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China’s centralised urban strategy has propelled its cities ahead, while India’s fragmented governance continues to slow its urban transformation.
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This is the 183rd in the ‘China Chronicles’ series.
Soon after independence (1950), India’s urbanisation (17 percent) was ahead of China's (13 percent). Whereas India adopted a largely hands-off approach concerning its cities for several decades after 1950, China was more aggressively anti-urban till about 1980, preventing rural-urban migration through its hukou system that categorised the Chinese population into urban or rural residents and placed locational and service-access restrictions on them.
India’s rural mindset lingered on well into the early years of the 21st century. In 2005, India acknowledged urbanisation as a critical pillar of national economic development. Since then, the Government of India’s (GoI) thrust towards urban engagement has been two-dimensional. Firstly, GoI has recommended reform-driven statutes for adoption by the states. Sadly, these have generally been ignored. Secondly, it has offered large central grants for states and cities to participate and partner in GoI-sponsored infrastructure initiatives.
While India was still hesitant about urbanisation, the Chinese leadership launched the country on the road to urbanisation at full throttle.
China’s more pronounced anti-urban policy, as cited above, was seriously questioned and reviewed by the Chinese leadership. It realised that its ambition to become a great economic power was restrained by its unfortunate aversion to urbanisation. If it wanted to accelerate its economic rise, it must dismantle the hukou system and allow larger rural populations into cities to participate in manufacturing and industries. The revised urban policy postulated the construction of more cities, a larger urban working population, and enhanced urban participation in building up the national economy. This fundamental alteration in the Chinese Weltanschauung marked a significant departure from the past with stunning results.
Post 1980, the urban trajectories of the two countries diverged sharply. While India was still hesitant about urbanisation, the Chinese leadership launched the country on the road to urbanisation at full throttle. World Bank estimates put India’s urban population in 2024 at 534.91 million or 37 percent, and China’s at 923.49 million (2024) or 66 percent. Thus, while India urbanised at an average growth rate of 2.70 percent per decade, China logged an average growth rate of 7.29 percent—nearly the fastest urbanisation the world has seen. As a result, China today has 160 cities with over a million people and 360 cities with populations between 100,000 and 1 million. In contrast, the number of Indian million-plus cities is estimated to be 40.
A major hurdle in the path of urbanisation in India has been the subject allocation in the Indian Constitution, according to which urban development falls in the domain of the states. Such a distribution appears, in hindsight, problematic. It limits the role of the GoI in cities. Since cities have the capacity to grow into massive units and become vitally significant to the national economy, it would have made greater sense if the Indian Constitution had bisected cities based on their demographic size and allowed all megacities beyond five million to fall in the domain of the GoI. The national significance of large cities to the national economy, however, does not appear to have been envisaged by the constitution framers.
Since cities have the capacity to grow into massive units and become vitally significant to the national economy, it would have made greater sense if the Indian Constitution had bisected cities based on their demographic size and allowed all megacities beyond five million to fall in the domain of the GoI.
In governance, China has followed a highly centralised, top-down planning model. There are strong national mandates in terms of direction and physical targets that cities are tasked to achieve. The local governments are given freedom of implementation, but the local officials' performance is centrally monitored, accompanied by a system of rewards and punishments. Several parastatals (entities created by the state to take over and run a municipal function), generally referred to in China as state-owned enterprises (SOEs), play a vital role in urban governance, infrastructure, and economic development. SOEs are charged with the functions of water supply, power, public transport, waste management, and infrastructure construction. However, in many instances, the city governments oversee the functioning of the parastatals in their territory.
On the other hand, Urban governance in India has a democratic, bottom-up structure with the aim of making cities self-empowered institutions. However, this is actually merely in form. In substance, cities are tightly controlled by the states. The principal functionary of the city, the municipal commissioner, is appointed by the state, and the state approves the city's development plan. Many parastatals, such as in China, operate in cities, but their functioning, unlike China's, is not integrated with the municipal bodies and mostly work in isolation.
In urban planning, China has strategised to posit it as a calculated tool for national development. The government uses Five-Year Plans to guide city growth, infrastructure, and industrialisation. India’s urban planning is again state-controlled. This prevents a cohesive national vision. The larger cities in many states do initiate the planning process. However, all final approvals lie with the state governments. This fractured mandate has always injected difficult problems into city planning.
Urban governance in India has a democratic, bottom-up structure with the aim of making cities self-empowered institutions.
China’s investment in urban infrastructure has been unprecedented. In the area of water services, most Chinese cities enjoy a 24/7 water supply of good quality. Its major cities have centralised sewerage systems with extensive underground networks and treatment plants. Its urban public transport is extensive. Today, China has 54 cities with metro systems extending over 11,000 km. It has bus services in over 600 cities with a total fleet size of about 680,000 buses. In terms of public open space, China’s per capita provision is substantially higher than in Indian cities.
Comparatively, a 24/7 water supply in Indian cities is a rarity. Only its largest cities have centralised sewerage systems, and most are not equipped to treat all their sewage. Furthermore, India’s urban public transport is also sketchy. Its urban metro systems are modest—23 cities with a total metro network of 1,000 km. Only 127 cities provide limited bus service with a total fleet size of about 46,000 city buses.
Despite GoI’s substantial attention to urban infrastructure in the past two decades, the investment road is hugely steep (US$2.4 trillion). Additionally, roadblocks in terms of fractured urban governance and city planning stand in the way. The sector awaits radical reforms so that Indian cities can offer a better quality of life than what is currently being provided.
Ramanath Jha is a Distinguished Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation.
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Dr. Ramanath Jha is Distinguished Fellow at Observer Research Foundation, Mumbai. He works on urbanisation — urban sustainability, urban governance and urban planning. Dr. Jha belongs ...
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