The Challenges And Opportunities Of Urbanization In India
Most of the population across the globe either live in cities or are headed there. It is estimated that by the year 2050, more than two-third of the world’s population will be settled in urban areas. The trend is already in place, with more than a million people shifting to cities every year. For countries like India, migration to developed and developing cities is driven by job opportunities and a better quality of life. However, rapid urbanization also brings its own challenges.
The Challenges
The relationship between population migration, urbanization and economic growth is complex. There is a thin margin between urbanization and overpopulation and in many large Indian cities, the ‘carrying capacity’ has already been reached. Some relevant examples are Delhi, Mumbai, Pune and Bangalore, where new migrants face a scarcity of affordable accommodation.
Urban growth or urbanization invariably feeds increasing industrialization and commercialization, which impacts the environment as well as infrastructural capabilities of a city. Increasing population also leads to continually expanding urban development and local Governments are continually challenged to deliver the necessary institutional, economic and managerial capabilities that such expansion requires. With lack of proper housing, most of the migrating population settle for slums and other unregulated/unorganized living options.
Urban Congestion
The rapid inward migration in cities like Mumbai, Pune and Delhi has given rise to clogging and problems like faulty water management and unnatural changes to the environment. The rapid creation of settlements in the peripheries of these saturated cities makes it impossible for the concerned city planning authorities to gauge and counter the changes to the environment and implement necessary sanitation and other necessary infrastructure.
Hijacked Environment
Major environmental issues include land degradation, resource depletion, decreased public health, loss of resilience in the ecosystem and unsafe residential standards. Health hazards are rampant as clogged settlements encourage flooding, degradation of natural resources like water table and air quality, faulty or non-existent drainage systems, inefficient or non-existent sewage treatment facilities and transport systems.
As a matter of fact, India faces a major threat from water pollution. Untreated sewage water being discharged into our existing water systems has been deemed the single-largest cause of surface and ground water pollution. As per the reports by the World Health Organization, only 209 out of 3,119 cities have sewage treatment facilities, and just 8 of them have a full-fledged wastewater treatment facility.
Cultural Impact
Along with environmental and health issues, inward migration also affects the inherent culture of the city.The host city is exposed to a variety of cultures and eventually adopts a new cultural norm which is the essence of ‘cosmopolitanization’.A city’s cosmopolitan ethos is born out of constituent cultural elements from various other cities and parts of the world, resulting in an urban mindset which is able to embrace positive change in the form of new economic opportunities and better lifestyle standards.
Success Story
Cities like the Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) of Pune have demonstrated that a forward-looking approach works brilliantly. In PCMC, the town planning authorities identified areas of future urbanization, equipped them with proper drainage systems, water supply, waste management and transport infrastructure before letting migrating population to occupy these areas. The process of cosmopolitanization in PCMC has resulted in a rapid shedding of the previous regional/industrial image and the emergence of a truly evolved global city.
Tags : EXPERT ZONE