E-Dialogues | Dialogues 11.0, 12.0, 13.0 & 14.0
Better Metropolis Management road to economic prosperity
E-Dialogue – 11.0 | Urbanisation in Independent India – Learnings and the Way Forward Urbanisation
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he eleventh edition of ‘E-Dialogues’ was based on the topic “Urbanisation in Independent India – Learnings and the Way Forward”. Since independence, India had witnessed a slow rate of urbanisation in the latter half of the 20 th century. This was mainly due to the central government’s focus on the agrarian economy of India. It was only in the early 2000s that Indian cities started getting the much needed attention. In order to discuss how cities in India were developed since independence, Urban Update invited Dr Kulwant Singh, Former Asia Advisor, UN Habitat; Prof Tathagata Chatterji, Professor, Urban Management and Governance, Xavier School of Human Settlement; Shubhagato Dasgupta, Senior Fellow, Centre for Policy and Research and Kumar Dhananjay, Consulting Editor, Urban Update. The session was moderated by Abhishek
40 September 2020 | www.urbanupdate.in
Pandey, Editor, Urban Update. Abhishek began by introducing the topic of the Webinar and saying that in India, there is a need to trace urbanisation trends postindependence India and figure out how we can improve our urban governance and design. He said, “While India has faced a population burst since Independence, its cities have witnessed uncontrolled rural to urban migration. This has resulted in cities becoming overcrowded and villages being mostly left vacant. It is high time now to try and understand how these changes have affected urban governance” Dr Kulwant Singh informed that his focus is on the history of urbanisation. After independence, when more and more people moved to cities, there was a steep increase in urban settlement. “Larger cities are growing at a faster rate”, he said. He also showed the relation between urbanisation and economic growth and said, “More urbanised the state, higher is the per
capita income.” Dr Singh addressed the issue of urban environment as well and said that the ever-changing weather is an important environmental challenge in India which adversely affects urban planning. Moreover, a large population and a large number of cars also cause deadly air pollution levels in Indian cities. The discussion was taken up by Dr Tathgata Chatterji. He talked about the two trends that have led urbanisation in India in the post economic liberalisation period. Firstly, metropolitan cities have guided the growth process with an emphasis on market led growth. He said, “Ten cities of India have contributed about 15 per cent of the GDP growth.” Despite this, the major problem lies in the management of these metropolises. We need to have a dedicated policy for management of metropolises and focus on the global trend of economic growth guided by them. The second trend that Dr Chatterji talked about is that of growth of census towns. “In some states,there are a large of number of these towns. This is reflective of changes in rural India and shows the problem of rural distress and change of Indian economy from agrarian to service-based. Shubhagato Dasgupta continued the discussion by addressing the two phases of India’s urban policy. During the 1980s, the first phase focused mainly on industrialisation and economic growth. “It was only in the second phase that the government focussed on urbanisation and development of small cities across India. With liberalisation on its way, cities did not have sufficient resources to implement developmental policies and this is one of the major reasons for most urban centres in India to still be
