The urban mess

The urban mess
The Hindu Business Line

LAST YEAR'S PUBLIC spat between Mr Deve Gowda and Mr N. R. Narayana Murthy ended in the latter's dire warning that Bangalore would regret any delay in upgrading its infrastructure. Last week that prognosis came true when Mr Jurgen Schubert, Managing Director of Siemens AG, announced that his company would not consider expanding its operations in Bangalore because of the city's poor civic amenities. With great finality he added the crushing blow to the city that contributes a third of the company's total turnover: "This State is not attractive to investors anymore."

Mr Schubert's observations, overstated as they sound, measure the extent of frustration in a city where roads and power are "in a mess". This could have been passed of as an expatriate's typical prejudice; but not when the city will lose jobs to other cities. Perhaps, it is too early to call it a precursor to capital flight, a la the labour-unrest-affected Calcutta of the 1970s. But nothing should be taken for granted considering the nature of the global economy in which capital, seeking the cheapest and most productive hub for production, has multiple choices to pick from. One of the more tragic ironies of Indian policymaking is that there has been no planning in the one segment of society that needs it most — the urban centre. While planners were busy devising ways to crank up the economy, cities were left to stagnate, weighed down by laws long rendered irrelevant. By virtue of their contribution to GDP, cities should have reflected that growth in the only way they can — a capacity to deliver better civic amenities. But the quality of infrastructure in India's cities has moved in inverse proportion to GDP growth. You do not need to know rocket science to understand urban problems — overcrowding, bad roads, poor communications, and an inability to cope with nature's fury because some of the natural defences (waterways and rivers in Mumbai, for instance) have been compromised. Civic authorities work to their whims, repairing a road here or rectifying a water line line there, unmindful of the slum dweller eating up space out of necessity and the builder for profit. If both get away it is because there is no plan to refer to and set guidelines for development or conservation.

To be sure, the Prime Minister has launched an urban renewal scheme, and master plans have been made for Mumbai and Delhi. But they all lack two key features: The first is vision — to evolve a city within a natural environment; there is no recognition that development does not mean the destruction of nature's gifts. That can come only by involving the citizens in the planning for the future; not simply through suggestions before the master plan is finalised but at every stage of its execution. And, second, benchmarking amenities to global standards and relevance to the people's present and future needs. The urban mess in India is partly the result of wishful thinking; the illusion of Bangalore as Silicon Valley or Mumbai as Shanghai muddies perspective as planners confuse glass-fronted edifices housing global companies and expressways for growth. That illusion has already cost one Indian city dear.