Messing around with waste
Solid waste management accounts for over 50% of overall municipal budgets and manpower, but municipal authorities collect only 50% of the waste and recycle a negligible 5%. Technology and privatisation are the solutions being proposed everywhere. But public-private partnerships are turning out to be more about using public money for private profit. Is integration of informal sector wastepickers into the management of domestic and commercial municipal waste the solution?
Size matters
Size clearly matters in the hierarchy of urban agglomerations. Most programmes including JNNURM are directed at the big cities. Basic civic services including electricity, sanitation and clean drinking water for the poor in small cities and towns are abysmal, and hardly better than rural areas. The widening gap in income levels between rural and urban areas cannot be bridged without developing small cities and towns
Big city, big share
The well-planned development of small cities can help disperse rural migration and prevent overcrowding of the metropolitan centres. JNNURM funds can make much more of a difference in these smaller towns. But the bulk of the allocation under JNNURM goes to the three mega cities of Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata
Urban territories, rural governance
West Bengal has the highest number of census towns among all the Indian states -- with 528 villages reclassified as such in the last decade -- but only 127 urban local bodies. The slow process of municipalisation means that most census towns, especially those with fast-growing industry, mining and commercial enterprises, are urban areas governed by gram panchayats. Such urban territories can become unregulated free-for-alls, with low taxes but haphazard development and poor infrastructure and services
Exclusionary cities: The exodus that wasn’t
Yes, the urban population increased more in absolute terms during 2001-11 than rural population. But, no, this is not because distressed agricultural workers are pouring into cities. It’s because census activism has tripled the number of urban centres in Census 2011. In fact, exclusionary policies are discouraging the inflow of rural poor into the mega cities
Slowdown in urban growth
Population growth in urban India has been decelerating over the last three decades, busting the myth of an urban explosion. Most cities with populations of 100,000-plus have recorded a significant decline in their population growth, more so the million-plus cities, suggesting that they have become less welcoming to migrants. Delhi and Chandigarh recorded less than half the growth rate of the '90s, and Mumbai district has reported a decline in absolute terms during 2001-11
The invisible migrant
The city is harsh terrain for the roughly 100 million circular migrants who move around the country in search of livelihoods. The territoriality of policy renders them invisible, denied access to essential services such as housing, subsidised foodgrain and bank accounts. Urban policy needs to be re-imagined to understand the realities of migrants
The ‘other’ urban India
The most vibrant, people-driven process of urbanisation is occurring outside the large metropolises which dominate popular imagination. It is not directed by the state, as in Chandigarh and Bhubaneswar, nor developed by the private sector, as in Mundhra or Mithapur. It is the result of decisions about livelihood and residence made by thousands of individuals that coalesce to transform a ‘village’ into a census town
Transition towns
The 74th constitutional amendment has on paper devolved power to urban local bodies. But even a cursory look at small towns reveals that elected representatives have little knowledge of their powers or responsibilities, cannot read or frame budgets and fail to generate local resources for planned development. Many of these towns are still transitioning between large village and town, with even basic public services absent, particularly for the poor
The making of a mini-city
Market forces, collusion of interest and malpractice are all involved in the growth and ad hoc development of a village into a small industrial town and then into a satellite town of a global city. Nowhere is this more visible than in Dharuhera, 70 km from Delhi
Mending what works
Waste can be a tool to break poverty when used imaginatively. In Nainital, Haridwar, Nagpur and several other cities, public-private partnerships in solid waste management have displaced the invisible, informal-sector wastepickers and traders instead of nurturing and upgrading them
Urban development in the 12th Plan: Who's in? Who's out
It seems likely that the 12th Plan will also incorporate the same old gendered assumptions that have effectively invisibilised women -- particularly working class women -- from urban policies in India, writes Kalyani Menon-Sen
The ground beneath their feet: Housing rights and resettlement in Delhi
Kalyani Menon-Sen tells the story of resettlement of basti residents in Delhi, a story of grandiose rhetoric in policy documents and diminishing entitlements on the ground
Decadal journeys: Debt and despair spur urban growth
Census 2011, which reports a higher growth of urban population than rural as millions give up farming, does not record footloose migration, which drives desperate people to search for work in multiple directions with no clear destination. This is a giant drama that we have not even begun to measure, says P Sainath
The exodus from rural India
For the first time since 1921, India's urban population has increased more than the rural. In 1921, influenza left its fatal imprint on the enumeration. The 2011 Census speaks of another tragedy: the collapse of millions of livelihoods in agriculture and related occupations. And the ongoing, despair-driven exodus that this has sparked in the countryside, writes P Sainath
Swept off the map
A new book, based on a study of 2,577 households from Yamuna Pushta two years after they had been moved to Bawana in the outskirts of Delhi, documents the devastating impact of urban displacement. The study found that displacement significantly raised both unemployment and dropout rates from schools
A tale of two cities
It's London, not Shanghai, that we in India should be emulating. London is emerging as the world's foremost global city
The high-rise hang-up
By 2020, the Mumbai Metropolitan Region is estimated to have 28.5 million people, more than even Tokyo. By 2050, it may have as many as 40 million. Unfortunately, Mumbai's architects and urban planners are obsessed with building taller and faster, not with the footprint of cities, or open spaces and partnerships between classes and communities
Turning mill land to mall land
The Supreme Court's recent verdict on the sale of mill lands in Mumbai has implications for the future development of all cities in India, and the redevelopment of derelict industrial lands in other cities
McKinsey's Mumbai
What happens when top honchos of companies and international consulting firms decide how cities should be managed? You get thousands of crores in public funds spent to meet the needs of 125,000 of Mumbai's motorised elite
Living and dead monuments
Mumbai's Victoria Terminus has been declared a World Heritage Site, joining the ranks of the Taj Mahal and Ajanta/Ellora. But VT as a monument has over 3 million commuters passing through it every day. That is a great danger, for unless people are aware of the heritage in their midst, it is hard to preserve it
Why Mumbai is choking
Every progressive city has shown that improving public transport is the best way to clean up the air. Mumbai, on the other hand, is geared towards providing 55 flyovers, sea links and coastal highways to the 9% of the population that uses private vehicles. Surely these are examples of topsy-turvy priorities, says Darryl D'Monte
