Urbanization - A Daunting Challenge

URBANISATION: A DAUNTING CHALLENGE

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Urbanisation has been a problem in India for quite sometime and the city governments in the country have always struggled to solve the problems like growth of slums, management of solid waste, water supply, street lighting, locating the street vendors etc. With the cities contributing more than 65 per cent of the GDP in the recent years, the government has now begun to look at the urban areas as engines of growth. With rapidly increasing population in the urban areas and insurmountable problems, urbanisation has emerged as one of the most serious challenges before the planners.

Migration to cities is considered to be a serious problem and most of the political parties as well as the municipal bodies are generally interested in reversing this trend of rapid urbanization. But migration is not the only reason for growth of the cities. Internal growth of cities and inclusion of the periphery areas are two other reasons for growth of the urban areas. It is expected that in the coming two decades, the urban population share in the total population of the country would increase to 50 per cent.

Rural poor come to the cities and towns to look for productive work with a view to get two square meals for their families and secure better education for their children. They also migrate to the cities to ensure that they are able to lead a better life than their forefathers and the cities act as the dream destinations for the poor for a better tomorrow. But more often than not, their dreams get shattered as they arrive in the cities. They are hassled by the problems like lack of affordable housing, lack of availability of clean drinking water, lack of cleanliness, sanitation and other civic amenities.

The question is—can we envisage the transformation of the modern day cities in the country without appreciating the contribution of the poorer sections in the overall growth of cities? They render required and important services like household assistance, street sweeping, solid waste disposal, delivery of newspapers, delivery of milk and other food articles and vegetables etc. But this important segment of urban population cannot get land security for their dwellings and are generally bereft of even bare minimum urban services in the vicinity of localities where they live.

There is thus a dire need for having the provision of housing for the urban poor. While the cities and towns keep coming out with various housing projects for the upper and middle classes, housing schemes for the urban poor and the low income groups generally do not exist. More often than not, the poor are required to be uprooted from their slums whenever a new scheme of infrastructure or housing is planned in any city. This trend needs to be reversed.

Lack of civic amenities is yet another problem. As per a slum census only 65.4 per cent of the households in the cities and towns had access to drinking water within their premises. Remaining households either had the water supply source outside their premises or away from their houses.

Source of lighting is another important area which was surveyed during the census. Though the percentage of households having an electric source of energy was much higher than in the rural areas, yet more than 12 per cent of the households in the urban areas did not have an electric source of lighting and have to depend on other sources like kerosene. About 0.4 per cent of the households in cities and towns have no source of lighting at all.

Availability of education facilities in the urban areas is also a key area, particularly for the poor. While the affluent and upper middle classes normally have best of educational facilities available to them in the cities, the poorer sections find it hard to have access even to basic educational facilities. The level of male and female literacy rates in the slum areas is distinctly lower than non-slum population of cities, with Patna recording highest difference of almost 30 per cent between the level of literacy rates in slum and non-slum areas of the city.

Lack of good healthcare facilities is also an area of serious concern. The Task Force appointed by the government of India to advise on health scenario in the urban slums has pointed out that 6 out of 10 children in slum areas are delivered at home in Indian slums. Further, more than half of India’s urban poor children are underweight and the state of under-nutrition in urban areas is worse than in the rural areas. Reach and utilisation of essential preventive health services by the urban poor is generally found to be very low and about 60 per cent of the children below one year of age are not fully immunized. Only 4 per cent couples use birth spacing methods.

In addition to the above mentioned problems pertaining to urban and social services, there are serious gaps in the availability of infrastructure facilities in urban areas. Roads are getting congested with more and more new vehicles getting registered every day and parking has become a serious problem in most urban areas. Solid waste management is also a serious problem in the country, particularly in the cities. Safe disposal of the solid waste in a scientific manner is a major issue in Indian cities and towns. With over 400 million people living in urban areas and generating millions of tonnes of garbage every day, without proper arrangements for safe disposal of the garbage serious problem of water contamination and environment pollution is on the anvil. The problem is worst in the areas inhabited by the poor and in the slums.

The Road Ahead

For the last about six decades, the government has focused on rural development and rural poverty alleviation. Billions of rupees have been spent but even after 60 years of concentration on this sector, the absolute number of rural poor in the country has actually increased. The government is now viewing the urbanisation process as an alternative strategy to eradicate rural poverty. Growth rate of population in the cities in the country is much higher than the general growth rate of population in the country and there is a need to strengthen the cities and towns to be able to brace up to the challenges ahead.

The government of India, in December, 2005, launched an ambitious programme called Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM), for renewal of Indian cities on sustainable basis. 63 cities have been chosen under the Mission. There are also two sub-missions. First sub-mission aims at strengthening the urban infrastructure like water supply, sewerage, traffic flow, de-congestion, scientific solid waste management, proper storm water drainage, preservation of heritage etc. Second sub-mission is aimed at providing basic services to the urban poor, including proper housing at affordable rates and up-gradation of slums to ensure that all the slum areas in the mission cities are provided with the same level of facilities as are available to the better areas in the Mission cities.

Funding pattern under the JNNURM is that for the States of the north east 90 per cent of the cost of projects approved under the mission is to be provided by the Union government as grant in aid and the remaining amount has to be pooled in by the Urban Local Body (ULB) concerned and the State government. For other hill States and the cities with less than one million population, the percentage of ACA is 80 per cent. For cities with population between one million and four million, the ACA is 50 per cent of the project cost, while the same for the cities with over four million population is 35 per cent. It is expected that after including the State and ULB share, during the mission period (upto 2012-13), more than Rs 1,50,000 crore would be spent for up-gradation of urban infrastructure and for providing basic services for urban poor in the Mission cities. In addition to the JNNURM funding and projects, the city administration has to make special efforts to make sure that the challenges of urbanization are met and the cities and towns are able to cope up with the urban problems in the years to come.