By Srinath Sridharan
It is to be cheered that India has invested efforts and resources in building larger highways, expressways, railways etc. in the past few years. With our top 10 cities bearing the burden of population volume & density, as well as the decaying civic and social infrastructure that was built for a much smaller proportion of current population, what next?
Traffic jams don’t exist. Roads are in great shape. No monsoon flooding. No encroachments. No pollution. Our cities are filled with greenery and have pedestrian zones. Isn’t this is how we act, as if nothing is wrong with our cities? Almost each of us seem to have a mindset that with so many others around, someone else would take the effort and that there is no need for us to be jumping in.
Civic projects seem to have a mind, timing, and destiny of their own. While it is natural to dig up the cities for further infra building, they are seemingly with nonchalance of public inconvenience. Most of my generation won’t even know of ‘footpath’, for the encroachments have killed it. We build newer metro projects and forget about last-mile connectivity. Is the civic planning premised on the assumption that citizens should be grateful for the physical infrastructure provided to them, and would willingly go through continuous pain? Will we change our public governance attitude, if such wasted human hours of spending in clogged public infrastructure are added to our GDP? What about the public governance accountability from the city authorities?
We have a globally-awed digital infrastructure. This has been converted into reality by the speed and urgency from our policy and polity leaders. Yet when it comes to local urban infrastructure, we don’t seem to apply the same digital potential in fixing the lacunae. There are commercially available technologies that can map urban decay and help policymakers solve the issues.
Urban decay and deterioration
“Do you think there is less value attached to life in India because the population is so huge?”
Urbanisation has been a driver of economic and social progress, but has its nemesis in other socio-economic problems. It took nearly 100 years for a third of its population to be in urban areas, and would take only 35 years for this to grow to half. Between 2001 and 2011 alone, more than nine million were added to urban India every year. With similar urbanisation expected to continue, estimates are that 590 million will live in Indian cities by 2030.
While many programmes have been launched to improve urban areas, the rapid pace of urbanisation calls for urgent repairs and capacity enhancement for existing cities and towns. Building newer cities alone won’t solve the congestion problem of existing cities, for they will need to offer viable economic means and positive social engagement to enable population transition. Urban policymakers must plan for the impacts of urbanisation on inequality, access to services, poverty, employment, trade attractiveness, transportation and traffic, public health, climate change, and municipal finance. Only by proactively addressing these interconnected issues can they ensure a good quality of life for millions of urban residents.
We live in a dual state—one of idealism and another of a depleting urban reality that far exceeds the imagination. There is an India which can afford to be inside its air-conditioned homes and offices and being driven around anyplace. Some of those Indians have access to accommodation in cleaner locales globally, even if it’s for a shorter holiday. The other India struggles for a daily living, and anything that’s offered to them is taken as a blessing. Here is where the unsaid hierarchy of officialdom acting as their lords, rather than kartas of public finance and public services. Delivering solutions for poor air and water quality, insufficient water availability, waste-disposal problems, and energy access and consumption amongst other civic infrastructure issues are part of what the policymakers signed up for.
Towards Amrit Kaal
There is an India that is an investment market for global investors. There is also an India that is a large consumption market for global brands to sell their wares. These have also been contributing factors that have positively tilted global narrative around India. There isn’t a free lunch! With a rise in aggregate Indian economy, we have seen a plethora of products and services to make Indian lives better, at least seemingly. Many of those fancy advertisements for these showcase a utopian India that’s divorced from real-conditions.
The sad commentary only allows for a harsher quandary—that complete disregard for public requirement apart from a tick-mark approach and lack of attention to town-planning peg the value of Indian life to as low as possible. The value of life is an economic value used to quantify the benefit of avoiding a fatality. It is also referred to as the cost of life, value of preventing a fatality (VPF), implied cost of averting a fatality (ICAF), and value of a statistical life (VSL). But it is difficult to quantify the value to include quality of life. This is a metric that we could learn to formulate as a policy-outcome measurement.
It’s a proud moment for every Indian that our nation is playing a leadership role globally. Hosting G20 events allows us to showcase our hospitable culture and traditions. Can’t our city leaders learn something from their need to quickly patch up the potholes and cover the shabby walls to make the city visibly in good condition for these global visitors? Hopefully they will show alacrity and urgency in making these into permanent solutions for ourselves. For our Amrit Kaal and journey towards being a developed nation, we need to show much better speed, precision, and capability in rebuilding our broken urban infra.
Improved infrastructure with better quality can aid in citizen contentment as well as social development. It is not that our decision makers are not aware of these issues. It is simply that there is no urgency in making urban issues as a critical policy-project. There is scant respect towards the misery of citizens for their daily lives in cities. With such apathy, one wonders if lack of civic infrastructure is the actual value of an Indian life.
The author is policy researcher and corporate advisor. Views are personal. | Twitter: @ssmumbai