Mega hoax

India is at that very seminal crossroads between becoming urban and remaining rural. Our economy is growing and changing, but when the chips are down it is agricultural growth which gets us out of the woods. However, the number of urban poor is growing. The darker side shows that we are suffering the ills of every kind of economy — industrial, services, agricultural, global and protected.

Yet, in all that, it is certain that the way forward is through urbanisation. This is a natural progression in human history and old wives’ tales about bucolic paradises are just that — stories. Dr Ambedkar, whose 52 death anniversary was observed on December 6, believed that a village was “but a sink of localism, a den of ignorance, narrow-mindedness and communalism”.

While the great man was undoubtedly correct, sadly the same can be said to be true today of Indian cities as well. Not only are we seeing resistance to social progress and change, we are also seeing narrow identity politics raising its head everywhere, even in our most progressive cities.

However, the biggest hoax which is being played on India today is in the unbridled, unstructured and unplanned growth of its cities. Last week, Mumbai was rated as the best mega city in the country. The award was given under the aegis of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission, which hands out money to cities to improve their infrastructure. Mumbai presumably wins because it has taken the most money from the government. But the infrastructure growth in Mumbai is currently chaotic, uncoordinated and extremely slow. Quality of life is abysmally low and we cannot compete on any international parameters. Mega city this may be in size, but not in the way it looks currently or how it forces people to live.

Most Indian cities mirror this chaos, with some exceptions like parts of Hyderabad and the National Capital Region. Interestingly four locations in Maharashtra — Greater Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, Pimpri-Chinchwad and Nagpur — won awards. The rest were shared by Ahmedabad, Visakhapatnam, Surat, Chandigarh and New Delhi.

Clearly, we need to rethink our urbanisation strategies and understand that what we require is coordinated and planned growth. We have to rescue ourselves from the nexus between politicians and developers and the impossible restrictions of bureaucratic bullheadedness. Otherwise, we might hand ourselves any number of awards, but they will all be empty and bogus.