Social Change

Urban growth in India is not equitable across different size categories, with concentration in large cities and low level of growth in small and medium towns. Market-oriented reforms in urban governance have increased this inequity as reflected in the implementation of JnNRUM and UIDSMMT programmes. This has also produced a bias against the poor in large cities in absorbing migrants and the level of infrastructure and services available to them in the areas where they reside when compared to the colonies of households with high income.

With economic growth and increasing diversification of economic activities away from primary sector, urbanisation has been constantly expanding all over the world. This process in India has been slow, and India today is one of the least urbanised countries of the world. Dependence on agriculture for work is still very high. A typical worker in India, by tradition and habit, is a reluctant migrant. He/she moves to the city only when city needs him/her. GDP growth in India has not contributed much to growth in job opportunities. India jumped from primary to tertiary sector bypassing the growth of manufacturing against the historical experience of developed countries and of China in recent years. This has to change. With reasonable assumption about economic growth with industrial development it would be reasonable to expect an urban population of nearly 50 per cent by 2031. Across the states, India has varied experience in urbanisation, ranging from 10 per cent to nearly 60 per cent and above. Levels of urbanisation and levels of economic development of states are highly correlated. More urbanised states also show better urban governance. Situation in small towns in less developed states in most cases is quite dehumanising. Urban planning has been almost non-existent. When asked to propose city development plans (CDPs) for assistance under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JnNURM), most of bigger cities propose to move from secondary sector to tertiary sector without showing much concern for implications of such movement for the urban poor. Poverty is not comparable over time with a fixed measuring rod. The urban poor suffer from a large number of vulnerabilities: residential, occupational and social. Residential vulnerabilities are the most acute. Urban poor need to be identified on the basis of these vulnerabilities. If this is done, the magnitude of urban poverty may turn out to be much larger than what the official estimates indicate.

A significant feature of the third world urbanisations, including India, is that most of the population is concentrated in few big cities and metropolitan areas. The article attempts to categorise the four top Indian metro cities in terms of their stage of growth, assess the components of population growth and summarise the migration dynamics in terms of the migrants’ choice of destination. The cores of the metropolitan areas have more population concentration than the peripheral zones. In all the four metropolitan cities, population growth rate is decelerating and, in some cases, it is even found to be negative. City cores are experiencing huge flow of out-migration and are growing mainly because of the natural increase. A significant feature characterising all the four top metros is that majority of the migratory movement (both in-migration and out-migration) has taken place in short distances mostly to and from the adjoining districts of the urban agglomeration (UA). It has emerged that the four cities in recent years have witnessed a higher volume and rate of population growth towards the periphery. Delhi and Mumbai have been more preferred destination of migration than Kolkata and Chennai and their vibrancy is reflected in the higher degree of alluring and fusing capacity to the in-migrating population.

This study argues that India’s urban growth is more sluggish than most observers believe and that the developed states and large cities are receiving most of that growth, while backward areas and smaller towns are tending to stagnate. Although adult male migration is considered as an effective mechanism for improving economic well-being and escaping poverty, their net migration into urban areas has not gone up over the past five decades. A slow and top-heavy pattern of Indian urbanisation is contributing to persistent inequalities. More importantly, the recent moves for empowerment of local bodies through a new system of urban governance have also contributed to increased spatial inequality. Obvious responses would be more inclusive population policies in the successful and large urban centres or, alternatively, more support for economic growth in smaller urban centres. The first is likely to face political obstacles, as urban elites and the middle class do not want to accommodate a large influx of low-income migrants. The second is also likely to face economic obstacles, as it can be difficult to find good public investment opportunities in smaller urban centres. However, without urban growth, the pursuit of both economic growth and equality will eventually be compromised.

The Basic Services to the Urban Poor (BSUP) is the part of a mission mode programme of the Indian Government that aims at providing access to basic amenities and services, including housing security, to urban poor living in slums. The article discusses the implementation of the BSUP in the city of Bhopal. The article throws a point for discussion whether providing a house under the programme is enough to improve the quality of life of urban poor and the programme delivers a complete package as it has been promised in the BSUP guidelines issued by the government. The article looks at two specific dimensions of the implementation of the BSUP: whether stated objectives of the BSUP have been fulfilled and whether the living conditions in the newly constructed settlements are sustainable. The article compares three cases in the city of Bhopal to probe these two specific dimensions. The cases include a newly constructed settlement under the BSUP, a transit camp where habitants of a displaced slum are waiting to shift to a newly constructed settlement under the BSUP and an existing slum, which was expected to be rehabilitated in the future.

Inclusive urban planning requires comprehensive and sufficiently detailed information about urban areas. In the absence of such information, many informal settlements are left out in the city-wide planning process. In the metros as well as in many big cities in particular, large proportion of the urban population lives in slums in India. The urban projects undertaken in these cities tend to ignore significant slum improvement interventions. The development plans have really not addressed the issue of the marginalisation of the poor in the cities, often leading to their spatial exclusion. They are pushed out of the city, where services are poor and investments are low.

Slum Environmental Sanitation Initiative (SESI) of UN-HABITAT in the cities of Bhopal, Indore, Gwalior and Jabalpur in the State of Madhya Pradesh has resulted in significant improvements in the lives of slum communities through creating open defecation free slums, improving access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene practices and mobilising men and women for community action.

Poverty Pocket Situation Analysis (PPSA) has been used as an instrument to prioritise the slums for investments based on poverty and environmental infrastructure deficiency matrix. The process involved spatial mapping of infrastructural deficiencies in the slums. The outcome helped in the selection of the most vulnerable slums for water and sanitation intervention under SESI.

Noted scholars have argued that urbanisation in India is dysfunctional, sans industrialisation, dependent on a largely informal tertiary sector and totally unsustainable (Bhalla, 2004). I posit in this article that whatever the nature of urbanisation—'top heavy', tertiarised and sans industrialisation—India needs to promote urbanisation since we can demonstrate that poverty is better fought through urbanisation than by only focussing on rural development programmes and the population living in 600,000 small and scattered villages and hamlets which are unlikely to attract substantial private investment in public infrastructure. I argue in this article that there is a need to shift the policy focus to promoting urban growth, albeit the segment of the academia that discourses on over-urbanisation in India. The situation wherein the agricultural sector which has a share of 60 per cent employment and 25 per cent share in GDP (1999–2000) is not sustainable. However, the current approach to urban residential planning that merely carves out areas required for high, middle and low income as well as economically weaker sections that leaves out perhaps more than 50 per cent of people living in urban areas must drastically change. At present, this segment of the city population occupies areas with very poor basic services.

The study focus on the urgency and relevance of debate on the subject in the context of (a) MDG 7 (b) Rangarajan Committee’s Report and (c) new versions of MDG and JnNURM on the anvil. The latest UN report (mid-2014) saying that one-third of the world’s extreme poor are in India is of serious concern.

Urban poverty, all over the globe, has many dimensions. It can be viewed from economic, spatial and social/cultural perspectives. Being multi-dimensional in its genesis and manifestations, it calls for multi-pronged strategies. In India, policy makers have concentrated on (a) planning and policy framework (b) in situ improvement of slums (basic services for the urban poor (BSUP); (c) affordable housing; and (d) improving skill and job opportunities of slum dwellers.

Interestingly, in a recent survey in 127 cities on the perceived constraints to inclusiveness, the highest tally was for failures of planning/policy framework and not the scarcity of funds. While emphasising the role of city governments in ensuring inclusiveness, the author relies on knowledge gathered by UN-HABITAT in ‘success cities’.

The urban divide can possibly be encapsulated in three D’s: dynamics of the divide (DD), characteristics of the divide (CD) and bridging the divide (BD).

This article analyses the present urban development policies with a focus on the extent of equity in the delivery of basic services especially in the context of effectiveness of the programme of Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JnNURM). The programme was designed as a reform-linked investment mission to ensure financially sustainable development of the cities through efficient governance, better infrastructure and improved service delivery. Further, the article analyses the infrastructural investment and geographical coverage of this programme and summarises the lessons learnt and attempts to delineate a policy perspective for inclusive urban development across the country.

The big city bias of the mission is very evident from the analysis. Also, the developed states and big cities could take advantage of the mission and improve their infrastructural requirements of water supply, sewerage and transportation. The spending for the urban poor declined over the years and they became partners in this programme in a very cosmetic sense. The small towns and poorer states could take little advantage of this programme because of their limited capacity to understand and implement reforms and prepare city development plans and detailed project reports which were contingent for qualifying for funds.

Hari Mohan Mathur, Displacement and Resettlement in India: The Human Cost of Development, London, Routledge, 2013, xix + 227 pp., £85.

Misra, R. P. (ed.), Urbanisation in South Asia: Focus on Mega Cities, New Delhi, Cambridge University Press, 2013, i–xxiii + 506 pp., ₹1295 (Hardcover).

Vandana Vasudevan, Urban Villager: Life in an Indian Satellite Town, Delhi, Sage, 2013, x + 280 pp., ₹625.

Marie-Caroline Saglio-Yatzimirsky, Dharavi: From Mega-Slum to Urban Paradigm, New Delhi, Routledge, 2013, 379 pp., ₹995.