Why does India live in its villages? With agriculture's contribution to the country's GDP having fallen to a paltry 18 per cent and declining, shouldn't it be a matter of surprise and concern that 68 per cent of the population remains dependent on farm income, thus continuing to reside in rural areas? Projections suggest that India's urban population might just about touch the 50 per cent mark by 2050. In the US, merely seven per cent live in the countryside and by 2050, not more than 10 per cent of China's estimated 1.6 billion people will reside in villages.

I have argued in these columns with reference to a discussion at Yale University last year in which I participated, that India's social structure, essentially its kinship and caste framework offers a safety net that encourages less-than-productive family members to develop a comfort zone inhibiting their migration to urban centres. This reality, I believe won't change in a hurry. So, India may end up defying the established, historical pattern, which dictates that economic development must necessarily result in mass migration to cities. But are our cities worth moving into, in the first place?

Each time I visit Bangalore I can understand why more people don't want to migrate to cities. I am not even talking about Mumbai, which has burst its seams already and simply cannot accommodate more. Delhi is still attractive because it's growing at a frenetic pace, but draws mainly people from faraway Bihar and eastern UP, or may be Uttarakhand and Nepal, not so much the rural populace living in its vicinity.

To revert to Bangalore: It is truly an essay in urban collapse, an essay scripted over barely 20 years. When I first visited this secluded, sylvan city in 1988, Bangalore was the nearest one could get to urban paradise. Its fabled temperate climate was invigorating, its lazy boulevards had more trees than traffic; people lived in sprawling bungalows or at least neat apartments that overlooked acres upon acres of greenery; one could spend languid afternoons browsing through books at its fabulous bookstores; in short, it was everything you didn't expect a city to be.

Today, it is hazardous to venture onto its streets: If you don't get knocked over by unruly vehicles, you are certain to choke on the pollution. Getting to the hi-tech city on its outskirts to visit Infosys or Wipro headquarters is a nightmarish prospect. It already takes more than an hour to drive from the airport to the city centre. The Governor was delayed by 20 minutes reaching the venue of the function I had gone to attend because it took his motorcade thrice the budgeted time to cover a distance of just two km!

But the purpose of stating this is not to rubbish Bangalore. It's just that one feels particularly bad about such a beautiful city being raped by haphazard development because, unlike Mumbai, it was not a gone case. Bangalore has been ravished by the sheer callousness of its residents, an indifferent bureaucracy and rapacious politicians.

"Everybody has great plans for this city, which they unveil at seminars. But they all blame everybody except themselves for failing to implement them," commented Justice N Santosh Hegde, retired judge of the Supreme Court and currently Lok Ayukta of Karnataka, seated next to me at an event last Wednesday. Earlier in the day he had participated in a symposium titled 'Unlocking Bangalore' sponsored by The Times of India and was obviously commenting on his experience there. His comments could be replicated for every Indian city. No wonder India's urban centres are on the verge of collapse; mega-cities (Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata) qualify for that title by virtue of their frighteningly large populations and not for the services that ought to be available in a metropolis.

The problem arises from the complete absence of strategic or forward planning in India. Somehow, the idea of thinking ahead is alien to the Hindu mind and, therefore, a civilisational problem. If Delhi is still a livable city, it is largely because the British had planned New Delhi in a carefully calibrated way. Chandigarh remains India's most beautiful city because Le Corbusier had planned it that way 55 years back. Delhi's post-Independence development, on the other hand, has been totally haphazard. Once-prized residential enclaves like Defence Colony and Greater Kailash are among South Delhi's least-favoured colonies today for one simple reason -- the roads are so narrow that not even two cars can pass each other without difficulty. Now that Delhi has witnessed a vehicular explosion, there is no place to park. Much of the Capital's traffic commotion is a result of chaotic and sporadic planning, such as the mess created by the hare-brained BRT corridor. It has taken more than 15 years to construct some 20 flyovers on Delhi's congested Ring Road and more overpasses are still barely in the drawing board stage.

Why couldn't the whole thing have been planned in one go so that after two or three years of suffering, road users would have had a hassle-free journey? But no, numerous busybodies in a plethora of parallel committees take years to approve projects, the authorities put on their thinking caps only when the problem gets out of hand, and contractors add their own mite to the inevitable delays.

It's the same story in Mumbai where the Bandra-Worli sealink has been five years in making and is nowhere near completion.

Even an infant can tell you, this won't solve the problem of getting to the commercial hub of Nariman Point from the airport; only result in heightened congestion on Peddar Road.

We are told that in the second phase, the Worli-Chowpatty sealink will solve this and motorists would be able to zip across from Bandra to Nariman Point in 30 minutes. But why a second phase? Why couldn't the obvious solution have been undertaken in one go?

Besides, why does it take eons to build flyovers? The 6.5 km flyover for through traffic on the Delhi-Chandigarh Highway in Panipat has been six years in the making, while the six-laning of the same highway from Delhi to the Haryana border has taken 10 years and is far from built.

With peripheral towns having no rapid access to the metros, is it any wonder that the population refuses to disperse from the few urban hubs we have?

And since new cities are not coming up around our metros quickly enough, new opportunities don't open up in urban areas. So the rural population has little reason to migrate to the cities unless they are faced with destitution at home.

And, meanwhile, our cities are collapsing because urban amenities -- such as power, water, health and education facilities -- simply cannot be provided even to their existing residents. It is, indeed, a bleak prognosis for urban India, but I am afraid we have only ourselves to blame for this denouement.

Courtesy: www.dailypioneer.com, March 30, 2008