The country’s creaking infrastructure has been unable to support its cities’ rapid growth. Local governments should be granted autonomy to increase productivity
Bimal Patel
Profile: Bimal Patel is Director, HCP Design and Project Management. Patel designed the Sabarmati Riverfront Development project in Ahmedabad.
India is witnessing an epochal transformation. From a country that lived in villages, it is becoming a nation of towns and cities. The last time the country witnessed such a transformation was during the period of the Mahabharata: Agricultural technology spread and village settlements transformed the subcontinent’s ecology, geography and economy. Today, scientific, technological and industrial improvements are propelling change. These changes are simultaneously making many rural livelihoods redundant, and turning cities into more productive and attractive places to work in. On account of this, a vast number of people are migrating from villages to cities.
Today, as a consequence of rapid growth, Indian cities are in a mess. They are overcrowded and their meagre infrastructure is highly stressed. They are polluted, unhygienic and often filthy. Roads are congested and traffic seems unmanageable. Social services and amenities are non-existent in most towns and local governments seem unable to cope. We seem to be descending into a downward spiral of urban ills, stagnating urban productivity and underdevelopment. Will we ever be able to make our cities efficient, livable and sustainable? Will we ever be able to make them abodes of happy and flourishing lives?
When asking such despondent questions, it serves well to remember that when the West first urbanised, its cities also fell apart. Nineteenth century London and Paris were also unmanageable messes—overcrowded, polluted, unhygienic, filthy, congested and hopeless. Engels’s and Dickens’s writings bring the miserable conditions of European slums and cities vividly to life.
Are Indian cities similarly autonomous? Are local governments effectively democratic?
(This story appears in the 23 August, 2013 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)