When none of the Indian cities figured in the first 200 ranks of the Global Urban Competitiveness Report compiled last year by a group of international experts, debates about the narrow economic focus of the ranking method offered some consolation to policymakers. But if anyone seriously believes Indian metropolises might compare favourably with the good ones in the world if only the scale of measurement were better, here comes a reality check: UN-Habitat recently expanded the definition of a ‘prosperous city’ to include quality of life, equitable development and environmental sustainability parameters along with productivity and infrastructure. Based on this matured framework, it has worked out a new comprehensive measure — City Prosperity Index (CPI) — to gauge cities. Even in this new analysis, Indian cities are yet to reach the top bracket. When a select group of urban centres across the world were calibrated with the new measure, the two alpha cities of India, Mumbai and Delhi, have come out as mediocre places. They are ranked below Sao Paulo, Shanghai and Ankara. Jakarta, which is similar to Mumbai in terms of productivity, has turned out to be a better city in terms of environment quality and equity. Seoul outdoes Delhi on all counts and turns out as a far superior metropolis.
Indian policymakers should not rush to unwisely dismiss this index as yet another irrelevant ranking. The importance of the CPI lies in its ability to show how and why one city outscores the other and the precise policy corrections it can engender. Though Indian cities do well in terms of productivity, they are environmental nightmares. Delhi, with an environment index of 0.448 (maximum being 1.000) is at the bottom of the pile of the 69 cities studied. Deteriorating air quality, inefficient management of waste, depletion of the ground water table and vanishing water bodies have compromised the advantages offered by Indian urban centres. Insensitive encroachment of open spaces, and depleted green cover have only added to the woes. In contrast, Chongqing in China has increased the amount of public space by 16 times in three decades and Singapore has covered 50 per cent of its surface area with greenery. The second challenge that daunts Indian cities is the issue of equity. Dhaka has a better equity index than Delhi. This is because plans here have paid less attention to the marginalised, resulting in inadequate social housing, eviction of street vendors, and flawed land policies. Achieving economic prosperity along with better quality of life and inclusive growth is imperative not just to climb the rank ladder, but to make our cities desirable places to live.
We need open discussion about curbing the population growth. The government needs to
enact laws irrespective of caste, religion and other considerations and make sure everyone
has only 1 or 2 kids. Bold decisions need to be made. As it is, other forms of life are having
lesser and lesser space for themselves and more and more land is getting converted to
apartments and buildings and roadways. This can only lead to problems like education in
water table, which can even cause earth quakes.
Paradoxically national economic policies should aim at improving the
quality of life at villages if the cities are to be made healthy
places to live. Dawn of independence saw the villages contributing
more than 70 % net national product and today the cities accounts for
60% of it and Mumbai alone pays 38% of national taxes. Today it is the
desire of young people to rush to mega cities with dream of making it
big which is the main cause of nightmare of urban chaos. It makes an
eminent economic sense to solve the problems of the villages first for
the happy side effects of better cities. India is not an over populated
country but with a terrible distributions of population. As on 1999
India had 304 per square KM population density much less than many
other countries. Logically the solutions to the ills of country lie in
the effective bottom up economic policies, promoting autonomy of self-
dependent village gram panchayath administrations.
This and many more such indices are clear picture of deploring conditions of Indian cities but it has still not fallen on the ears of those at the helm of affairs.Its high time that some positive steps are taken otherwise rising population,sprawling urban centers,and degrading ecological balance would ultimately lead to complete breakdown of governance and law and order in the country.
Once green cities like Bangalore and New Delhi are becoming barren with indescriminate felling of trees on the road side in the name of development. This may suit the greed of politicians and contractors but they are ravaging the environment in these cities.
It was rightly concluded that Indian cities have poor infrastructure.
They are suffered from inequitable growth. It is need of the hour to
form the comprehensive policy for urban development. Urban local
bodies should be given the more autonomy and power in urban governance.
To get a place in top cities of the world in not a task of single day and of a single person or single authority or single organisation. but ubfortunately after a long period of time after diagonization of indian's urban problem, we could not do bettter to the the expectation. There are not only lack of pure air, pure water, shelter, and many more things but lack of security. our metros have a lack of security. We have the institution to provide security to people but there are happening many case of murder, rape, molestation in our metros. This is more devastating than others.
The editorial is an eye opener for all of us.
It is a pity that though we have the advantage of seeing the challenges faced by the more advanced cities, we are still taking the lethargic approach to planning cities. There should be infrastructure to handle the growing population, but it should be more towards improving the public transport rather than widening the roads and building more fly overs to accommodate the growing number of cars. Go for BRTS and metro. Everyone knows driving in traffic is a hassle, but still they drive as they do not see a better alternative. Cities like Toronto have made their downtown highly liveable, with excellent transport facilities. Take a leaf from what works best and apply their lessons. We are fortunate that we are far behind, and still growing, and can learn from how others ahead of us have fared. We have lot of best practices to choose from. Let us not hide behind "we are Indians and we are like this only".
Indian cities are livable for Indians because they know no alternative. If there was a western style clean city in India right next to an Indian city so that there was no advantage of having family and friends in one and not the other, then almost all Indians would prefer to live in the western style city in India. The only reason Indians settled in the west even consider going back to India is for family, friends and people of their own kind, not for the quality of its cities.
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