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By Rahul Srivastava Despite several government policies, contemporary Indian cities remain civic nightmares
While most of the Euro-American (read capitalist) world translated development as massive urbanisation and thereby transformed most of their rural worlds into barren spaces for human habitation, India took on the task of modernising and developing itself obsessed with the idea that the real India always lives in the villages. A sad result of such thinking was that most contemporary cities became civic nightmares and victims of neglect. The-not-so-sad result was that India’s villages continue to be inhabited by millions and still have the potential of being real agricultural producers. However, first Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s deep commitment to modernity meant that he toyed with the idea of building a genuinely modern city that could act as a role model for modern urban dwellers. The city was Chandigarh, but there are grand debates within the architectural world whether even this was a success or a disaster. Some say that India has an ancient history of refined urban planning which could have been popularised and been more effective than Chandigarh in terms of providing a more identifiable set of concepts and practices for its urban citizens. Udaipur in Rajasthan, Fatehpur Sikri, Hampi, Vijayanagar and of course the ancient Harrappan townships come to mind. On the other hand, modernising rural India was also not such a straightforward thing. It meant a transformation of agricultural practices that not only depleted natural resources such as water and quality of soil, but also displaced people in a massive way, often pushing them into cities to continue living in wretched situations. In the First Five Year Plan (1951-56), the government concentrated on institution-building and on construction of homes for government employees and the weaker sections of society. Interestingly, a good part of the Plan outlay was spent on rehabilitation of the refugees from Pakistan and on building the new city of Chandigarh. An Industrial Housing Scheme was also initiated. Chandigarh , with its obvious modernist edge, in some perverted way became the model for the low-cost yellow buildings that were so ubiquitous during the two decades after Indian independence and continue to remain so today. In the Second Five Year Plan (1956-61), the scope of housing programmes for the poor was expanded. The Industrial Housing Scheme was widened to cover all workers. Three new schemes were introduced: 1) Rural Housing, 2) Slum Clearance and 3) Sweepers Housing. Town and country planning legislations were enacted in many states and necessary organisations were set up for the preparation of Master Plans for important towns. Once again, these schemes were not quite seen to be in tandem with other vital inputs that create habitats -- good roads, deep connections with rural hinterlands and facilities such as hospitals and education. In the Third Plan (1961-66) efforts were made to co-ordinate all agencies and help orient the programmes to the needs of the low-income groups. A scheme was introduced in 1959 to give loans to state governments for a period of 10 years for acquisition and development of land in order to make available building sites in sufficient numbers. Master Plans for major cities were prepared and the state capitals of Gandhinagar and Bhubaneshwar were developed. The architectural fetish for starting afresh got a fresh lease of life. The dominant idea became to invest in new townships that often had no connections with earlier built forms and traditional urban habitats. The Fourth Plan (1969-74) stressed the need to prevent the further growth of population in large cities and the need for decongestion or dispersal of population. This was envisaged through the creation of smaller towns. The Housing & Urban Development Corporation (HUDCO) was established to fund housing and urban development programmes. A scheme for environmental improvement was undertaken with a view to providing a minimum level of services, like water supply, sewerage, drainage, street pavements in 11 cities with a population of 800,000 and above. The scheme was later extended to nine more cities. This was in principle a good move, but for reasons to do with the general inability to actually implement grandiose plans, remained excellent ideals. The Fifth Plan (1974-79) reiterated the policies of the preceding Plans to promote smaller towns in new urban centres, in order to ease the increasing pressure of urbanisation. This was to be supplemented by efforts to augment civic services in urban areas with particular emphasis on a comprehensive and regional approach to problems in metropolitan cities. The Urban Land (Ceiling & Regulation) Act was enacted to prevent concentration of land holdings in urban areas and to make urban land available for construction of houses for the middle- and low-income groups. The fact that historically urban centres sprout organically along trade routes, roadways and food markets was often not grafted on to many of the choices made. The tendency to plan from the above was the standard perspective for many years, and some would say continues to exist even today. The Sixth Plan (1980-85) focused on integrated provision of services along with shelter, particularly for the poor. The Integrated Development of Small and Medium Towns (IDSMT) was launched in towns with population below 1 lakh for roads, pavements, minor civic works, bus-stands, markets, shopping complexes etc. Positive inducements were proposed for setting up new industries and commercial and professional establishments in small, medium and intermediate towns. Many of the 4,000-plus townships and urban agglomerations that are part of the 2001 census are a legacy of these moves. The Seventh Plan (1985-90) stressed the need to entrust the major responsibility of housing construction to the private sector. The National Housing Bank was set up to expand the base of housing finance. The NBO was reconstituted and a new organisation called Building Material Technology Promotion Council (BMTPC) was set up to promote the commercial production of innovative building materials. A network of Building Centres was also set up during this Plan period. The Seventh Plan explicitly recognised the problems of the urban poor and for the first time an Urban Poverty Alleviation Scheme known as Urban Basic Services for the Poor (UBSP) was launched. Since then, much of the tendency has been to allow for the industries around building materials, mainly cement and steel, to determine the allocation of resources for building environments. This was also the period when private builders got an enormous boost to enter the mass housing market and make materials even more expensive for the poor. The Eighth Plan (1992-97) for the first time explicitly recognised the role and importance of the urban sector for the national economy. While the growth rate of employment in the urban areas averaged around 3.8% per annum, it dropped to about 1.6% in the rural areas. Therefore, the urban areas have to be enabled to absorb larger increments to the labour force. The Plan identified the key issues in the emerging urban scenario, viz: the widening gap between demand and supply of infrastructural services, which hits the poor, whose access to the basic services like drinking water, sanitation, education and basic healthcare is shrinking; the unabated growth of the urban population, aggravating the accumulated backlog of housing shortages and resulting in the proliferation of slums and squatter settlements and decay of city environments. Once again, we are back to square one: the need to attack poverty in urban areas with the same urgency that motivated anti-poverty rhetoric in the early years of India’s modern growth, the need to provide spaces for the poor to enter into economic transactions without fear of harassment from organised markets and local state machinery, the need to make building materials cheap and subsidise land for the poor, create inexpensive medical and health facilities and give priority to primary health. All familiar inputs, which would have qualitatively changed the way the economy would have been had similar investments been made in the rural sector itself, decades ago. InfoChange News & Features, January 2005 |
