Towards chaos

A view of Visakhapatnam. Has anybody started working on more police, more courts, road networks, sanitation, drainage, water supply and power requirements for these urban agglomerations?-K.R. DEEPAK ?

By the middle of this century, India will no longer be an essentially rural country as it is now. The majority of its people will be staying in urban areas.

THE Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) of the United Nations has estimated that, by 2050, 55 per cent of Indias population will be living in urban areas. The total number of people in the urban areas, they estimate, will be 900 million. In other words, by the middle of this century, India will no longer be an essentially rural country as it is now. The majority of its people will not be staying in villages.

This will happen in around 40 years or so from now, and the shift in emphasis has, unmistakably, already started. The population of our cities is beginning to grow rapidly; so rapidly as to leave civic amenities and services far behind, and one hears almost every day, and in almost all our cities, of water shortages, power shortages, traffic snarls and jams, of the rapid growth of slums and of the encroachment on public land by slum-dwellers and land sharks alike.

The situation is even more alarming in some urban conglomerations that spread over more than one State the classic example is, of course, the capital, Delhi, where the urban sprawl has spread over Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, and it is more than likely that, in time, the urban stretches in these two States will actually exceed the city of Delhi, which will become a minor part of a gigantic National Capital Region.

But, Delhi is not the only urban area that will spread across more than one State: Chandigarh will almost certainly be a similar urban horror, its urban sprawl stretching over Panchkula in Haryana and Mohali in Punjab, and, as in the case of Delhi, the city of Chandigarh will in time become smaller than the huge urban conurbations of Panchkula and Mohali. Both these may well become ungovernable if the Union government does not take a close look at what is going on and determine what steps can be taken to ensure that these huge areas, with populations larger than many European countries, can be governed. Can they remain parts of different States?

Or should they be brought under a single unit, a Union Territory directly administered by the Central government? But, in the unlikely event of the neighbouring States agreeing to that alternative, what happens as the urban sprawl keeps growing, as it inevitably will, and covers more and more areas of the neighbouring States?

Leaving these two cities aside for the moment, consider the other giant cities that are going to grow just as fast, if not faster. Chennai, Bangalore, Mumbai, Kolkata and cities such as Indore, Mangalore and Kochi are going to become giant urban conglomerations and will pose a slightly different kind of administrative problem as they engulf, but do not eliminate, municipalities and local bodies. Those structures of civic governance will remain parts of the giant urban sprawl, but, on paper, at least, independent municipalities or panchayats.

There is no evidence that any thought has been given to this administrative problem; and if any thought has gone into the problem, there is nothing to show for it.

When Kolkata grew as an urban conglomeration and covered over a dozen municipalities and local bodies on either side of the Hooghly river, some efforts were made, some decades ago, to make them all part of a single corporation, but not one of these local bodies would agree.

So they continue to exist Serampore, Chinsura, Baidyabati, Howrah, Jagaddal, Bhatpara and numerous others financially bankrupt and totally dependent on the state for funds, which come to them in small, hopelessly inadequate amounts.

They are unable to maintain roads, or drains, or remove garbage, or do anything except some cosmetic work in some areas, usually where the state or some other agency has provided funds for improvement of a limited kind.

The story is not very different in other States, going by what one reads, or is made aware of, by the media. And it is owing to one single fact. No State government gives this problem a problem that will become a horrific nightmare in the years to come the kind of close and urgent attention it needs.

The signs of the coming nightmare are everywhere, as those who have to live in these areas will tell you. But the most frightening aspect is the effect it has begun to have on the maintenance of law and order. And it is not only that there are terribly few police stations and police personnel in these areas; there are a pitiful number of courts to dispense justice, and cases pile up in the courts that do exist. The adage justice delayed is justice denied is something the people of these areas have now to live with.

The relatively affluent respond by putting up walls and gates, sealing themselves off into little fortresses; but what of the poor, and the less well-off? It is they, paradoxically, who have to return late from work in larger numbers, and go to work early; and every such venture is becoming, increasingly, a grave risk. In the mornings and evenings, there is the murderous traffic, the terrible struggle to get into a bus or fearfully travel in an auto or on a scooter. And for those who have to return late, such as hawkers, tailors, construction workers and domestic helpers, it is the danger of being assaulted, robbed or killed.

Does the Eleventh Plan provide for the problems of these rapidly growing urban areas? Only in bits and pieces. Hardly anything for better policing or more courts, some roads in some areas, a few water supply schemes, power stations that will take years to come up and, if one is to believe some of the reports appearing in the media, that are already beset with problems ranging from land availability to the lack of gas supplies for turbines and the railheads for coal transportation.

But beyond all this, is there any planning being done for these urban agglomerations? Has anybody started working on more police, more courts, road networks, sanitation, drainage, water supply and power requirements for these areas, these areas of the future? One wants to know because the planning process will take a long time, and so will the provision of the services. By the time these services are provided according to the plans made, the population will have grown and will exceed the capacity of the services unless the planning is done with foresight, and services provided with built-in capacities to expand to meet greater demands on them.

Forty years in the planning process is not a long time, and that period will see the country transformed into a predominantly urban country. The demand on the countrys resources will be immense, and ways and means worked out now to ensure that those resources are available in the decades to come. This is an issue where it does not matter what the political colour of the government of the day is. The problem will not go away because of changes in the ruling party or parties; it needs to be looked at as something that is a concern that overshadows political power.

How our urban areas will be administered and how they will be provided with the services that will be needed are issues that all parties must come together and consider with high seriousness. Hard decisions beginning with the allocation of resources will need to be made, and it is imperative that the process begin now.

If it does not, the future will be an urban chaos that may well bring in a night without end.