ARE WE MAKING CITIES WORTH LIVING ?

Migration choking big cities
Notwithstanding, the tragic tragedy that perished 70 migrants in a building collapse in East Delhi,the helpless migrants  are keep on coming to capital and other cities.   Ramesh Saha a weary looking man in his 30s, hails from the same Murshidabad district of West Bengal whose many migrants killed in a building collapse.
Saha had come to Delhi from a small village eight days before the tragedy, leaving his wife and four children behind. He hadn’t found work yet. He tried lowering his daily price from Rs150 to Rs 100 and than Rs 80, without luck. Like many of the workers around him, he was sleeping on the ground by the temple in Laxmi Nagar.
Across India, migrants like Saha are keep on pouring  into cities. Many of which are woefully mismanaged and ill-equipped to handle the influx. India has at least 41 cities with more than one million people, up from 23 two decades ago. A half dozen others will soon join the mega city list. Urban experts say the risk is now rising that some of these cities could face the same fate as Mumbai and Calcutta, which became synonymous with poverty and decay in the 1970s and 1980s.
Although city planners have tried to learn from Calcutta and Mumbai’s untamed sprawl, they haven’t been able to manage the growth.
There is “no doubt that India’s future is in the cities,” says M. Ramachandran, former secretary at India’s Ministry of Urban Development.
What’s happening in India is part of a world-wide challenge. Mega cities are sprouting around the globe. But in billion-person India, the trend is on steroids.
The country already has 25 of the world’s 100-fastest growing urban areas, according to City Mayors, an international urban-affairs think tank. That compares with eight in China. Pune, near Mumbai, has more than four million people, about the same as the Houston area. Kanpur has more than three million, as does Surat.India is expected to add 10 million people a year between 2000 and 2030 to its 5,161 cities, according to the United Nations.
If India fails to get a handle on its new urban areas, it could be saddled with more bottlenecks and inefficiencies that could doom the country to years of sub par growth, says Dharmakirti Joshi, an economist at Mumbai ratings agency Crisil. India’s gross domestic product has been growing faster than that of most other developing countries, averaging 8.8% a year in the past five years, according to the International Monetary Fund. But economists say inadequate roads, electricity and other infrastructure shave one to two percentage points off growth each year.
The Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission was launched in 2005 by the national government to help more than 60 major cities by spending $10 billion to upgrade sewers, water supply, roads and other necessities. But that falls far short of the $52 billion the government estimates it will take to fix India’s urban infrastructure.
Living in the city may not be working out well so far. But then again, says Saha, “we don’t have anywhere else to go.” Migration has been growing steadily, an inevitable result of urban attractions for the rural poor.
It may be difficult to believe that about 20,000 people migrate to Chandigarh every year. Yet, it is a fact; Chandigarh is no exception to the trend of urban growth.
Job opportunities attract people from the villages and towns to move to the cities. One third of the world population lived in the cities in the 1950s. Now, it is about half the world population.
By 2050, it is estimated that three fourths of the population (about six billion people) will live in cities. As the world moves towards cities and dense urban pockets, pressure builds on city planners and developers to ensure planned growth.
Architect P. Arun Prasad, president of the Coimbatore chapter of the Indian Institute of Architects said that in India, 50 per cent of the 1.1 billion population lives in cities. And, in most of the urban areas, one fourth of the population lives in slums. In Coimbatore, 12.5 per cent of the 14 lakh population lack quality living conditions. In Mumbai, about 50 per cent lives in slums.
“We need to address the pressure that is building on the urban areas,” says Prof Nazma Rizvi,formerly of capital’s School of planning and Architecture. As the economy of a city grows, there is more demand for supplementary services and hence people come in as drivers, domestic help, etc. The need for affordable housing for those migrating to the city has to be met. When there is no planned growth, many of those who migrate to the cities settle down in areas that lack in sanitation, hygiene and cleanliness.
According to the Indian Standard for Housing for the Economically Weaker section, the minimum area of a dwelling should be 450 sq.ft.The cost for such a dwelling unit will work out to 3.5 lakh to Rs. 4 lakh.
Said  Anil Sharma,CMD of Amprapali group, adding ” China has a concept of social housing. In India, more schemes are needed to provide affordable housing so that cities are sustainable. Further, these cities need to be planned. Every city has a development authority that prepares the Master Plan envisaging the need for the next 10 years. When experts are not involved in preparing the Master Plan and individual plans are approved without planning for the entire locality, the city suffers haphazard development.”
According to author of ‘Affordable housing’ Dr.Arun Mohan, ” the development authorities of cities should have competent planners for housing, transport, the environment, urban and regional development. The authority should also zone areas according to the land use. It should identify roads and industrial areas. Cities such as Delhi, Chandigarh and Gurgaon were designed by planners.The Government should include the public as partners for development of an area and share the profits with them.”
Added By : SARUTS