Rohit Pawar to government: Focus on citizens, not just projects

(From left) NCP Mumbai youth president Nitin Deshmukh, NCP MLA Rohit Pawar, businessman Niranjan Hiranandani and Shiv Sena MLA Pratap Sarnaik's son, Vihang

Rohit Pawar has chosen to work on improving Human Development Index (HDI) as the newly elected MLA. NCP legislator and grandnephew of party chief Sharad Pawar has urged the Maha Vikas Aghadi government of the Shiv Sena-NCP-Congress alliance to take HDI into account while implementing its development plans for the state.

The United Nations describes HDI as a "summary measure of average achievement in key dimensions of human development: a long and healthy life, being knowledgeable and have a decent standard of living". "HDI was created to emphasize that people should be the ultimate criteria for assessing the development of a country, not economic growth alone," it adds.

Rohit said politicians mostly talk about poverty with every average corporator and MLA speaking on issues concerning gutters, metre and other civic concerns, but no one looks at the larger picture - tax payers' major concern of commuting. He said the government needs to focus on improving the HDI along with raising the standard of living of the poor.

"Time spent on travelling, bad roads and pollution add to people's stress, which in turn leads to poor HDI. Improving quality of roads and initiating projects that will ease citizens' commute should be the goal of any government. This will help us boost our HDI rank," he said. In 2018, India ranked 130 on UN's HDI.

In fact after taking oath, Rohit, who was with Shiv Sena MLA Pratap Sarnaik's son Vihang, ran into businessmanNiranjan Hiranandani in a lobby of a five-star hotel. Grabbing the opportunity, Rohit discussed with Hiranandani the ways to improve the quality ofinfrastructure in the city, particularly roads and lack of affordable housingwithin the city limits.

"The moment one talks about affordable housing, the location is always far from Mumbai or metro cities. After all, people who buy those flats are the ones who travelling to Mumbai for work. The long travelling hours increases stress levels. I feel that such projects should be within city limits," Rohit told mid-day.

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