India is urbanising slowly but surely, but our cities are on the verge of collapse due to poor urban planning, particularly in the transportation sector. The solutions require political will as well as innovative thinking
The 2011 census had an interesting statistic, the percentage of India’s population which live in cities crossed the 30 per cent mark for the first time. While at 31.16 per cent, the proportion of India’s urban population is still far behind the rural population and India is still predominantly a rural country, something that is evident in our policymaking, as India’s economy grows, which despite recent hiccups one expects will continue.
The population of Delhi alone, without considering the fast-growing suburban areas of Ghaziabad, Gurgaon and Noida, grew at 21.2 per cent between 2001 and 2011 to 16.79 million. There is no doubt that Delhi will become India’s largest city soon enough and the population in the city and surrounding suburban areas will exceed 50 million by 2020. To put that number in perspective, that is five times the population of Norway.
The challenges facing urban planners in India are tremendous but not necessarily unique as mega-cities across Asia have also had to deal with population explosions over the past few decades. For example, last year China — for long as agrarian a society as India — saw its urban population overtake its rural population.
Even if you consider that China started its economic reforms 15 years before India, the fact is that in just over 30 years the country has transformed. And it is not just mega-cities such as Shanghai that have exploded, cities like Shenzen that until 1980 was a small fishing village today houses a population in excess of 10 million.
Across the cities of China, planners have struggled with housing and transportation requirements. However, the development of a high-speed rail system, albeit one with huge allegations of corruption surrounding it, contributed to moving people between China’s densely populated eastern seaboard and its interiors quickly. This lessens the pressure on cities like Shanghai.
China picked up some of the lessons from the massive and rapid urbanisation of Japan following World War II. India would do well to learn from both examples, but also not delay planning this build-up of urban infrastructure until it is too late. And lessons should not be taken just from the East, one of the most important lessons which should be applied to the large Indian cities right away is one from the West.
Every large city in India ought to have a unified transportation planning company. It is true that there is a transport department in Delhi, but there are also competing modes of transport with little or no co-ordination between them. The Delhi Transport Corporation and the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation are independent of each other, which might have made sense at the start, but like several mega-cities such as london, New York and Paris have done a unified urban transport company will lead to better coordination and planning going forward.
Something as simple as having a single ticket or pass between different modes of transport would improve collections and lead to less hassles for consumers as well.
Then there is the controversial issue of congestion charges for personal vehicles. This system, which was notably introduced in london over a decade ago, has had a level of success despite initially being opposed by most owners of personal transport.
Other cities have not copied london’s daily charge for commuters to the middle of the city, but several Chinese cities, notably Beijing, in an effort to cut back on both pollution and congestion, prevent cars and other personal transport vehicles with particular numbers from entering cities on particular days. For example, cars with number-plates ending in zero and five are prevented from entering central Beijing on Mondays. Those with plates ending in one and six are prevented on Tuesday and so on and so forth, thus preventing at least 20 per cent of the vehicular population from entering the city centre on every given weekday.
In India, unfortunately, there has been no attempt to control vehicular population growth. One reason for that is the abysmal state of public transport in most cities.
Even in Delhi where the Metro has made a marked change in areas where it has reached, it will take until the completion of the third phase in 2015 to have most of the main parts of the entire city connected. And the pace of construction of the Delhi Metro has been exemplary. In Mumbai the Metro Rail project while almost complete is horribly behind schedule and in Hyderabad, construction of the project was hit by the fallout of the Satyam-Maytas scandal.
That said, late as they are, attempts are being made for infrastructure development in some major urban centres. But, as India grows, several smaller cities, with populations of under five million today, will also spread rapidly. It is of vital importance that these cities not be overlooked by planners. Cities such as Bhopal, lucknow, Kanpur, Vadodara, Nagpur, Raipur and so on will be major population growth centres. Many of these cities are already clogged as there has been almost no effort to improve urban planning as well as transportation. In some cities local mafia runs public buses, for example, with little regards for routes or passengers.
Middle-class urban voters are ignored by most politicians, and while a city like Delhi has some inherent advantages of being a city State, other major cities are not afforded this necessity due to political and regional jingoism. However, these people, more than most understand that the urban migration that is taking place in India is irreversible no matter how many populist schemes come up aimed at keeping people poor and in villages.
The human urge for a better life will make people move to cities. The 31 per cent in 2011 might become 35 or even 40 per cent by 2021. Our planners, bureaucrats and politicians have to start planning for this change. Because if we do not, the five per cent growth the Indian economy is scheduled to register in 2012-2013 might become a way of life, and slow growth is the last thing a young India can afford.