Roadmap of Urban Development | Gist of Rajya Sabha TV / RSTV (now Sansad TV) - UPSC PDF Download

Urbanisation and Economic Growth:

• There are strong correlations between urbanisation and economic growth.
• Urbanisation could generate millions of jobs for the growing youth population.
• Productivity increases when rural farmers become urban factory workers, as has happened most spectacularly in China.
• Between 1978 and 2018, China’s urbanisation rate jumped up from 18% to 58%.
• In the process, over 500 million people were lifted out of poverty and the country attained middle income status.
• India’s present level of urbanisation (34%) is far lower than China (58%) or even Indonesia (55%).
• Naturally, there is huge scope for growth.

Drawbacks of Current model of urbanization:

• The new Indian urban landscape is being designed around grand concepts such as smart cities and export-oriented industrial corridors.
• Cities are built mostly on economic terms without considering or less importance to cultural and recreational aspects of human beings.
• The cities do not cater for environmental disasters.
• Currently, India’s ongoing urbanisation offers little opportunity for inclusion of its disadvantaged populations.
• There is a growing phenomenon of ‘sons of soil’ or ‘outsider’ based abuse.
• Politicisation of India’s urban spaces — often for so-called ‘vote-bank populism’ — is creating exclusionary barriers for new migrants.
• Multiple jurisdictions, weak revenue base and human resource capacity deficit.

Centre-State Coordination:

• Since majority of city-related issues are state subjects, states must take the lead in order to make cities vibrant economic centres.
• Sustainable urban development needs to be led by the central government working closely with state and local governments.
• For effective implementation of the urbanisation roadmap, the Centre should take the lead to sensitise states and encourage them to frame their own urban policies.
• The state policies could then be plugged into the overarching national framework.

Negative Impacts:

• Urban population explosion has come with its own set of evils.
• Metros like Bengaluru, once known for its expansive lakes, are set to face extreme water stress in the future.
• Lakes are encroached for illegal buildings like high rise apartments, commercial building, and slum.
• Cities are flooded during monsoon and after that we see a period of drought.
• The environment has been the casualty.
• Noise Pollution, Air Pollution and Water Scarcity.
• Environmental pollution caused by daily hour-long traffic jams on a 10-km stretch causes more harm to the environment.
• Long term exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) contributed to 42 lakh premature deaths in 2015 in the whole world out of which India and China together shared 52%.
• Water scarcity has often led to riots among common people in slums and undeveloped colonies where population density is very high.
• Recent study found that adults living in urban areas, as well as those with a higher household wealth or education, tended to have a higher Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) risk.

Concerns:

• In Indian cities, there is lack of basic infrastructure and a deteriorating quality of life.
• India spends about $17 per capita annually on urban infrastructure projects, against a global benchmark of $100 and China’s $116.
• Indian cities face challenges in terms of governance and sustainability.
• The poverty and social isolation of minority groups in cities.
• With rapid urbanization, these problems are going to aggravate, and can cumulatively pose a challenge to India’s growth trajectory.
• Urban institutions also suffer from shortage of skilled people.
• Poor collection of property taxes. Jaipur and Bengaluru collect only 5-20% of their potential property tax.

Smart Cities:

• In the budget, 2014, it was projected for ‘one hundred Smart cities’, as satellite towns of larger cities and modernizing the existing mid- sized cities. Though there is no clear definition of smart cities, it may include creative, cyber, digital, e-governed, entrepreneurial, intelligent, knowledge, harnessing the power of Information and communication technology (ICT). Smartness has to be there with respect to governance and service delivery.

Its feature can be :-

e-governance (through Digital India initiative, National e-governance plan, National Optical fiber network, e- panchayat project of MRD)

• Continuous improvements in design and management
• Climate oriented development
• Mass transit oriented development
• People centric technological applications (m-health, e- learning )
• Planning can be bottom up for future urbanization
• Smart PDS rationing
• Social inclusive and economically diverse.

Creating Urban Infrastructure:

• Not creating essential urban infrastructure will lead to a deteriorating quality of life.
• With large-scale migration to the cities, we must focus on making our cities economically viable and environmentally sustainable.
• Investing in our urban infrastructure will lead to enhanced economic activity.
• It will result in large-scale employment generation and an improved quality of life.
• This is a much-desired socioeconomic outcome in a young nation where the majority of urban migrants are youth.
• We also need to work hard to ensure that our urban infrastructure causes least harm to the environment.