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CITIES shape civilisations and are in turn shaped by them. They are so inextricably enmeshed that it is impossible to view them separately. Both spring up from the same inner urges and the same value system. It has been correctly remarked; "show me your cities and I will tell you about the cultural aim of your people." Invariably, cultural and civilisational contours get imprinted on the faces of cities. History tells us that cities have always acted not only as powerful engines of economic growth but also as cradles of many civilisations. Oswald Spengler, the great historian and author of the famous book,The Decline of the West, has aptly remarked: "World history is the history of civic man. Peoples, states, politics, all arts and all sciences rest upon one prime phenomenon of human being, the town." The city has many facets. As an economic entity, it is a seat of business and industry; as a social organisation, it is a creator of community and collective action; as a political unit, it is a repository of old traditions, a fountain-head of new ideas, an instrument of intellectual advancement, and a moulder of attitudes and thoughts. It is a spiritual workshop of the nation, a most imposing creation of its social, economic and cultural aspiration. The significance of the subject can be best brought home by the observations made by United Nations Centre for Human Settlement: "It is in the cities, towns and hamlets of the new urban world that majority of us will live and work in the new century where most of the pollution will be generated and natural resources consumed, where political and social conditions are likely to boil over into conflict, and where, ultimately, the roots of global security — true human security — will lie." The twentieth century has been called the age of urbanisation. At its commencement, the world was predominantly rural; only 8 per cent of the population lived in urban settlements. By 1950, the percentage had risen to 29 and by 1990 to 45. It is estimated to be around 50 at present. It could be stated with a fair degreee of certainty that the world of 21st century would be an urban world. During 1950 and 1990, the cities grew more than twice as fast as villages. The current decade, 1990-2000, has seen an increase of about 83 per cent in the world urban population, and the cities have added, on an average, about 81 million people annually. In 1950 the developing countries had about 39 per cent of the world urban population. By 1990, this percentage had gone up to 63; today, it is estimated to be 70. India is no exception to the general trend. During the last 50 years, it has, on an average, added 5 to 6 million people to its towns and cities. There are already four megacities (5 million plus), 19 metro-cities (1 million plus) and 300 large towns, besides about 3800 small and medium-size urban settlements. By 2001, four of our metro-cities — Mumbai, Delhi, Calcutta and Chennai — would be among the 30 largest cities in the world. The ESCAP estimates that between 1990 and 2020, India will add 418 million people to its urban population. If present densities are maintained, urban areas will be two - and - a -half times more extensive than they are now. I have little doubt that, with the emerging reality of globalisation, growing acceptance, willingly or under pressure, of common economic ideology and rapid rise of new technologies and their convergence, the new world would be a confederation of cities, rather than of countries, which would be linked, like the nervous system of a human organism, through internets and would constitute a vast single web interwoven with numerous but invisible threads. The distance would die. And space would be a common vehicle for human contact and communication. What place would the Indian city have in the new confederation of world of cities? What impact would this confederation, this emerging new reality, have on the Indian civilisation? Urban politics, urban poverty, urban pollution, urban productivity, urban planning and pattern and urban shortages, both physical and financial, are the crucial issues around which the machinery of urban governance in India revolves. The formidable nature of these issues have thrown this machinery in deep crisis. But this is not merely of governance; it extends to the governed as well. It is a crisis of character, commitment, conscience and creative and constructive sense of the community as a whole. At present, there is no sanitation worth the name for 52 per cent of the urban population. The sewerage system covers only 35 per cent of the population of Class IV cities and 75 per cent of the population of Class I cities. About 34 per cent of urban population does not have any arrangement even for drainage of rain water around its habitats. 60 per cent of the municipal bodies in India collect less than 40 per cent of the urban waste which is allowed to decompose and putrefy on the roadside and around houses and factories. Quite a substantial portion of it goes into the drains, choking them and creating slush and stink all around, besides providing breeding ground for pests, flies and mosquitoes and cockroaches. In the arena of urban infrastructure alone, at least Rs 20,000 crore per annum would be required over the next 10 years, over and above the plan resources, to make good the present deficiencies. According to official estimates, which are highly conservative, the present shortage of houses is about 25 million units — 7 million in urban areas and 18 million in rural areas. Non-official report puts the shortage much higher. Today, we have the dubious distinction of having the highest congestion rate in the world — about 19 per cent of the Indian families live in less than 10 square metres of space. About 44 per cent of families in the urban areas live in one room only. On an average, the slums and squatters’ population has been increasing at more than double the general growth rate of population of the cities. At present, at least 35 per cent of our city’s population lives in the slum-settlements. The economics and health costs of congestion and haphazard movement of traffic are very heavy, besides exposing commuters and pedestrians to a high risk of accidents. A United Nations Study shows that there are more fatalities each year from road accidents in India than in the United States, though the former has about a twentieth of the road vehicles as compared to the latter. Urban environment, too, has suffered a deep degradation. Delhi has attained the dubious distinction of being the fourth worst polluted city in the world. Even in not so large cities as Amritsar, Ludhiana and Mandi Gobindgarh of a predominantly agricultural State, Punjab, suspended particulate matter in the air now exceeds the safe level. The dust-load in the air of our cities is the highest in the world. A World Bank Study has revealed that the polluted air in the Indian cities is causing premature death of about 40,000 persons every year. The extent of water pollution can be gauged from the state of our rivers which, for most part of the years, are hardly distinguishable from vast urban gutters. Noise is another factor that lowers the quality of life in our cities. According to the survey conducted by the National Physical Laboratory, Delhi, Mumbai and Calcutta are the noisiest cities in the world. Clearly, if the march of unhealthy new realities has to be halted and these realities have to be replaced by another set of new realities — positive, productive and elevating, there has to be fundamental transformation of the institutional frame-work of urban India as well as that of the frame-work of the Indian mind and soul. In the context of the peculiar conditions prevailing in our country, wherein massive migration to major urban centres has not been accompanied by de-population of villages, wherein small and medium-sized towns are languishing and wherein problems of ‘teeming countryside’ and ‘teeming metropolises’ have to be tackled simultaneously, it may be necessary to formulate an overall policy for all human settlements, instead of looking at the rural and urban areas in segments. If economic advancement and higher quality of life have to be attained together, a clear strategy of spatial planning needs to be worked out and balanced distribution of population over different settlements ensured. We must keep in mind that by 2020, our urban areas, if the present trends and attitudes persist, would be two and - a - half times more extensive than they are now. So far, not much thought has been given to the human settlement technology — a technology specially designed to solve the problems connected with our human settlements, such as problems of improving and managing the civic services, of constructing inexpensive houses and of conserving energy and recycling waste. ‘Trench technology’, rain-water harvesting technology the technology of converting energy from human waste are the three examples whose application could substantially improve the quality of life in our cities. There is no reason why India should not be able to evolve its own technological devices to solve the problem of its cities and give them a new shape and form. India, with its vast technical manpower and scientific skill, is capable of technological innovations. Only a sense of direction and purpose is required
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Ominous signs
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