I have been asked to talk about the urbanization process and its many fallouts, which we are facing today. Before I come to the specifics of our own experiences with urbanization in Agra, I would like to present an overview of the problem.
Two new developments need to be taken note of--
Government of India’s latest policy on Special Economic Zones (SEZs) backed by an Act of Parliament in June this year- This Act empowers the government to set up 300 tax-exempted enclaves, all over the country, with the ostensible objective of stimulating production of goods and services for export to help generate additional economic activity. The size of the enclaves will vary from 10 hectares to 1000 hectares. What this would in effect mean, is creation of new urban clusters, or new townships. In next couple of years we will have an additional 300 towns in India, with world class facilities, as the private sector promoters would not face any resources crunch. How these islands of opulence and prosperity will impact existing urban centers, is a matter that needs to be debated. How fast the central government is moving on this project can be understood by the clearance given to 181 SEZs till date. A special cell is daily processing the applications.
Another initiative of the present government in respect of existing urban centers is the Rs.50,000 crore worth Jawahar Lal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (NURM). This mission, it has been claimed, will drastically alter the urban development scenario in country. Agra is also one of the centers which has been identified under this new scheme.
Two other related trends need to be taken note of--
One, the land grab movement by land Mafiosi, the entry of big sharks called colonizers and land developers, the high-tech township promoters, in short a high profiled “land development industry” as distinct from Dr. Lohia’s concept of “Bhoomi Sena” has accessed all the surplus land for building multi-storied buildings and apartments for the city elites, on government lands, on public ponds, on the peripheries of the cities. The government agencies like the ADA or the Awas Vikas Nigam, playing the second fiddle, have been acquiring land for them, often fleecing the farmers by depriving them of the actual market rates. This uncontrolled spree for privatization of land resources for commercial purposes and devoid of any public concerns is now a major trend all over India. Last month Newsweek identified Ghaziabad as “the hottest urban center” in India. This transformation of the western districts of UP, which have traditionally been agriculturally prosperous, into a 21st century “super urban elitist metropolitan area,” is a development that has to be taken note of seriously, as the rising crime rate in this belt appears to be a direct fallout of this trend.
Another disturbing trend discernible, which could prove to be a source of worry in future, is the mass exodus from rural areas to the cities, which have graduated as hubs of development and employment generating centers. If we take the case of Agra, originally a city planned for just 60,000 people in the days of the Mughal empire, it is today peopled by more than 16 lakhs. This additional population burden is not the result of any fertility drugs or sudden peaking of the birth rate, but contributed by the mass migration from rural areas, and the temptation of the municipal bodies to periodically extend city limits to integrate rural clusters into the city. This has naturally put the civic amenities and the available infrastructures under tremendous pressure. The gap between people’s rising expectations and the capacity of the local bodies to deliver and keep pace with the demands of the community continues to widen. In most developing countries metropolitan areas have squeezed the countryside of precious land resources, all in the name of national development. Against such a backdrop the mass exodus from rural areas to the islands of opulence that the cities have become, is understandably inevitable.
Also note may be taken of the Supreme Court’s initiative to stop commercial activities in Delhi’s residential areas. This has become a major issue of confrontation involving the city planners like the DDA, political parties dependent on vote bank politics, the residential areas associations, the tax collecting agencies, social activists and the judiciary. With so many interest groups fighting it out, it is possible to get confused about the real issues. In such a surcharged atmosphere it also becomes difficult to identify the original culprits. The development has to be seen against four continuing trends in urban areas: increase in population pressure, growth of consumer markets, escalation of land prices and above all ad hocism in government’s urbanization policies, more a result of responding to alarm calls rather than a systematic evaluation of the needs of the community and existing resources. The Delhi fiasco of urban planning will be repeated in all Indian cities as courts become more and more sensitized to society’s long-term concerns and environmental groups start playing a catalytic role.
Our urban centers are bursting at the seams. One question people often ask everywhere is “if we can get man on the moon, why can’t we move people across the town more efficiently and safely?” India too is planning to send a manned flight to the moon in 2010. True, lack of transport facilities is not the only problem that city governments are finding hard to tackle, it nevertheless indicates the miserable mess that urban planners have created virtually everywhere by their commitment to “big is beautiful and better, smaller issues will sort out themselves.” Unfortunately it has not happened that way.
Democratic communities should be concerned about the last man in the row, the smaller and the weaker segments of the society, but our town-planners have been showing extra favors to the big land sharks.
Poor Housing, alarming crime situation, increasing unemployment in the cities, apartheid in education, inadequate transport services are some of the chief problems defying solutions.
Paradoxically with higher incomes and higher spending, poverty has now moved into the cities. We are now warned that the quality of life would further deteriorate in the cities. Housing patterns developed in recent years in many Indian cities have not measured up to the expectations of the people. One prime reason has been the detachment of social and cultural values from modern housing designs and planning. Corbusier, the god of urban planning wanted us to believe that a house is just a machine. The Indian perspective on town-planning is different. With housing is intricately linked our civilization, our social, cultural and esthetic values. No wonder people have termed cities like Chandigarh a vast wasteland dotted by grave like cement and concrete structures which keep warm in summer and cool in winter. Alienation and isolation, two chief fallouts of the modern urban planning, are nowhere in stark evidence as in cities which have snapped their links with the old traditional cultural heritage of India, which interestingly now finds ex-pression through commerce-backed celebrations on festivals which are now called “events.”
Cities, which have better transport facilities as is the case with Delhi with the metro rail network expanding to newer areas, have led to increased mobility, attracting migration from rural areas. If you compare Delhi today with what it was a decade ago, it would appear that the whole of Bihar has migrated to the national capital. In course of time ghettoes and slums are bound to mushroom leading to ethnic and regional tensions between the sons of the soil and outsiders, as has happened in Mumbai.
As enlightened public opinion pressures government to enact suitable legislation to socially integrate the “outsiders” communities, the crime rate shoots up due to economic compulsions. Dacoits and criminals who were once localized to the Chambal ravines, today masquerade posh colonies in the cities and loot and lift people at will.
One can go on and on listing all the problems that urban communities face today. A desperate call is often heard from those frustrated with our experiments in town planning “let’s go back to nature, and return to our roots in the villages.” This however can not happen. You can not reverse the process as cities are the beehives of development and growth. The backwaters and the internal colonies left behind in rural areas, are not worth preserving. Indian villages have nothing to offer. By glamorizing and romanticizing rural life, we are preventing their integration with the mainstream urban life.
While urban centers have to be developed along more humanistic value systems that are responsive to environmental concerns, the vast rural hinterland of India has to be systematically and speedily urbanized in terms of broad basing civic amenities and making modern facilities available to the villagers.
In case of Agra, Sanjay Place, the future Kinari bazaar, is an excellent example of the haphazard and vision less urban planning. The buildings and roads are already in a terrible shape. The ADA’s greed for money from sale of land has not left an inch of space for green parks and tree plantation. Often one has to jump from one block to the other as there are no link roads. The whole complex lacks an individual identity one that is compatible with the Mughal grandeur of the city.
Khandari road, Bagh Farzana and the Civil Lines are the posh slums of Agra. Many high rise buildings have no sewer connections and are directly pumping all the toilet and sewage waste underground through borings. This is a criminal act as all our underground reserves will be poisoned with toxic wastes. Even some of the big hotels are doing the same as they have no sewer line connection.
In old city, new high rise buildings, commercial complexes and markets are coming up, without civic amenities like toilets, parking slots and green cover, courtesy the ADA babus. Belanganj today has a dozen such complexes and the result is endless traffic jams. It appears that due to security concerns people are now not moving out of the inner city limits, but dismantling old structures to create more space and better working conditions.
But this has created new problems and areas of concern. The western model of urban development relies on de-linking place of residence from place of work. That’s how we witnessed the growth of residential colonies. Since markets are separated from residences, half a person’s life is spent in commuting between the two. The Indian town planning philosophy, on the other hand, believed in the integration of the two: ‘Neeche dukan Upar Makan’ or showroom in the front and ‘peeche karkhana and upar ghar’. The advantages of this were many: Security, more flexible working hours, better utilization of space and involvement of the whole family in the business operation.
Let’s admit villages in India have no future. Of the 5 lakh 50 thousand odd villages, at least 25% are all set to disappear in the next 5 years.
Another process we should soon be witness to is the growing suburbanization of India. Metros have already crossed the optimum growth level. We should now be seeing a reverse trend, which should benefit development of smaller towns and new suburbs on the periphery. This change has been triggered by constantly evolving better transport systems and an ever-increasing number of private vehicles on the roads. The problem of finding private parking space in big cities is forcing many residents to move out.
As more and more people today want to own a house of their own, the old dream of “ek bangla bane nyara,” is all set to be fulfilled by more and more players jumping on the bandwagon of a highly lucrative building industry financed by private resources.
The process of urbanization has just begun in India. The problems and negative trends are bound to be there. But the plus point is that social activists and the courts, backed by a powerful media, are keeping a vigilant eye, which one hopes will keep the wrong doers on the back foot. All towns and cities of India should have watch-dog groups who should be allowed a say. We should also use the RTI Act to good advantage.
A Talk by Brij Khandelwal, Editor (Consultancy), Www.mediabharti.com , at the seminar on ‘Rapid Urbanization’ held at Goverdhan Hotel in Agra, Saturday, 30th September 2006
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