HIRDAY SCHEME – Heritage City Development and Augmentation Yojna.

HIRDAY SCHEME – Heritage City Development and Augmentation Yojna.

Some important questions for examination are the date of launch of the project, the name of the person who inaugurated the yojana, the total outlay for the scheme, the names of the 12 cities to be developed under phase 1 of HRIDAY, etc.

What is HIRDAY SCHEME and What are its Objectives?

It is an ambitious project initiated by the Modi Government for the development of and improvement of Heritage cities in India. Under the phase 1 of the project, 12 cities have been identified which will be uplifted and developed.

Heritage City Development Scheme (HRIDAY) launched on Jan 21, 2015 : Centre to fund entire expenditure. The main objictive of HIRDAY was to is to preserve character of the soul of heritage city and facilitate inclusive heritage linked urban development by exploring various avenues including involving private sector. 

HRIDAY Specific objectives are:

• Planning, development and implementation of heritage sensitive infrastructure.
• Service delivery and infrastructure provisioning in historic city core areas.
• Preserve and revitalize heritage wherein tourists can connect directly with city’s unique character.
• Develop and document a heritage asset inventory of cities – natural, cultural, living and built heritage as a basis for urban planning, growth and service provision & delivery.
• Implementation and enhancement of basic services delivery with focus on sanitation services like public conveniences, toilets, water taps, street lights with use of latest technologies in improving tourist facilities/amenities.
• Local capacity enhancement for inclusive heritage-based industry.
• Create effective linkages between tourism and cultural facilities and also the conservation of natural and built heritage.
• Urban heritage adaptive rehabilitation and maintenance, including appropriate technologies for historic buildings retrofitting.
• Establish and manage effective public private partnership for adaptive urban rehabilitation.
• Development and promotion of core tangible economic activities to enhance avenues of livelihoods amongst stakeholders. This would also include necessary skill development amongst them including making public spaces accessible and developing cultural spaces.
• Making cities informative with use of modern ICT tools and making cities secure with modern surveillance and security apparatus like CCTV etc.
• Increase accessibility i.e. physical access (roads as well as universal design) and intellectual access (i.e. digital heritage and GIS mapping of historical locations/ tourist maps and routes).

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