you. That's crazy Well, you can say spasiba to a katharina for a st. Peter St. Peter Berg Because it's a she was she was the Empress who really kind of put that city westernized Yeah, she very much Western. She tried to emulate France as a matter Always a good choice in my book. Well enough of my half attempts at history Let's listen to some headlines tech crunch has confirmed that Microsoft has indeed acquired productivity app Wunderlist a company That created Wunderlist 6 Wunderkinder has more than 13 million users CEO Christian Reber said for now Nothing will change although new features and partner integrations are likely And it's an example of Microsoft continuing to grab apps in the productivity space So yeah, they're on the roll.  I think I think everyone is a big fan of Wunderlist Except for a while and then I stopped. Hmm. And I don't have a good reason why I stopped. I just It has fans Who are now automatically fans of Microsoft? So what you're saying is Veronica Belmont huge fan of Microsoft that is exactly what I'm saying The verge reports the first products to work with Apple's home kit are here Home kit allows smart home products to be controlled by any iOS device Lutron's two hundred and thirty dollars lighting kit and instian's smart home hub go on sale today Echo bees two hundred and fifty dollars thermostat. I home's power outlet and it'll Gato sensors will go on sale in July Home kit was announced one year ago today. So they're sliding in Just under the mark to be able to say at WWDC next week last year We announced home kit and we've launched these products on the platform since It did take a longer time than I would have expected. Yeah, me too That thing's just been sitting there doing nothing on your phone for a year But I imagine we're going to hear a lot more about this next Monday Very probable ours technical reports that Intel announced Thunderbolt 3 will use the USB type-c connector Instead of the mini display port connector Thunderbolt 3 will as you might expect support USB 3.1 Therefore up to 10 gigabits per second and Thunderbolts transparent port layer will go up to 40 gigabits per second Bidirectional full duplex that means one Thunderbolt 3 cable can support to 4k displays or even a 5k display at 60 Hertz At launch a passive Thunderbolt 3 cable that supports USB 3.1 and display port 1.2 at 20 gigabits per second Will be sold and an active cable that supports the 40 gigabits per second transport layer But without the display port compatibility will also be sold an active optical cable is coming sometime in 2016 The other two that I mentioned will ship before the end of this year so that means that Thunderbolt will now be indistinguishable from from USB 3.1 I'm wondering if this is going to lead to some confusion and I guess I'm already somewhat confused so yes it will You will have a Thunderbolt 3 connector where you will also be able to plug in USB cables Right. I think the most confusion is going to come when somebody has a Thunderbolt Device let's say a display and they plug it into a USB port and it doesn't work Exactly because the USB port doesn't support Thunderbolt because Thunderbolt will support USB It seems like it's looking like all the cables will support USB 3.1 But not every USB port is going to support Thunderbolt Although that's fixable. I guess, you know, it's just just firmware because it supports the connector, right? So hopefully the confusion will be at a minimum, but there will be some cases out there where something's going to seem like it should work and I won't I'm really excited about this the USB type-c connector I think is fantastic and the fact that Thunderbolt and Intel is saying we're you know what we're going to standardize on that I think is great. Yeah, it's I mean it seems at this point that USB 3.1 has everything Anyone should hope for in a connector. It could be the one to rule all of them now if only Apple would Abandon the lightning port that they launched what two years ago. Well, and remember their last or their last MacBook had a USB C yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, the MacBook the new MacBook does only has one. It's yeah, it could be possible I mean there is no Apart from the fact that they wouldn't want to change, you know, they wouldn't want to flip-flop And the flip-floppers they could go to USB 3.1 It would be annoying for all the people that have gotten Lightning connectors, but could make sense. I guess maybe they could they could continue to support Thunderbolt and lightning And have a USB type-c connection That's what this this allows and for those who don't know the USB type-c connection is the one that that's flippable speaking of flip-flopping Like it doesn't matter which orientation you plug it in. It's and it's tiny Yeah, yeah, but I mean all the cables you have you would need to get new cables if you have iOS devices Yeah, Apple fans are kind of used to that. I guess so Although there was a sizable uproar when Apple let go of the very old 30-pin connector two years ago. I didn't say there wouldn't be uproar. Ah, right All right, CNET reports that a Nintendo spokesman told the Wall Street Journal There is no truth to the report saying that we are planning to adopt Android for NX So it turns out Nikkei's people were not as familiar with the matter as they thought No, you know the the the polygon report on the matter Mentioned that Nikkei I'm quoting Nikkei does have a long history of getting its reports correct and Nintendo has a history of denying those reports early on despite them being accurate This is a really flat denial though. Like there's denials and there's denials, right? There's like we have nothing to announce at this time, which is a really soft denial and there's like We do want to comment on rumors and speculation all that. This is there is no truth to the report That's pretty that's pretty solid. If you want to get a little bit a little bit Annoyingly Specific about it. They're saying there is no truth to the report that we are planning to adopt Android for an X So they might not be planning to do it Or maybe they're studying different options with Android being one of them. Well, and you give me a case track record, but you're absolutely right about my guess is in The NX lab somebody has a prototype of Android that they're playing around with to see What it can do and yet it's not on the roadmap that that would fit these facts if the if somebody leaks out like hey They're developing with with Android and yet they're like that's just an experiment We have no plans to actually make that the product Intel also announced updates to its 14 nanometer Broadwell fifth generation core processor lineup according to CNET five desktop and five mobile parts were announced The core i7 5950 HQ for laptops is the most expensive one 623 bucks that gets you a 2.9 gigahertz quad-core chip and apparently 95% better media performance than the previous i7 5600 you although at a cost of a 47 watt thermal design power rating So it's quite a debit increase there the iris pro 6200 graphics cards getting all the attention though That comes as a socketed desktop part with up to 128 megabytes of ED RAM Comparable to the GeForce 940 M They're also announced five new Zeon server chips and those are getting the iris pro 6300 built-in So CPU Geeks everywhere rejoice Give your guards to Broadwell Our Stecnica reports game fly announced It has acquired cloud gaming service Playcast and is using it to launch a game fly streaming service on fire TV today Game fly streaming launches with 35 titles available in packs The packs give unlimited play to seven to 16 games Ranging in price from seven to ten dollars a month Game fly intends to refresh the games available and expand to other platforms You can talk about your can this confuses me more than Thunderbolt 3 and USB type-c does so I can buy packs Per month so I could have multiple subscriptions per month to packs of games that won't change Think of it like a satellite TV or cable TV plan like Yeah, it's basically bundles and it might seem like a bad way of doing it because you have to pay for multiple packs Or probably you're gonna want something because I can go to Sony I just pay him one amount a month and I get all the games That is very true But these can be cheaper, you know Sony is if you pay for it for three months It gets you It comes down to 15 bucks a month This could be seven so you could get some games. Yeah, it's not that I'm guessing It's probably not gonna be for very hardcore gamers, but I guess it's interesting that they're trying a different monetization with this idea of cloud gaming Because we haven't yet found there isn't a lot of competition. This is sort of a new field and It there could be something there I think seven is probably a little bit too expensive because as you correctly said Sony has a more old encompassing Offering but if you come down, let's say a couple of bucks if you have Let's say 10 games for five bucks a month Could be interesting for some people maybe yeah And so far the games are not blowing me away if you're a Lego fan They've got a Lego pack and I can see where that that bundled approach might work me for particular fans, right? They're gonna be excited to get oh, I get you know Lego Batman Lego Hobbit Lego Gotham They go beyond Gotham, but then there's a racing game and I'm I like racing games and I'm looking at this I'm like grid to Moto gp-13 You know Yeah, I mean I don't know that maybe it's because I have a console if I didn't have a console and this was my only access I Might be more excited Yeah, I guess that's that is the idea. I mean there are there are some interesting games There's Batman, you know Arkham. This is city or asylum might be city or fear three dirt three there. They're serious games They're it's not like the you know, I don't know that we or things like that where the games weren't as compelling That's a very good point. So However, we look at it though Alicia Keys said it best this game flies on fire TV wired reports that Facebook will open a new artificial intelligence lab in Paris where you're usually at The head of AI for Facebook Yann Lacune was born and educated in Paris and says he wants to work openly with and invest in the AI research community in Europe Lacune specializes in deep learning and building computers that mimic the human brains neural network Facebook already uses deep learning to identify images on the site and don't forget Google owns a deep learning outfit called DeepMind in Oxford, England So it looks like all the US money is coming to Europe to invest in AI research Yeah, maybe not all of it, but some of it. It's interesting, you know We're at least in in Paris the French are usually bemoaning the fact that we are not attractive to Entrepreneurs and the the job market or the economic context context is not attractive yet Probably for geographical reasons and a bunch of others all of the big tech companies have offices in Paris And this is one other example of that. So I'm not sure what to make of it But it's definitely interesting and and I'm also happy that Facebook is investing in in Europe in Paris, but it's Again, interesting that they're doing that At the time when Europe is not maybe not very happy with the way those tech giants handle Taxes and data and things like that. So that's you think there's another motivation of like, hey, you know We're employing all these people now in AI research Well The verge reports sound hound founder Kvan Muhair has launched an Android app called hound the app is a natural language processor that handles complex questions and Answers them fast. How does speech recognition and understanding in the same engine? Hey, Tom What is the population of the capital of the country in which the space needle is located, huh too late? Hound already has the answer the population of Washington DC is 601,723 Precisely and that that is an example of one of the questions. They did in a demo for the verge and You know, they were impressive because What is the population of the capital of the country in which the space needle is located means you have to deal with two Washington's you have to know the space needle is in Washington But the capital of that country that Washington is in is also called Washington But it's a different Washington to Washington DC and then be able to look up the population and spit that answer out Which is very impressive and the fact that it is speech recognition and understanding in the same engine is one of the reasons It's able to do things fast, but just able to tease out the complexity of natural language like that Is fairly impressive now this app is available for Android users of phones. I couldn't put it on my tablet It was like nope can't put it on an XS9 So I'm curious how it works in practice. It also isn't integrated into anything yet, right? But that's that's what Hound wants they're like we want people to see how good this is and then put it in their apps And hopefully put it in their platforms as well Tom I don't know how people are educated in the US But for me it was a relatively easy question and I understood the thing about the country or state in you know at maximum 15 seconds, so it's not that well you have you have the advantage of the evolved natural language processor of your brain How now that that's too complex for me to understand Let's move on the next web reports BQ has announced the Aquarius e5 HD Ubuntu edition That's its second smartphone to replace Android with Ubuntu. It's a 5-inch 720p display dual SIM One gigabyte of RAM quad core processor 16 gigabytes of storage phone the rear camera is 13 megapixels too It's expected to arrive mid-June unlocked for 199 euros and 90 euro cents across all of Euroland. I Love the addition of two euros in the sentence well played. Thank you Mashable reports that Pinterest showed off muck action buttons that will let users buy products directly From the site and add items to a wish list So if you see a recipe on Pinterest and want all the ingredients You could add those ingredients in your cart with one click Pinterest's head of partnerships Tim Kendall Tim Kendall said Pinterest hasn't built the feature yet. Oh, it's an interesting one though There are so many opportunities for interest to monetize this would seem like a pretty obvious one It's it reminds me of the same impulse behind the Google Tap right, which is like I'm in context. So I want to do something This is much less sophisticated than that because it doesn't have to interpret what's on the page. You mean you mean Google now on tap or yeah, yeah, Google now So so yes, I'm not comparing the technologies But it's that same impulse on the user side Which is I just want to do the thing that I'm looking at and and in Pinterest a lot of times I mean people shop and if there's a buy button there That they can just buy the thing they're looking at Pinterest is going to make some money off that so our retailers Yep. Yeah, definitely time for some news from you A lot of our news tons of our news the wonder list story for instance comes off of our subreddit daily tech news show.Reddit.com and you Don't get to complain unless you vote. So if you're like wait a minute Why didn't you cover my favorite story of the day? Well get into daily tech news show reddit.com and make your voice heard now You're not the only voice so we have to pay attention a lot of things and we also put our own spin on it That's why we're here is to to craft the perspective But it is very important and very helpful to see what the subreddit thinks is important and the more people that participate The more helpful it is Thank you our patentee for submitting our patinee I should say submitting this one. You guys voted it up PC world reports on a product called Batterizer which claims to extend the life of disposable batteries by around 800 percent It's essentially a scaled-down Voltage booster that keeps batteries alive even when they drop below 1.5 volts of output they can actually keep them alive all the way down to 0.6 volts The sleeve that goes around the battery is 0.1 millimeters thick So the batteries can fit in pretty much any standard compartment Batterizer is going to launch on an indiegogo campaign in June and then they intend to sell the product in September for ten dollars for a pack of four nice teaglass 1976 sent us the Disturbing news I'm disturbed that hot topic seems to have been outbid in its purchase of think geek Yes, hold your hold your comments for just a moment a second. Our stagnica reports GameStop swooped in and offered twenty dollars a share wait wait. It's not over Stealing the deal away from hot topic geek net think Geeks parent company has formally accepted GameStop software. So if you are hoping for a last-minute reversal, apparently it doesn't didn't happen although The deal should conclude sometime in August unless We should buy it Can you think we can come up with twenty one dollars a share? How many shares is it more than a lot of shares? Okay, if it's more than three then it might be a little bit difficult, but if it isn't we have a shot so Look think geek and hot topic made perfect sense to me It's basically, you know hot topic was saying we just want to be the physical world Equivalent of thinking and that made a lot of sense GameStop this is genius GameStop's been doing all the right things in advance of saying Oh, you know what games are gonna all be bought online in the future instead of folding in advance of that like bookstores Let's figure out how to keep the people who come into our stores coming into our stores to buy other things So they've been you know, they've been starting online services, which is smart But this would be brilliant to start become the think geek store become the place where gamers shop for the things That they would like to buy in person immediately accessories shirts fun little toys Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I agree and that is a look at the headlines All right, let's talk about a story that caught Patrick's eye today tech crunches Sarah Perez reporting that the app store Made a change the iOS app store made a change May 14th in the US market That took away the new what's hot and all iPhone Algorithmically determined sections of the games page on the app store and replaced it with mostly editorially curated lists Games now has best new games chosen by editors best new updates chosen by editors and on sub categories all-time Greats there is one algorithmically determined category still there called more games. You might like that's based on your individual history there So it's more relevant to you. I also saw best new updates as well First-time games subcategories have ever had curated lists. They've had featured lists and theme lists on the main page But never on the subcategories Different categories have different lists in the app store Patrick a lot of developers though are complaining that their sales have tanked because of this Yeah, this is an interesting consequence of that change The I suspect that the sales might be a Temporary effect the sales tanking I would suspect that before the the the algorithm Wouldn't necessarily be easy to to game. Huh? Huh? Yeah, thank you a second But you know the algorithms are always Possible and probably easy well actually easier to game than just the curation So it might be that some of those site tools were just trying to game the system Or maybe they're just not appeared Anymore because they're not the ones that the teams at Apple have chosen to display So there might be some time to adapt but the fact is it was providing a somewhat poor experience In my opinion when you only had algorithmically selected titles and apps and it is a little bit more work to have The games selected by a team But they already do that in some other portions of the store on podcasts on other things and there's Really no reason for games do not be in that in that same boat One of the really interesting aspects of it though is that it allows Apple to sort of influence the type of content That they will have on their store This might be seen as a nefarious Something that could be used you know power that could be used for evil In this case all of the games that are in the little carousel at the top that doesn't appear So you have lots of different categories in the app store and when they're algorithmically created You don't have a small carousel at the top. It's just a very ugly Banner that doesn't represent anything really when they are curated you have a Carousel that displays a bunch of titles in this case at least in France all of the titles selected are Titles that you have to pay maybe all but one are titles you have to pay for they're not freemium games So they're not free to play games So I'm wondering if this isn't a way for Apple to try and give a little nudge a little hint To developers saying what we value are games that you pay once for and you don't you're not going to be pestered with lots of Suggestions and reminders and opportunities to pay more or pay something for the game That it because we've discussed it a few times It seems those free-to-play games have sort of taken over The entire economy of the app store especially for games Which is a huge very important portion of that store so essentially what I'm saying is this curation gives Apple the power to Steer the app stores boat when algorithm didn't necessarily as much Well good because of the chance to steer it even more than they already did I guess Lockdown app stores in existence. So there they've been steering for a long time They just took over more of the direction now some devs reporting drops of 30 to 90 percent of their sales granted I'm sure when you change the listings the people who are no longer in the listings are gonna see their their sales drop That's doesn't matter how you change them. That's going to happen What I bet didn't happen is an overall drop in app sales The Apple wouldn't do that because that would hurt them and it would mean less money for them and their developers overall So I'm going to say without knowing for sure that I'm certain this has not hurt developers in aggregate That it has helped aggregate in developers in aggregate. However, it may have hurt small developers Harder because Apple can decide to choose the partners that it's more familiar with which could be bigger developers And that that could be a valid problem with this But at the same time instead of having to Game a system as you were saying a developer has to now impress the Apple editorial board So there's a there's a different method here It's still to me not the ideal system though because what should happen is the thing that impresses people who play games should be what is surfaced and featured and I don't know if there's a dead-on way to do that yet yeah, it's definitely a difficult problem because Theoretically if you put the games if you you put forward the games that have been selling the most or making the most money Which was the old system? You would you know come up with a list where the most successful games are presented to to the potential buyers In effect even if that was the case there were effects that wouldn't necessarily be desirable like games that were the most Efficient are Tricking people into spending money correct we get or even without going that far games That would have the kind that would elicit the kind of behavior. You don't necessarily want associated with your game with your store like You know somewhat addictive behavior, you know the free-to-play market has become More and more worrisome to game developers in the past year or 18 months There have been a few reports of a Mobile games Conferences where there were you know developers of course, but also a lot of people that were dealing in in gambling and Those kinds of sites that were very interested Take care of that by just banning gambling apps though. No, no curate the store. Well, that's the thing It's not gambling apps. It's games that have Freedom and free-to-play Elements, but that rely on player behaviors and gaming Apple could just ban those kinds of apps. I don't think they could want to be associated with those kinds of apps I don't think they could quite in that way because they're they're almost they constitute a huge amount of the Gaming apps market now there they've become so huge But if you're trying to curate them out of existence, why not just go the rest of the way? You're basically saying I don't want them to be successful either way Well, I don't that's the thing. I don't think that's neither Apple wants nor desirable. I think it's about balance So in other words, they don't want to rid the world of them. They just don't want to highlight them And and they get this this is a very Apple maneuver, right? They get more control over the App Store Makes perfect sense to me Well, did we lose Patrick? I thought he was just being unusually reticent But he seems to have frozen up We'll we'll we'll get him back. Don't worry, but that was pretty much the wrap-up of that conversation So apps reported January the App Store had 1.4 million apps And I bet at WWDC next week. We're gonna hear even more Let's move on to our pick of the day. It was sent to us by Matt Had a discussion with Darren on Friday if you remember regarding trusting Google with your passwords as well as cyber attacks from North Korea Matt says I always find the security and cyber crime topics on the show entertaining and this latest one prompted me to start reading a book That has been on my reading list since it came out in February. The book is Future Crimes by Mark Goodman Don't think it's the same Mark Goodman that was on MTV Book covers a wide range of topics from our oversharing of personal information The motives of the companies we give that info to and how they use it the technology used in both cyber attacks and terrorist attacks Such as the Mumbai attacks in 2008 and the future possibilities of technology centered crimes around the world It is a lengthy book, but totally enthralling and Matt says I highly recommend it for any tech Cyber crime or security fan junkie enthusiast conspiracist Luddite or otherwise You can find the pick at bookstores everywhere. So check it out Future Crimes by Mark Goodman Said your picks to feedback at Daily Tech news show comm and you can find my picks at Daily Tech news show comm slash picks Got some emails to Juice wrote in regarding our discussion on Monday about Facebook and the news Juice says I just wrote a short research paper from my honors on paywalls The newspaper paywall a suboptimal payment model that distinguishes that diminishes public access to quality journalism And and J juice says yeah, it's an academic wank title It's meant to be but here's a section of it regarding a social danger Readers who are paying per article try to only read articles that they agree with rather than items that will challenge their world view And there's a quote referring to individuals who had to pay for news in a study Were significantly less likely to select stories from an opinion challenging source than individuals who did not have to pay for news I also highly recommend Matthew Ingram now with fortune after the sudden demise of giga ohm and Jeff Jarvis Mostly on medium, but also on this week in Google on these subjects. I'm sure that's not news to you Those recommendations says juice, but yeah, that is that is a great a great great point there that When you have paywalls, you're going to have a selection bias involved there and Facebook doesn't have a paywall so you actually do have some freedom inside of Facebook to pick the kinds of things that you may or may not Agree with we also got L watt commander aka David the programmer in Florida From tropical South Florida saying your story on news sources and which are trusted was very good being barely a Gen X Or I found that I really do not match my demographic at all What the study seemed to miss in my opinion is that Facebook tends to expose people to the Extremes in news far more than traditional news stories sure people on Facebook think they are being exposed to different viewpoints But it's Veronica pointed out they are just being exposed to things that are so far from their worldview that they are easy to dismiss That's a fair Piece of criticism as well I think a lot of people when you hear a study want to say well I'm not like that so that part of his reaction is not unusual everybody Everybody says that because the study is an average and none of us are our exact Replications of the average but the idea that on Facebook you might see more extreme examples of journalism far to one side Or the other of an issue I think is a very interesting and and and frankly a Premise that should be explored and find out if people when they expose themselves to viewpoints different than their own Tend to expose themselves to more extreme viewpoints that they can then not be swayed by Hello. Oh, hello Patrick is back. I So apparently the internet blew up at the house That was going to happen. We knew that was going to happen. And at least it happened at the end of our conversation Did you get the the last of my? Sentence maybe yes I got the last year since then I was responding and then you were very quiet And I'm like well, that's not like Patrick Usually is quick with the like. No, yes, but here's the other point. That's what I like He's also being very still So I think we had a problem with the connection, but it's good to have you back We were just going through some things about the Facebook algorithm story that we had yesterday I've got one more from Claudia who talks about how During Dilma Rousseff selection.  So she unfriended a bunch of people And she said since Since I did that I Banished them to my acquaintance list and their post have disappeared I have not seen any conservative posts in my wall except for those posted or shared by my mother I believe that feed filtering is real and a real danger We surround ourselves only with the news we want to hear with the points of view We agree with and that validate those points of views with other people's arguments and creates a feedback loop So we've got three different responses here one basically saying, you know, the real problem isn't on Facebook It's on paywalls paywalls are the thing that make you only want to read stuff You want to hear and then we have a walk commander saying oh no no you you see things on Facebook That you don't want to hear but you see the extreme so you just dismissed them and then Claudia saying well You hear other viewpoints until it gets really serious and then you dismiss them all and that's a danger as well You know, it's it's a very difficult thing I think we actually need some very serious academic Academic research on this. It's it's risen to a point where Yesterday you were saying that you know if that ends up influencing an election. I don't think you know Facebook would ever actually do this, but it could become An important powerful factor in shaping people's viewpoints and maybe we would need some yeah Some academic serious reliable research on the topic because for now the only thing we have is People saying that's how it influences me or that's how it does it and that is very Circumstantial and we got more than a few people writing in saying yeah Exactly you need to watch this because Mark Zuckerberg is in the pocket of the candidate I disagree with and so he's gonna spin the election towards that person thing is all those people named a different person on a different Point in the political spectrum all the way from the left to the extreme right So I'm not sure anyone's very clear on whose pocket Mark Zuckerberg might be in but if he were he could Have an effect one would think yep Jeff from Waterlogged Boston had a quick note on the Windows 10 notification Microsoft pushed to Windows 7 users the other day It's created a lot of work and undue stress for those in the position to support Windows 7 users What's this icon? Do I have a virus have been asked to myself and my peers constantly since KB 3035 583 got pushed down I've been told Windows 7 Enterprise Edition users were spared the notification But my opinion is that all machines running the pro edition should have been excluded as well I'm glad Microsoft is making the upgrade path easy and straightforward for home users But they need to be more sensitive to small and medium-sized businesses who will have their own deployment schedule and user training for Windows 10 All right. Yeah fair enough fair enough but I think there is you know good and but size to everything that the upside of Forcing quote-unquote forcing a lot of people to see the possibility of upgrading that the upgrade path Outweighs the the the small annoyances that he's mentioning You know in my opinion, it's better if in a couple of years We have as many people as possible on the same platform and version of Windows I assumed it was all about load balancing to just be like all right These are the number of people in this order that are going to get the upgrade push to them because they reserved it ahead of time We'll see how this I'm starting to think this is going to be a bit of a nightmare at the end of July Well, thank you Patrick Beja for joining us as always When you're not traipsing around Finland actually even when you are traipsing around Finland you're doing lots of other podcasts Yeah, I am I'm gonna be in Finland for a few weeks and the connection at the home where I will be is gonna be better than this one so You know, I'll be able to wait because you're gonna be farther out in the country You're going to have better bandwidth So basically I met my mother-in-law's house right now and she really doesn't care about the internet so she didn't you know That's why but at the house. I'm gonna be for a few weeks I made damn sure that there was an excellent connection and I'm gonna have a backup backup Mobile connection 4g mobile connection. So very awesome And yes, I have a lot of cool things going on and all of them are at French spin dot com you can find a show about gaming called pixels and you can find a show about International fun and news with people from different countries around the world giving their opinions and thoughts on topics that we think we might have figured out and that show is called the Phileas Club Both of them have had new episodes in the past few days. So you can go to French spin dot com and enjoy both Enjoy them. I actually really enjoyed the last Phileas Club. I'm glad you had two Middle Eastern Residents because you got to see the difference in the way. They've they've used certain things. I was really it was really enlightening Yeah, yeah, that was the idea. You know, we as I said in the show I often Invite to Europeans on the show, but for some reason I thought well, you know Arab countries I have one they're covered the entirety of the Middle East is covered So, yeah, I figured that could be good and it was it was a very fun show So check it out French spin comm also check out our patreon patreon.com slash ace detect and join the 5051 people who are making this show possible for you to listen to or if you are one of those people Thank you very much for making the show possible daily tech news show comm slash support has all the different ways You can support the show our email addresses feedback at daily tech news show.com. You give us call 51259 daily It's 51259 32459 listen to the show live at out the geek radio comm and visit our website daily tech news show comm body it was saying that I swallowed the show We'll be back tomorrow. 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So I guess we we are on the second of a very foggy day in Delhi So we've lost some of our colleagues, but it's always nice to have a posey a crowd To discuss with this is the first time I'm sitting in this kind of format. I can only hope that You do have a ball patch you don't You have a ball patch at the moment. No, I don't either. So I think we are okay Anyway And so we are here to talk about de-risking urbanization and the development of cities and I was warned As I took over this This this responsibility to focus on the positive and not dwell on what the challenges are The challenges are too many and we don't think but we need to try and focus on what the solutions are now as I was looking at some of your comments about the subject matter I thought might be useful to Subdivide the conversation into three segments. So maybe the first 10-12 minutes We will focus on innovations in the delivery of services and Innovations in catering to the multiple stakeholders in urban India including in particular the Urban work second we can spend a few minutes on financing and funding of City development and third and probably the most important we should spend a little time on on on governance So I Guess all of you know the broad contours of the challenge according to the 2011 census, I think we are 380 million in urban India today Probably going up to five six hundred million over the next couple of decades But what I think a lot of people don't fully appreciate and this is a very important and frustrating aspect of the narrative in India is that over the next couple of decades we will probably end up With more poor in urban India absolute numbers than in rural India that could well be the case As urbanization proceeds so whereas a lot of the discussion and debate in our country is focused on You know improving the lives rule in there. There is not nearly enough discussion to figure out how we manage the transition inevitable transition To urbanization what has been happening is that urbanization has been taking place in an ad hoc manner and service delivery is completely shall we say chaotic So when I say service delivery just to make it more specific water and sanitation Affordable housing Public transportation these are just three. Let's not talk about education and public health care But if you wanted to cover the gamut that would be service delivery So challenges of delivering these services To a population that an absolute numbers is huge and humongous growing and a large number of poor people Without housing 25 million is the shortage in housing the bulk of it is with the poorest So to start to kick off that discussion maybe Priya Again the accent on the positive you spent a lot of time What what you think are the have you have you come across what are the innovations? promising innovations and trying to meet this challenge of service delivery Thank You Rajiv first of all the You're absolutely correct. This is a I look at it as an opportunity not just a challenge Primarily because of what we do in real estate, which is developing communities Where we do provide sort of mixed-use townships, which have waters sanitation roads education health care, however Clearly what we do is not enough. You know the GDP will have multiplied five times by 2030 There'll be 13 cities with a population of over four million and we have to build seven to nine billion square feet every year Which is a new Chicago every year just to meet the growing demand You're right to talk about affordability 54% of Mumbai lives in slums perhaps higher if you if you get the proper census numbers and Job creation is critical 70% of net new employment is going to be in cities What what I'd like to talk about is really the fact that a lot of this to this end We have to invest in capital expenditure So we need we're investing about a tenth as much as we should China invests about For $500 a square foot. I mean a per capita. I apologize per capita in infrastructure We need to invest at least $200 a square foot as per capita Sorry, I think in square feet, but I should state this in per capita and we are investing a tenth of that So clearly the the key emphasis needs to be On investment investment investment and whatever we can do to improve that Now we spent a lot of time in a discussion around our vision for India And I said one of the big things we could do is we there was a big study done by IFC and World Bank Which said that we are the 183 countries they ranked all of them in in terms of ease of doing business and We came 130 second probably no surprise But we came 181st in ease of getting construction permits and 182nd in ease of enforcing contracts That's too difficult for a country that needs to attract so much capital expenditure It's a very relatively a very easy fix for what we need to do I say very simplistically because construction permits obviously covers a lot of things we all experienced it All of those wind real estate, but it's a tremendous huge headache and to articulate that as a number makes us clearly understand how Awful we are at getting construction permits a lot of innovation in that area a lot of directional movement in that area is required The second thing is to elect executives in cities who have power, you know, we went to Tianjin for the weft There was a lot of Discussion with the vice mayor Ren who's wonderful the GDP is the fastest-growing GDP in China It's a city that has partnered with the weft we're doing some lot of development initiatives there with the weft and You know in transport and service industry, etc. But what Sort of made me realize where India is completely different is there are no executives in power in these cities that have real power to make decisions And that is a huge innovation I think that needs to occur People need to be in charge of these cities that really have power not like the municipal commissioners were Controlled by the corporations controlled by who we need politically elected leaders with absolute or a lot of power over these They will come back to that question of governance. So if I could Paraphrase what you said is that Creating space for the private sector through some form of deregulation Could really unleash a lot of potential growth in the construction industry And that would go a long way towards creating More affordable housing and jobs for the urban world. I mean the you you come at all this from a very different perspective There was social entrepreneur Would you agree with that? What is your? If you had to focus on what is the way forward for improving service delivery to India's growing urban population When you talk about the positives just in September there was a bill introduced in the Lok Sabha And we hope that it will be passed in the winter session ever is about Regulating the street vendors. So the bill talks about that in every city There would be a town vending committee and the town vending committee would demarcate vending zones and no vending zones And in the vending zones the street vendors would have licenses and they would be allowed to sell So that would That would rain in lot of chaos in the cities that some cities who have done quite good on creating vending zones So such kind of positive steps are needed. So when you talk about say sanitation when you talk then we also work with the waste pickers and We have organized them into a company which is doing waste management Presently we are doing it into three four cities But when you the only negative thing is that we are not allowed to talk about the challenges But the challenge is as she was saying that the governance You know everything in cities will come back on governance whether you like or you don't like because the city governance Is very bad in the country and the third thing is that there is no Efforts to unleash the potential of the urban poor You know say for example affordable housing if an urban poor wants to build a house Where we he or she will get money. There is no financing for that You know most of the time this genuine money on housing is blocked. It's not being spent They don't need money They just need land where they can build their houses and they can build on their own that Understanding about urban poverty. We seriously lack, you know, we need to unleash their potential That is not happening in the country and in the cities. Okay, I Just wanted to And trying to keep the conversation positive There are despite the governance challenge despite the government challenge This is what is fascinating about in there There are a number of examples perhaps not as many as they should be but there's nevertheless a number of examples of Incipient success in new delivery models for urban services So in water supply and solid weight disposal, I can point to at least half a dozen examples where Public-private partnerships have actually begun to have a serious impact. So in Karnataka, for example with in partnership with a French company Delivery of 24 seven water services at very affordable rates including to the smart slum communities In the city in the style has been achieved With not too much stress You know all the normal things that we we have focused on the rules going to allow the right of way Where is the capex going to come from to to redo the pipes and all that so a combination of technology a little bit of goodwill and pragmatic negotiations between energetic leadership at the city level and the state level and private enterprise has delivered Some success Question for you, I mean, I know that you have Held the view for quite some time that we cannot in this country solve our urbanization problems unless we take on the challenge of building new cities, right? if the problems of governance that both PR are being have alluded to were not hard enough in existing cities, how would you challenge? How would you solve the problem of governance in building new cities? Well When you are discussing I thought you kept the governance to the last I know but the pressure is overwhelming First thing is that the city should be allowed to manage Whether it's a big city like Bombay or Delhi or whether it's a small town like Surat or Ratnagiri, I think this is something that is missing in India The institution of the mayor is missing in India Without this you are not going to be able to get sufficient urbanization and successful It has many advantages first advantage is that the city governs itself and therefore The those who govern the city and manage the city are Accountable to the people and they're very closely Accountable that keeps them more honest that keeps them more getting the job done Second important thing about this is that We need to understand that the city may have to decide what it wants to do. I completely I'm horrified at the idea that the Indian parliament should be passing a law of how each town or city Would be managing its vendors is none of the government of India's business It is the business of the city how it wishes to deal with its vendors How it wishes to do until you leave it at that level vendors have many uses Apart from providing services and cheap services They also provide eyes on the ground and provide security to the place So there are a variety of things which I think would be still left to the city to decide So until we create these urban units and we are going to urbanize rapidly You've talked about already 200 million and 20 years will be 400 in another 10 15 years So we are discussing a huge migration So coming back to the point that so this is absolute imperative one might say oh the We will not be able to do that first. Let's get down to doing something else. Yes We will still manage to get something going but your final and ultimate way things will improve is only when you create sweet city Now when you come down to some we have got some very great Holy cows that we always keep discussing affordable housing affordable What do you mean the very definition of the word poor means the person does not have the money to build out So you have to create rental housing in city today all the policies are such that they discourage From rent tax to giving tenants almost rights of ownership Therefore you don't get if you go back to Bombay for example And you see Ballard estate or any place These are five and six stories tall buildings sitting on a footprint the size of the floor Which means you are talking about six emphasize and they will build them. You'll see large amount of housing Except for the very rich Everybody in in Bombay live from the lowest worker to a middle-class civil servant lived in rental house So they have not built any rental housing in this country nor do we have a policy All our ministers get big bungalows whatever start of society economic start as they come from when they come to Delhi or they come to Bombay or Hyderabad if they were forced to live in rental housing to fully think of better policy And the slums therefore is the answer the slum Lord has provided That answer of creating rental housing because a poor man that travels to the city for work He comes there because he knows he's going to get work He doesn't have money to quickly build a house He quickly needs some place to park himself and he finds the slum is the cheapest form of housing And so if you don't build cities in a planned way if you don't give them independence Slums is the way things will happen. Can I just take that up? I'm just gonna I'm going with the flow. So I'm gonna mix everything up now Thought just occurred to me and this is a question addressed you first actually to you I've been do you think that? Urban poor would actually take to rental housing if it were provided in a you know So as you said in any case they are taking to rental housing and that doing a shanty way the poor condition So I would I would say that they should be Finance should be accessible to them. Okay, so that they can purchase houses over a period of time rather than wait for This is then a question for Priya from a real estate developer point of view, right Would you develop housing stock for renting? If let's say you were we were to come up with innovative schemes to improve the yield to you and Yet keep it affordable to the person that is paying First of all absolutely yes, and secondly, I mean if you look at the model of let's say the UK where rental housing is very common Policy supported the financing is available for it And more importantly the government provides subsidies to the poorest who cannot afford it So for instance at any time a development is made a certain amount is reserved for affordable housing and then just like in China Subsidy vouchers are provided to people so that when they move to an urban area They cannot afford rental housing and they get a subsidy not dissimilar to our public a food subsidy I mean obviously a public food subsidy subsidy has its own challenges But if it's a direct rent subsidy provided it will allow people not to move to slums and allow developers To actually create a market which even the poorest can afford James do you have one retirement on this? Well, I just to pick up that point I mean it in the UK I think the government played quite a neat trick because as Priya says there is housing benefit which goes to the poor Remember society and the way the social housing is financed is By by Securitizing in effect the housing benefit So the cost of capital comes way way down because the risk the financiers is the government housing benefit cash flow Rather than rather than the use that you know the poor members of Saudi who are obviously not going to be a good credit risk at all So in that way, I mean over the last I think the current figure is around 50 billion pounds worth of debt has been raised to fund social housing in the UK At a very very low cost of capital against the receivables of the rent against the receive note against the receivables of the housing benefit So it's the government cash flow that's Providing the security rather than rather than the rent from the from the from the tenant and the debt is raised against that Yeah, that's very interesting. Yeah, and and We've come up with a very concrete suggestion in this You know concrete suggestions wonderful ideas are sitting around the streets of this land Right, nobody's willing to pick them up. All right. I'm glad you started so let's so let's shift gears to that I want to pick up Come back to the issue of governance. I think we are all and your international experience would be very helpful to get a Some point as for how we go about it. I think everybody there's everybody knows that governance needs to be decentralized in Indian cities right What can we do? To make that happen Can I get James what just the internet? I mean, I just want to support the mayor point I mean, I mean the fact is if you look around the world successful cities have mayors and And you know, you only have to look at the crisis in New York and see the role of my Bloomberg and in dealing with it This is about de-risking cities But but I think we talk about mayors But I think there's a more important point that lies below the appointment of mayor when a mayor is appointed central government delegates powers to that mayor and It's it's not just the man I mean, there are lots of ceremonial mayors that to be honest do very little the substantive mayors of those where central government has Made a conscious decision to delegate both both tax tax-raising powers But also powers to to control matters in the city and that's where they become affected I mean this doesn't that means the mayor does not report to the chief Correct like the chief minister does not report to the private He's an independent and what he does in the city is what he does and doesn't have to ask the chief minister What he does but in our federal structure fun in our federal structure even in the federal structure of America federal structure of Germany Federal structure of of Switzerland several federal structures. It's federal structure of China China where there's so much control The mayors are fairly independent people and therefore it's important to understand that city can Work best only when it governs itself, right? Of course, there are some intercity issues with the state has to look at just as interstate issues with the central government has to look at but the whole idea is that let the city develop and The powers be delegated when you talk of that if the mayors and that city decides it's going to provide only Education and it does not wish to have factories so it be if they want to have six airports so it be As long as they are safe and therefore this is the most important aspect of yet We are forgetting for panchayat. We want this and we talk of the freedom That's precisely the and when all these panchayats are going to finally become little cities or towns, right? Then what happens now here you will find another interesting future No, panchayat can actually spend the money without the permission of the collector No municipality can do anything without the permission of the municipal commissioner. This is not local self-governance You know how strong the local self-governance was when Kaurji Jagger was the mayor during British times And the Indian standard time was introduced. He did not agree with it So Crawford market showed Bombay time on his watch during his tenure I want to I want to come in this idea of a strong mayor I have seen in Uttar Pradesh for example They have direct election of mayors, but many of the municipal bodies with which we work They have indirect election of the mayor. So the municipal commissioners are elected this Counselors are elected what what councillors or what commissioners and they go to elect the mayor Here a lot of trading happens and I tell you the dirty pictures some of the municipal bodies with which we work There's the actual the businessman who has invested in the election of the mayor sits next to the mayor in deciding most of the issues So I would go for a direct election of the mayor where the mayor is powerful in the city rather than Otherwise it has become quite cosmetic cosmetic and it's become quite complicated in that way Just I mean just it's an interesting statistic in in in the UK The prime minister is elected by about 50,000 votes in his constituency The mayor of London is is elected by four or five million people The fact is London would not have got a congestion charge with national policy No prime minister of the UK would have been able to implement congestion charging in London It was only a mayor that could introduce that policy because that was on his on his election mandate Yeah, there's also one more thing While the mayor exists The ability to manage cities the professional capabilities to manage cities are equally lucky It's one thing to have a mayor who has been delegated the city has been delegated the power to do what it likes Is that building the city capable administration you got a municipal commissioner that the state government appoints The whole and he moves on to another job The city must appoint it the city must choose it and if he does a bad job He gets sacked from the city And if he does a good job, maybe other cities will deploy him We must have city management as a Separate civil service professional line creative. I don't sorry. No, no, please specific question We all agree direct election of mayors is the way to go from where we are today to where we want to go What is the one or two things we need to do to accelerate that process? So we have a 74th amendment of the constitution which talks about this transitory phase Which we've all sort of been talking about where every state gets money Every state gets money directly and that leads the path to the city's getting money directly I think that's very important Which is establishing a clear formula by which the cities make money So for instance today cities in india grow at the same rate as the rest of the country That's unacceptable. Usually the gdp in cities has to be faster And so for example the way the you the way china works is they get 25 of the vat They raise they can sell land they can raise money For example, the uk they can raise a special spv which can go out and raise money They can sell land again and they also get grants So for instance, this is all very clear very formulaic so that we don't have We don't kill the golden the proverbial golden goose the city of mumbai or delhi etc Which raise the vast majority of the tax receipts of the country and all in really almost all of urban india that raises The tax receipts doesn't get any proportion of the money it deserves and needs And therefore I think if you start with that then you clearly start to create a pot of money that then People in government are interested in spending and you empower and have something That the election is worth talking about can I can I um I'd like to make an observation and then get your comments on it We're all struggling with this or how do we how do we get from where we are to where we need to go And I'd like to submit the following hypothesis That we are actually further along this journey than we give ourselves credit for The reason why We are further along is actually just pure and simple the logic of politics One of the very interesting features of the 2011 census is the Capturing of data on what they call census towns Census towns are not urban local bodies are actually gram panchayats village You know governed as villages right, but In physical form Population density everything else. They are exactly like Urban areas right now My hypothesis is maybe not in the next election certainly not but certainly over the next decade right Given this shift of population Um and the nature of urbanization that is taking place The urban and peri urban population that is politically active and influential in this country It becomes so large that these changes will become inevitable Do you have a as an outsider? Do you have a comment? Well It's interesting when you think of hierarchy in a country. It's this Priya's point I think that that you know most most countries have a hierarchy of Central government state city Local government Now the reality is with the growth of cities and the importance of cities in the economy that hierarchy is actually not right And you have to bring cities up in the hierarchy and interestingly in South Africa In their constitution cities have an equivalent place to to the the surrounding of province state Which is a recognition of their importance to the economy and the fact is that if you look at the credit rating in most countries The credit rating of a city the major city in that country will be higher The per capita income will absolutely their ability to raise money will be higher And and therefore if you give them the self sufficiency if you give them the ability to govern themselves They will they will thrive And not be be be hampered by by everything that's going on outside that city So urban you'd agree with that that um I mean am I being too optimistic naively optimistic. No next decade The forces of politics will inevitably drive us towards a better urban governance. So that's a reality Actually, the city administration issue is a new issue for the country We have not been thinking about it since quite some time So it's just recent issue and this regarding the tax structure and all So that's very important. See if you look at most of the municipal bodies in the country They are heavily dependent upon center state government and central government fund They are not made to be Self-sufficient, you know or financially stable. They are may they they they're planned like that You know that they don't become self-sufficient. They are dependent on the state governments for that Yeah, so like simple thing like advertisement many of the municipal bodies do not know how to raise money from You have advertisers running after them, you know for giving money, you know We have street vendors running after them for giving tax, you know, but they don't want, you know Because that's not what they're made to be and the officers who get posted They don't have any experience in urban administration. That's the worst part That's why I agree that let the mayor appoint a person who has exposure on urban administration They come from district They have been district my state in some states and they come with big egos And they don't want to understand the urban issues and so so there's a conflict and another Problem with this indirect election is that the the ward councillors the ward commissioners they Those who get elected in the ward, they are only interested in people who have voted for them. So in a ward In a ward, there would not be there would be people who have not voted You know, they they would be residing somewhere else their name in the voter list would be somewhere So they are not interested in the market. They're only interested in few localities, which is their vote bank That's why I'm saying that indirect election a direct election of the is the of the mayor is the right so that the mayor is Otherwise, the mayor is not a mayor is only accountable to the ward councillors who have elected them And the ward councillors are accountable only to certain pockets in the constituency to who have voted them See, there's also one more thing just as we talk of mayor while you're right your your your Analysis of how the population will now live in cities and therefore it will be The insurance that this will happen But that means you will now get get votes for making this happen Yes, but leadership will have to be shown of what is that power to this And that would include the right to appoint the municipal governor and staff You may have schools or colleges or things that are creating a cater of officers that you can choose from But the choice should be that of the city The police is not accountable to the city in this country And this is another big because the police is yeah, so Really is another story because it's a union territory. The fact is that every other place we we've got to have From this so we have to create as leaders as thought leaders. We have to create this structure Pursuant to the 73rd 74th amendment and put it forth to the On for conversation and discussion and debate Pursuant people in members of parliament that please pass this legislation quickly Perhaps some state wants to pass that legislation quickly because there's no timing on that legislation So once we do that we'll get a model that people can follow as I said Why directly elected men why the police commissioner should be reporting to the city? Why should the municipal commissioner report to the city? How to create a cater of city managers that understand the city? And we have to do this so fast We also have to understand the public-private partnership model better Because we can't do so many cities in such a short time without this kind of participation And we have to bring in civil society and NGOs into this discussion At the end the cities will be governed by NGOs support Exactly, there's no other way that can in fact so we have a really little time remaining before we open up for Q&A I wanted to address Use that as a segue into the one set of issues we have with this and that's funding and financing Um, so you talk about public-private partnerships There's another aspect to The funding challenge that I want to be placed on the table It's always struck me that when you compare China and India That in China because land belongs to the state And as land use changes from agriculture to non-agriculture rapid to rapid urbanization That increase in the value of land is actually captured by the municipalities Then after a few inevitable leakages, it is however Reinvested in municipal infrastructure in our country. What is fascinating is that this Value accretion that happens through change in land use is captured entirely in the private space And the private space Or in the or in the hands of the state government Is it really most political parties have created made cities. They are colonies, right? So but it is so what I said in the private space meaning it's not coming through government program It's either being funneled off. So this is where the big corruption happens So it's spent it's spent in the the villages of India right and it's collected in the city Right, that's why I say that the political parties of India at the state level Have used the cities as their colonies, right to to reef. Yeah, so exactly So they send land land use rights in Mumbai To take the service to reinvest in and that money is spent in sub quadruple Factory in the middle, correct of nowhere, correct a planting gain where there shouldn't be plenty tonight So James, do you have any Lessons from elsewhere in the world about how we can unlock the value of land Well, I think the two most successful The most successful two of the most successful cities in the world are Hong Kong and Singapore Where clearly land monetization has driven growth. China would be would be another example I mean the mtr, which is the the the the transport authority in In Hong Kong is a property company masquerading as a as a metric It is a property company this so I think the first point I would make is for new cities This should be much more manageable because because the the city should be able to grab hold of the land Before the public money goes in Before the private sector money comes in I think to be clear public money Always has to go in before to to to enable the private sector investment Rajiv, I think I think that's sort of a little bit hard in Indian politics I'll tell you why I say that I think we've already fragmented our land holding. They're already under the under the old engine laws All land holdings are heavily Mostly fragmented unless they've been aggregated for development And so to go out and say well, we'll do what Singapore does, which is 90% Singapore housing board 90% of housing in Singapore Singapore housing board htp And to try and do that is going to be relatively hard. I think I'd love to hear your opinion on that in in the Indian context to monetize directly However, you know, we've seen that happen with sit go and mara and all these other places where they are working To provide and which which is where the government really needs to work Extensively is to try and get some of that uplift in value by permitting So what they can say to a developer like anybody and say go up to them and say well, actually if you have managed to aggregate 500 acres Then we'd like to work with you and and work with you on getting some of that accretion and value Which is where the informal channels are working versus the formal channel if there is more Succinct simple policy on that. I think that's going to be much better Then trying to go out and go down the path of compulsory land acquisition, which is probably Sorry, but there is another method. Sorry. I agree with I think there are big difficulties I mean mmrda in Mumbai is an example of a body that does effectively monetize and then But but there is another way of doing this if you can't grab hold of the land And I agree with you that is a problem everywhere particularly in modern. Sorry in particularly in mature cities Then the other way is to is you have to do is to capture Some of that upside through some kind of property tax over time And increasingly that is you've been used as a mechanism and then cities are Securitizing that property tax And raising capital off the back of that property tax To fund infrastructure and what they're doing is ring fencing the incremental property tax Now the trouble that all ministries of finance have without methodology is is that they they ask you to prove That the the the the property tax it is genuinely incremental and not substitution But that is an increasing way in which cities are are using uplift or using Development to fund infrastructure We have one more big challenge and we need to discuss that too Is that while you see what happened in europe and what happened either has happened over a long period of time and small villages grew into cities and then they became thousands and It is a very serious evolutionary process by which they have arrived at what they're doing The migration that we are going to see in india happened in europe over a thousand years Now We need to understand this is all going to happen to us in a very short time In a very young country And this is posing the bigger challenge and a lot With with the right kind of policies that we get we get reforms and we get prosperity at employment You're going to find that 95 percent of the new middle class or middle income Is born not born of yesterday's middle class She's going to get a very different kind of population in this place So there are social issues that are also going to creep up Migrations going to come from different parts of the country and not just one area And these are all issues that can only be sorted out If we have more power to the cities on one side At the same time we also look at the the concept of funding and taxation the finance commission can be given the task How can this be done? We have brilliant people who have done a more excellent job in finance commission And you will get these solutions very quickly. We have not begun the conversation adequately not dependent enough It hasn't caught the imagination of people will need some leadership there that should own this Put it out there in the public forum for discussion and hope like that with the new urbanized population It'll it'll catch traction So with that We have 15 minutes left. Maybe we can open up the floor to You just introduce yourself before you ask the question So vikram Gandhi from vsg capital advisors You know you talked about mayors, which obviously is critical and everyone agrees with that But if you take the large cities So so maybe agit you or people other people who are very familiar with Mumbai or Bangalore So having a Mumbai mayor with power is good. How do you get from point a to point b? How do you make that happen? Is it is it realistic to expect that to actually happen? No, but Don't that it's not realistic to expect serious improvement in the cities also Because this is something that you have tried and you will get like jn and use some funding some improvement And then then because of the urgency of things Parliament is spending its time passing laws on what vendors should stand on what street in which Which town and village of this country rather than protecting our borders and securing the energy energy security of this country So you will have to understand that this structural change must take me and this is talked about This same parliament has accepted it and incorporated it in the 73rd and 74th amendment All it did was not put a date to each state and it's time that But we are occupied with other things in the country at the moment But i'm sure they will sense will prevail and only then will it happen But we've got to have leadership Produce enough paper reduce the conversation launch it at every every forum we can And I think over a period of the next two three years This consciousness will come I don't see any other way and then also things happen Like if you don't plan a city slums happen And when slums happen take gurga for example, where we are sitting See all those lovely big glittering small small small low-cost hotels along the road As you leave deli and come along those were slums before As the city came in and as prosperity came in these those slums became hotels So this is the other organic way that things will grow Right and some big fire will burn out a good part of it and again will be rebuilt like it happened in london So that's some some other way things will happen and I don't That's one solution Yellowstone national park you have A high chance of James I mean, I'm not familiar with enough of the political situation in India But what I would say is around the world When mayors Empowered mayors have been appointed it requires the central politicians to accept A devolution of power to that individual a loss of power to that individual And you know if you if you take london as a good example and you take transport The fact is the mayor of london probably has As much influence if not more power over national transport not national but london transport Than than the secretary of state for transport and that's a big That was a big loss of power for the secretary of state for transport And the the mayor of london is would rank amongst the top suddenly the top five politicians in the country Suddenly So There is a practical difficulty in my mind in terms of the central By definition, it means people will be giving up serious power to make it happen So but just to we need to take one more question. I just to again try and Bring the conversation to a positive note You know after all what were the political uh pulls and pressures that led to the creation of chattis go of Uttar khand Or jharkhand and jharkhand now the empirical evidence is really compelling after the creation of these states that were carved out of much larger agglomerations The performance has improved dramatically Delhi became a state. So it's a matter of time I think the the politics of the state of maharashtra will change over the next decade And there will be a growing constituency that will force the hand Or future chief ministers that they will not be able to ignore The 40 to 45 million people who will be living in the greater Mumbai region Now what form it takes whether it'll be a directly elected mayor or not Difficult to predict but clearly the interests of that region will have to be reflected Sorry, we had one more question. Just just what I just want to give you on a positive note If in 1989 somebody would have told you in 10 years you'll have 500 television channels Would you have believed? They have happened right we had Two states run unwatchable challenge All 700 today may be still unwatchable, but there are seven So if that can happen, why won't this? Right Raji may I draw your attention and then pose a question behind what I'm drawing attention to which is It says de-risking Indian cities one of the biggest risks is health And health linked to something called the vectors of disease which are born out of garbage not collected And which is enshrined in a very strict law created in the year 2000 the ms municipal sort of is management rules 2000 Where the clauses in inserted there enjoin upon strict penalties including imprisonment of municipal commissioners if they don't follow the law In creating sanitary landfills within a time-bound framework ajit, which you said low hanging fruit I'm absolutely amazed that despite the plague in surat despite everything that is happening nidan Why don't you take it up as something which is you've got the law You've got magisterial powers within the law and yet you have news appearing every other day in places Like Mumbai or Delhi or Bangalore which become unlivable for something as simple as a low hanging fruit Which is collection and sanitary disposal of garbage See whatever we discuss in cities will come back on governance And I'll give you example of some of the municipal bodies with which we are working without naming them You know, we are working on the waste management of say one city I will not name the city and that's part of the best governed one of the best governed states now A lot of talk about Bihar and in that city, you know the municipal commissioner is giving you different orders The mayor is giving you different orders. The ward commissioners are giving you different orders The person who has got the mayor elected by paying money is giving you different orders There are resident associations giving you different orders and it's a chaos It's a who is the leader in the city to whom you should listen to there are the sanitary inspectors who are Previously there. They are giving you different orders. They are the trade unions who are there from previous They are giving they are trying to pull you in different parts And if the municipal commissioner is angry what they what they he will do He will put the worst people the best leaders of the union at the garbage collection site, you know Yeah, so that you know when your vehicles go there for weightage for tonnage that person will create problem And so, you know and ultimately you are paid by tonnage So the financial system doesn't work and for getting the money paid We have one person who spends the whole day in the municipal office and he says that the file goes to 17 places 17 places before the money is sanctioned, you know, and he cries every time he's able to get the money It's only our passion for municipal reform that keeps us there. It's only our passion for that Otherwise, I will tell you the condition of the waste management in India Many many municipal bodies are outsourcing I will not it's not be it will not be an understatement that many of the so-called Waste management companies are playing a fraud with the people with the municipal bodies You know the somehow we have shifted to the tonnage based system Whereby the municipal body pays the waste management company by the number of tons you take it to the site So there the fraud happens that one track will make 10 rounds without actually disposing of the waste, you know So we'll collect the waste go there. There is CCTV. There are all formalities We'll do that we'll take out one ton out of say seven eight tons and then again come back in half an hour Again have the photographs again and that's how it's happening. That's why no, we must understand that why dengue is angry Why we are suffering from health? We must understand It's very easy to just give one article just blame it to the government But until the administration in the cities happen, you know, I can tell you about waste management I can tell you about other issues on which we are working. You know, it's a real painful day to day experience Yesterday somebody rang me up from that city saying that this guy who is at the tonnage He is not allowing us.  He's given you an idea He's given you an idea There is a there's a there's a clause in the municipality's act Which can help you put one municipal commissioner in jail And you will get improvement in administration and you will rule the prime time of indian television for days All 700 channels That is not the objective To get your job done to get your job done to get your job done. We have time for one more question from the audience Yes Take a lady Hi, I'm mini menon from bloomberg tv. My question is to dr. Lal and james, you know, for the longest time We've been speaking about Novel Financial products or debt products to fund it So my first question is the the point you raised about the national housing board in england and you know how that's funded Can't we look at Customized financial products for the problems that we face because most of our cities are running out of money as well Second is that can we have a system where user charges are not being levied in most cases? I think the the largest beneficiary of subsidies in india is the middle class Is the urban middle class and they can well afford to pay for what they get So is it is the success of our cities also predicated on the ability to charge user charges and really make it financially viable Well, I I think expression that's coming out more and more is fair consumer charging One of the one of the problems with most most consumer charging mechanisms Is is i'm going to use a western world example But somebody living in a slum pays the same price for the first liter of water As the person who's filling their swimming pool with their last liter of water and there is no differential pricing for For consumer charging and that's why I think there is great difficulty in introducing consumer charging But coming to your financing point fundamentally cities I mean this is probably the country that's concentrating on city cities need to generate long term stable cash flows Whether that's from taxation consumer charging confidence in land monetization And only off the back of that will they be able to do proper long term planning which will Which will facilitate growth and reduce risk and resilience And off the back of that they will they will create a lower cost of capital And and the problem too often is a lot of the funding cash flows which are then get off the back of which You raise the finance are relatively short term relatively uncertain carry regulatory risk or whatever risk you want to call it And as a result there it is very difficult to raise low cost of capital money And anything like long term capital and therefore only in customer Okay time for wrap up Including thoughts I just go around The panel one positive thought Our best would be risk Yeah Empower the master planning and I think Already existing in the existing framework we have We have very We have the path available the regulatory path is there And I think create a strong and robust master planning department because no city in the world Any mega city has been created without great master planning that has been done looking at a 50 125 even 10 year horizon. I think that's one focus we should have Well, I would say Embrace change because I think those cities that are Pushing forward are the ones that realize that the old methods just don't work and that the world to be honest The world has changed Dramatically and say you in order to push forward you have to do things do things differently But it start a major college for creative city managers in the country And persuade a small city which is wants to go places which wants to now create itself Follow these new practices and you probably might get a model in the short And then you have the last word. Yeah, I think we should also focus on making them financially very viable That the user charge or whatever, you know, how taxes and property tax, for example Parking in cannot place is 10 rupees in Delhi. Just imagine, you know, how we are living our Our own money and if it is financially viable or financially stable, then it will attract more talent. Otherwise, nobody would like to come in government Excellent, I just want to leave you all with a vignette. Actually, you just reminded me of Of this to your point about fairness and perceived fairness of user charges You know, there's been a lot of debate about the rapid bus transit system in Delhi And ironically to the very first corridor they chose Was the corridor where the most wealthy people with the most cars were living Is not the smartest thing to do But all the time that the brt was being launched and there were all kinds of teething problems You should go back and compare the commentary on that Between the English language press And the Hindi language press English language press is all up in arms. Oh, this is terrible. Very inconvenient. Horrible. We can't stand this. You read the same Over the same day as the Hindi language press, they'll say this is great So the world is changing and I think the politics will drive it all in the end. Thank you very much. Thank you


Lamentation is an often overlooked but deeply faithful practice of Christians. Lamentation is the act of crying out to God when all is wrong, when the church fails us, when people we have trusted betray us, when families are ripped apart, we cry out to God. In crying out to God, we are expressing one of the deepest forms of faith that we believe that God has not given up and will not give up on us. We demand God's intervention through lamentation.