An appropriate support mechanism should be provided to assist in the distribution of population evenly across the country, said Jagmohan.Speaking at the second international conference on infrastructure development, Infranet'99, organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry, Jagmohan said a completely new thinking was required regarding urban and rural dwellings.

This is necessary as despite massive migration to urban centres, the rural population is not declining. "The problem is deteriorating by the day and we need to create awareness of the magnitude of the problem", he said, adding that there was a need to develop human settlement technology.

The minister said the slum and squatter population in urban centres was growing at a faster rate and if unchecked, would lead to a situation, where there would be more slum clusters than the normal urban dwellings in a city.

Regretting that the total budgetary allocation for development of urban areas was a mere Rs 46 crore, Jagmohan said an average city of over three lakh inhabitants required at least Rs 50 crore to provide basic civic amenities like water, sanitation and roads.

He said it would require at least 140 years to provide basic infrastructure needs to over 4,000 cities in the country with the same level of budgetary support.

While 60 per cent of GDP was accounted for and 90 per cent of the revenue came from the cities, the budgetary allocation for urban development was only a meagre 2.6 per cent of GDP, he added.

Jagmohan said most of the infrastructure projects had not taken off simply because the economic capacity of the common people to pay the economic costs of the project did not exist. "We must create the economic capacity in common man to pay for the projects", he said, adding that there was also a need to move towards an equitable system of resources.

Jagmohan said he had convened a national-level meeting of urban development ministers of various states next month to discuss the problem of cities and evolve effective methods to solve the problems.

He said public and private sector partnership could solve the problem of resources required for development of the infrastructure sector.

Malaysian minister for public works S Samy Vellu said his government had signed an agreement with the Tamil Nadu government for construction of a port in Kolachel in Tamil Nadu.

The new port will cost $3 billion and the Malaysian government had commissioned $4 million for the initial study, which would be completed within five months. "The port will connect India to Europe and Malaysia and Hong Kong", he added.

Vellu emphasised on increased South-South cooperation to ensure that infrastructure bottlenecks do not come in the way of economic development of these countries. He said strategic alliances and partnerships between India and Malaysia could solve several problems related to infrastructural development in both countries.

CII president Rahul Bajaj said public-private sector partnership in infrastructure development could work only in the presence of an independent and autonomous regulatory body which can be created by government through a legislation.