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Events & Issues
New Delhi, 24 January 2011
Urbanisation Mess
VITAL
INFRASTRUCTURE NEEDED
By Suraj Saraf
The mess that fast Indian urbanization is shaping in to has
been highlighted in a number of recent reports by various agencies. In one such
telling account by Mckinsy Global Institute stated, that India needed US $1.2
trillion capital expenditure to cater to this growth, mainly in infrastructure,
an eight-fold increase of its current spending level.
Significantly, it indicted the country, “Across all major
quality-of-life indicators, India’s cities fall well short of delivering even a
basic standard of living for their residents. “India
now spends $17 per capita on urban infrastructure, compared to rival China’s $116.
This is not all. “This figure is clearly inadequate: while
it took about 40 years for India’s
urban population to rise by nearly 230 million in 2008, it will take only half
that time to add the next 250 million people. India
will, over the next two decades, see an urban transformation the scale and
speed of which has not happened anywhere except China, with many cities becoming
larger than many countries in terms of population size.
“India
has Asia’s third largest economy and the
increasing global clout that goes with it. It is already home to a quarter of
the world’s 20 most densely populated countries. While rapidly modernizing
cities such as Shanghai and Sao
Paulo are winning business from centres such as London
and New York, the slow pace of urban
development in India is
harming its cities, which by 2030 will be home to about 590 million people,
nearly twice the population of United
States.
More. This was endorsed by a consultant at Everstone
Investment Advisor who added, “It is going to one of the most defining change
that we have yet to see, as poor infrastructure shaves an estimated 2
percentage points of India’s
economic growth.”
According to the official Government version, urban
population could go up to 53 crore by 2021. Moreover, this growth has already put
a severe pressure on the civic structure such as water supply, sewerage,
drainage, transport as also availability of houses in all major cities. Notwithstanding,
that the 11th plan has estimated Rs.53,666 crore for water supply, Rs.
53,168 crore for sewerage, Rs.20,173 crore for drainage and Rs.2,212 crore for
solid waste management in urban areas.
Even as the Indian economy remains one of the bright spots
in the world showing an upward growth trajectory, around 49000 slums continue
to blight the urban landscape forcing lakhs of people to live in pathetic
conditions, according to the National Sample Survey (NSSO).
To make things worse, of these 49,000 slums, 24% were
located along nallahas and drains and
around 12% along railway tracks. Not surprisingly, 57% of slums came up on
public land, owned mostly by local bodies and State Governments.
The survey added that though sanitary conditions in the
slums in terms of toilet facilities showed an improvement, a lot still needed
to be done. Toilets with septic tanks (or similar facility) were available in
68% notified and 47% non-notified slums (up from 66% and 35% respectively in
2002).
At a time when the UPA Government has made the ambitious
promise of a slum-free India,
around 10% notified and 20% non-notified slums (though down from 17% and 51%
respectively in 2002) did not have any toilet facility at all.
Equally shocking, the NSSO report “Some characteristics of
urban slums 2008-2009”, averred that around 10% notified and 23% non-notified
areas did not have any drainage facility at all as against 15% notified and 44%
non-notified slums in 2002. About 48% slums were usually affected by water-logging
during monsoon, 32% saw water-logging inside the slums as well as on the approach
road and 95 had only the approach road water-logged.
The NSSO survey further divulged that over the last five
years, roads (both within slums and approach roads) and water supply had
improved in about 50% of the notified slums. Presently, 78% of the notified
slums and 57% of non-notified slums have an approach road inside the slum and
around 73 of the notified and 58% of non-notified slums a motorable approach
road.
In addition, the NSSO report found that in 64% of the notified
slums a majority of the dwellings were pucca,
while the corresponding percentage for non-notified slums was 50%. Only 1%
notified and 7% non-notified slums did not have electricity connection.
Undoubtedly, in view of this messed-up urbanization, India is
improving very, very slowly and any project to accelerate this improvement is
most welcome. In fact, the World Health Organisation (WHO has launched one such
project pointedly called, ‘1000 cities, 1000 lives’.
Under this campaign, cities have been invited to open a
portion of their streets to people and close them to motor vehicles, offering
citizens a novel public space for physical exercise, meeting family, friends
and community, health check-ups, eating healthy local food or visiting local
attractions.
Already, 84 countries and 453 cities have registered their
participation in the campaign of which 80 cities are from India. To
ensure its success free health check-ups, health fairs, street campaign,
seminars and smoke-free zones were set up across these cities with 1000 people
narrating their experiences.
Importantly, to ensure lasting health benefit to cities and
citizens, special attention is being paid to schools, activities with children,
poster campaigns with schools, university forums, company relay races, clean clean-up
campaigns, health fairs and town hall meeting with mayors, national leaders,
state heads on local health concerns.
The WHO launched this campaign primarily as urbanization is
emerging as a major challenge for public health relating to water, environment,
non-communicable diseases and their risk factor, tobacco use, unhealthy diets
and communicable diseases like tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS.
Furthermore, the report underscored that over the next 30
years virtually all population growth would be in urban areas, thereby signalling
that urbanization is here to stay. Under these conditions, in a welcome move
the National Urban Health Mission is all set to launch a scheme to provide
better health care to urban slums.
This ambitious Rs.33,000 crore plan is expected to bring
under its purview domestic helps, vegetable vendors, vulnerable population
namely migrants, rag-pickers and street children.
Clearly, the Mission’s
endeavour aimed to correct the “structural imbalances” of public health system
in urban areas, including that of infrastructure and human resource, would
focus on urban slum dwellers who neither get the benefit of routine
immunization nor that of programmes on vector-born diseases. Soon, reproductive
and child health will also be brought under the Mission, which will cover all cities with a
population of more than one lakh.
Scandalously, the Mission
discloses that several health indicators among the urban poor are worse than
those in rural areas. Even the under-five child mortality is 72.7 significantly
higher than the urban average of 51.9 per 1000. Thankfully, the Urban Health
Mission aims at reducing this to 30 per thousand. ---- INFA
(Copyright,
India News and Feature Alliance)
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