Everyone living in or visiting India is aware of the huge income disparities which are more visible in the cities than in the villages. More than before, there is also a vulgar display of wealth by the Rich, and their houses and lifestyles are taken as a yardstick of their wealth. By contrast, in the sweltering heat, monsoon rains or intense cold, 93 million people are living in slums today, often without any regular power or water connections or a proper roof above their heads. Around 25 per cent of the population in any big city lives in slums, and in Greater Mumbai, more than half (54 per cent ) are slum-dwellers.
India is going to have more slums in the future if nothing is done about affordable housing for the poor right now. Around 590 million people or half of the population will be living in cities by 2030. There has to be a big investment in low cost housing for the urban poor from now itself in order to improve their living conditions in the future.
There have been two recent reports on the future of urban infrastructure in India - one by the McKinsey Global Institute (India's Urban Awakening: Building Inclusive Cities, Sustaining Economic Growth) and the other by an expert committee on urban infrastructure headed by Isher Judge Ahluwalia. Both have asked for the government to step up the per capita expenditure on urban infrastructure of the government.
According to the McKinsey report, currently the government is spending $7 per capita per year on urban infrastructure; it should be spending $134 per capita in the future and a total $1.2 trillion is required over the next 20 years. The expert committee has recommended an investment of Rs 39.2 lakh crore over 20 years. It seems a monumental task and whether the huge amounts will be properly spent, given the current level of corruption, is something worth pondering about. Yet the task is urgent.
Looking at the existing condition, there is little evidence of any planned thinking about the growth of urban slums except the JNNURM ( the National Urban Renewal Mission) appointed in December 2005. But apathy for the urban poor was amply displayed during the recent Commonwealth Games, when slums were arbitrarily and summarily moved from near the banks of the Yamuna to far off places in a beautification drive of the city. Transportation costs are escalating every year and the urban poor who now have to live on the city fringes will be poorer in terms of real spending power, especially with the high food inflation during the last two years.
Slums are growing because rural people are migrating to the cities in droves from everyday. In Delhi alone, thousands arrive daily looking for jobs. Though India is growing at 8.5 per cent, there is pervasive rural poverty in some states and few jobs are there except those under the MGNREGA which has, in fact, stemmed the migration flow slightly. Slum-dwellers neither have basic amenities like toilets in their houses nor regular access to clean drinking water. Around 128 million people do not have access to clean water all over India. As for health care, most of the urban poor have to go to private clinics as government dispensaries are hardly adequate, if at all available. Public hospitals can be a nightmare in case of emergency. One big illness can throw the slum-dwellers into extreme poverty and they can get indebted for life.
Many of the slum children do not go to school as there are few teachers and the classes are big (the average is 40, the highest in the world) and if the child is absent for a while, it is very difficult for him or her to rejoin because catching up is impossible. They naturally drop out because parents cannot help them with studies and they end up as helpers at home or as child labour. India has the highest number of child labour in the world and it is not surprising that 8 to 9 million children are out of school. You can see many on the roads of Delhi, begging, performing painful acrobatics or selling cheap tidbits.
There is going to be a huge problem of solid waste disposal and sewage also with an increase in urbanization, and the McKinsey report paints a grim picture of cities being dry, stinking hell-holes. Many urban rich today do not want to see the slums and are opting for gated communities with their own parks, schools, hospitals, malls, security, water and power supply. If the rich think they can wish away the poor in this manner, they won't be successful because the poor are not only aware of their lifestyles through the spread of visual media and mobile phones, but are also very envious and hateful (as Aravind Adiga's novel, "White Tiger", amply shows) of the rich which manifests itself in increasing crime, sporadic and organised violence against civil society.
The government, as a recent news report says, is going ahead with cheap housing in a big way, keeping in mind the huge shortfall in supply, and is also going to give preference to women in allotments. This is a laudatory move otherwise the male head of the household can sell, rent or mortgage it for cash for his own consumption purposes. Unless the millions living in the slums are given proper housing and amenities, the glaring rich-poor divide will increase. It is not going to be good for the country's image even as a tourist spot or as a foreign investment destination.
Another trend that is surfacing in India (though there are 69 dollar billionaires and 127000 dollar millionaires) is the lack of generosity and philanthropy of the rich. According to the Lagatum Institute's report, a small percentage of Indians (19 per cent) donate for charity.
The future of Indian cities will be good if planning starts now in all earnest. Every big city in the world has gone through the phases that Indian cities are currently experiencing but each managed to come out of that stage and eschewed stark human deprivation, though many still have ghettos. They have done so with good city governance and municipal bodies which are accountable to the public. They have been able to garner enough tax revenue for improving low cost housing and increasing the quantity and quality of social services for the poor. City management can be better if bureaucratic red tape is reduced and there is greater autonomy given to mayors, municipal councilors and other administrators. Only with better governed cities can there be less sharp inequalities.
(Dr. Jayshree Sengupta is a Senior Fellow at Observer Research Foundation)
Courtesy: The Tribune
The views expressed above belong to the author(s). ORF research and analyses now available on Telegram! Click here to access our curated content — blogs, longforms and interviews.
PREV
