Amidst all the Karnataka elections drama of the last couple of weeks, the release of some numbers, which are downright terrifying if you are Indian, went by without attracting the kind of attention they deserved.
I am talking about the 2018 Revision of World Urbanization Prospects report by the United Nations’s Population Division. According to it, India has one of the fastest-growing urban populations in the world. India, China and Nigeria will together account for 35% of the projected growth of the world’s urban population between 2018 and 2050.
Population explosion
A big chunk of that urbanisation will be happening in India though. In scale, India will outstrip even China and Nigeria. The report estimates that by 2050, India will have added 416 million urban dwellers, China 255 million and Nigeria 189 million. Already Delhi — or the National Capital Region, to be precise — is the world’s second-most populous urban agglomeration. By 2028, in just a decade, Delhi will become the world’s most populous city, outstripping Tokyo.
It doesn’t end here. By 2030, India will have seven cities with populations in excess of 10 million, two cities in the 5-10 million bracket, as many as 62 cities in the 1-5 million range, and a staggering 70 more with populations between half and 1 million.
This may thrill inveterate record seekers, but not too many others, particularly those who will be living in these urban sprawls. Because while India may be ratcheting up the number of mega urban agglomerations, these cities will be megacities only in terms of sprawl and population, and will sorely be lacking the kind of urban infrastructure which we take for granted in current global megacities like London, Tokyo and New York.
Make no mistake. India is heading towards an urban crisis of apocalyptic proportions. We do not have the infrastructure to cater to the needs of so many people. We do not have the resources — whether water, transport, housing, education or health care — that will be in demand then.
Slowly moving ‘smart cities’
What’s worse is that we don’t appear to have a plan in place on how we are going to deal with this. Which brings me to the other worrying bit of news which got overwhelmed by the Karnataka drama. Last fortnight, the heads of India’s ambitious, 100 ‘smart cities’ initiative got together for the first time to take stock of the situation and share best practices.
That particular meet, I suspect, was spurred by the less-than-encouraging progress that the smart cities programme has made so far. Which is very litte: Less than 7% of the funds allocated for the entire project have been used so far. In fact, in the three years since the programme was launched, completed projects account for only 1.4% of the total investment envisaged. Another 407 projects have issued tenders, which hopefully means that someone will bid, win and execute them over the next few years. E ven these projects account for less than 12% of the total outlay. The rest are still in the planning stage. Such glacial progress in something which was expected to be executed in mission mode and was under the direct eye of the Prime Minister himself, whose personal initiative this is, makes a worrying case for the ability of our civic system to absorb and execute large investment plans.
Given complex, overlapping and often conflicting layers of authority in most of our cities — the paralysis in Delhi because of the stand-off between the Centre, the Aam Aadmi Party-run State government and the Bharatiya Janata Party-controlled municipalities offers a stark example — and the lack of institutional capacity within civic authorities, particularly when it comes to planning and project execution, it is perhaps prime ministerial prodding which has managed to achieve even the progress that has been made so far.
Critical challenges
There is a more fundamental question which needs to be addressed. Are smart cities the way to go, when we haven’t fixed the basics yet? Water is going to be a critical challenge in virtually every city in India. This needs a holistic approach that integrates national, regional, State and local level initiatives. We don’t have any such thing. Housing and civic conservancy present equally tall challenges. Uncontrolled and unplanned urbanisation and the near absence of reliable public transportation have added another mega problem to the list: pollution. According to World Health Organisation data released earlier this month, 14 of the world’s 20 most polluted cities are in India.
One could go on — creating jobs is another mega challenge — but the point is that as a nation, our people, our political leadership and our policy planners do not appear to be taking this as seriously as they should. A Chalta hai attitude and jugaad can’t fix this. We need to act now.
