India’s urban crisis, strangely enough, is not about a shortage of resources. 

A cursory look at various headlines on Indian cities this monsoon season paints a catastrophic picture, of which a singularly tragic one this year is about a Mumbai schoolboy being crushed to death as a tree fell on his school bus. That is closely followed by a headline that would make a good plot for a black comedy. “10 Trapped As Collapsing Garbage Mound Takes Building Down With It Near Pune.”  Elsewhere, piling garbage and collapsing houses make for different aspects of India’s urban crisis. In Pune, the twain have met in surreal circumstances.

Flawed Public Policy Framework

As it turns out, our public policy framework is a chaotic one in which our purse strings and heartstrings are horribly mismatched.

In Delhi, Home Minister Amit Shah flagged off 300 new electric buses to aid air pollution-free public transport while state chief minister Rekha Gupta launched a portal to plant 70 lakh saplings to green the city. Such initiatives do sound good, but we have reached an odd situation in India where we need better, not bigger, cities. Ground reality shows that existing systems are collapsing and need urgent attention, not on an ill-conceived flood of resources.

Apart from flooding and waterlogged streets, monsoon rains have caused more than 1,700 tree collapses this season in Mumbai alone. In Delhi, upscale areas like East of Kailash and other neighbourhoods where the well-heeled live saw trees uprooted on concrete footpaths and falling on busy roads.

Environmentalists point to climate change (a usual suspect whose path is not easy to trace) and a paucity of urban planning (which is something that is in our control).

Officially, Delhi has decent tree cover, but trees are falling in densely populated areas because the concrete jungle is overpowering the trees where real jungles used to be. Structural weaknesses are a natural result. Planting thousands of trees sounds good, but where the trees are, how they are nurtured and how good their future maintenance is not something that grabs attention at inaugural ceremonies.

Schemes Revamped Yet Gaps Remain

There is an ironic excess at play. Since Prime Minister Narendra Modi took charge in 2014, some old schemes have been revamped, rebranded and expanded, and new ones launched. Everything on the face of it appears solid – and that includes resource allocation. But, like the monsoon waters sloshing about cities, the money spent seems to be flooding the system in a manner that does not result in a positive impact that common citizens can easily experience.

What we need is an O&M orientation where we study not outlays but outcomes.

The government’s Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) focuses on sewerage, water supply and green space development in 500 cities. It has seen projects worth Rs 279,000 crore sanctioned since inception, with Rs 8,000 crore marked for the current fiscal year. But take a hard look, and chances are that these are likely to be or mostly on projects done without an overall urban planning framework.

The Smart Cities Mission focuses on intelligent infrastructure, digital governance and efficient public transport. The Swacch Bharat Mission deals with large-scale sanitation and waste management. Such schemes no doubt have good intentions and reasonable resources, but they are no substitute for perspective planning and monitoring. Throwing good money after not-so-good plans is something the government needs to look at.

Some insight may come from the simple fact that money attracts people. Our cities need decongestion because pride projects attract migrant workers and greedy realtors whose private ambition does not match public planning. Or you could say public planning is not leading but instead following private lobbies and their short-term considerations.

City Planning

Planned cities like Chandigarh and the Lutyens Zone of New Delhi point to what cities could be. Noida and Navi Mumbai, which have somewhat similar histories, are better off than the vain skyscraper territories of Gurugram for the same reason.

Let’s take a hard look at trees. India does not have a nationwide tree census or audit. It only has a Forest Survey of India that measures forest cover.  Trees need to be part of a city’s landscape and proximate to its citizens. Administration details matter. Last month the Delhi high court stayed the operation of a Delhi government notification issued last year that had exempted landowners from informing a tree officer before felling trees on the ground that they were deemed dangerous to life, property or traffic. Look hard, and you will find loopholes that enable environmental destruction by private parties. Proper planning must necessarily include effective regulation. Delhi has just begun conducting a tree census in what looks like an afterthought where forethought should have been.

Influx Of Migrants Into Metros

Beyond all this, we need to stop the influx of migrants into the metropolises,  and preferably engineer a reverse migration. This needs urban planning for multiple cities so that the quality of life of citizens does not get worse when incomes and jobs boom – as seems to be the case.

Cities typically have dense populations with advanced municipal infrastructure, but they become a burden when the very infrastructure attracts people to take things to unmanageable levels. A town is a smaller city that has self-governing institutions.  What we really need is a “township” approach that prioritises dozens of smaller cities with master plans –not big metropolises whose master plans attract more resources, more people and nightmarish infrastructure chokes.

Cities like Andhra Pradesh’s emerging capital, Amaravati, and Chattisgarh’s Naya Raipur seem to be showing the way. But there is a long way to go in matching demographics with infrastructure and regulation.

(The writer is a senior journalist covering a diverse range of subjects, including economy, technology, and politics. Views expressed are personal.)