People need towns to move to. We need to plan them...
Written by The Indian Express
2 min read
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India will urbanise,whether we will it or not,whether we plan for it or not. Updating urban infrastructure to meet the stream of migrants is at least on the policy horizon now,even if not implemented everywhere. Perhaps in due course,political pressure for similar efforts will begin to work in smaller cities as well. But that wont be enough: being distractedly unconscious of the great alterations of our rural-urban frontiers that have begun happening,and that will intensify in the decades to come,can harm us greatly. Not that we can really remain unconscious.
And yet we have prepared so little,planned not at all. New Raipur,in Chhattisgarh,is one of the few places where a comprehensive town-planning and building project is in operation. And even the seed of what is unquestionably a worthy project comes from a necessity that might have struck even the most hidebound in 1950s India: a new state will need a new capital. We need to think outside those limits. Towns must come up even when governments see no reason of prestige or politics. They must come up because we have too few.
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From New Raipur there are both lessons and cautions to be drawn. Lessons are many: the presence of a nodal authority,coordinating projects that include the private sector; housing those who live in the vicinity as integral parts of the new town; broad agreement between political parties; already-existing links to highways,a fast-tracked connection to the rail network. And,of course,land acquisition was largely carried out at prices acceptable to farmers. But one caution remains: new urban areas cannot always be greenfield projects of this sort. We need to sense where villages are coalescing into towns,and anticipate their need for civic structures and support. That sense cannot always depend on the leaden-footed state,but it needs government resources. Policy needs to find a way to induce towns into being,to lay down grids and create frameworks where people,with their relocation decisions,are already telling us its needed.
