The Dark Side of India’s Urban Development

India’s urban population has grown from 62 million in 1951 to 377 million in 2011. Though the share of the country’s urban population to its total population is still at 31% (Census 2011), urban India has grown five times since 1961 in terms of population. For the first time in history, Census 2011 highlighted that the net decadal addition to the population during 2001-11 was more in urban than in the rural areas, thus marking the beginning of a demographic shift. This trend will be an ongoing process with 600 million people expected to reside in urban areas by 2030 as compared to 377 million in 2011. However, despite such a high rate of urbanisation, certain inhabitants of the cities like the informal workers and slum-dwellers are unwanted and considered to be ‘encroachers’ and their rights are, more often than not, sacrificed in the name of urban development.

The ‘Unwanted’ Informal Settlements

While the number of people residing in urban India is on the rise, equally alarming is the rise in the number of the urban poor. Standing at no less than 76 million, the burgeoning size of the urban poor cannot be ignored. According to UN Habitat, India is home to 63% of all slum dwellers in South Asia which amounts to 170 million people and 17% of the world’s slum dwellers. As per Census 2011, there are 13.7 million slum households in India that live amidst inadequate basic amenities, poor health outcomes, insecurity as well as unstable incomes.

Over decades, successive governments have, time and again, promised the urban poor the provision of affordable housing. However, these housing schemes for the urban poor such as Rajiv AwasYojana (RAY), which aimed to make India “slum-free” by 2022 and provide basic services and shelter to every citizen, have not been successful in delivering on their promise. The newly launched Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) by the present NDA government which envisages “Housing for All by 2022” may soon follow a similar path as its predecessor.

A preliminary look at the PMAY guidelines shows that its definition of those who constitute the “All” in its vision of “Housing for All” is skewed.PMAY ignores housing for the houseless such as migrant informal workers. Rather the guidelines state that migrants should be excluded from such housing schemes since it induces them to migrate from rural areas. It should be noted that the rural poor are forced to migrate to cities in search of better livelihood opportunities due to lack of investments in rural areas and failing agriculture, not to acquire houses in urban areas. Moreover, those who have pucca houses in any part of India are not eligible for this scheme. This means that slum-dwellers (largely migrant informal workers) who have pucca houses in their place of origin will not have any housing rights in the cities they migrate for work. Furthermore, affordable rental housing which was initially to be part of PMAY is missing from the NDA government’s flagship scheme. These large numbers of slum-dwellers which constitute 93 million of India’s population (Census 2011) also have to live with the fear of being forcefully evicted from the informal settlements they call their home in the urban areas. These informal settlements are the homes and work places of a large number of the city’s informal workforce who have largely migrated from rural areas in order to earn a livelihood. Due to construction of large-scale amenities and facilities like metro rail and stadiums which requires extensive stretches of land in prime locations, there is a large scale displacement and eviction of local, generally low-income communities, especially those living in informal settlements. These slum-dwellers are then relocated to the periphery of the cities, far away from their work sites and thus, have to suffer from loss of not only their homes but also their livelihood.

The Sketchy Path towards Urban Development

Many scholars have noticed a growing trend in most of the Asian countries, where they want to make their cities ‘world class’or ‘global cities’ (Sassen 1991; Ong and Roy 2011). According to Ong and Roy (2011), many cities of the developing world aspire to become ‘world class’ in order to showcase their growing importance at the global platform and this is mainly done through excessive building of mega infrastructure projects such as smart cities,metro rail projects, industrial corridors and so on.

It has been an increasing trend in the developing countries world over wherein large cities are placed at the centre of certain economic growth strategies through building of large-scale economic and infrastructure projects which enhance their potential as “engines of growth” (Kennedy et al. 2011). However, this type of large scale development results in certain problems such as displacement of local population and their livelihoods, environmental risks and so on. These projects also lead to spatial fragmentation and social exclusion since these projects only benefit a certain section of the society, mostly the affluent.

The ‘Smart Cities’ mission, a flagship program by the NDA government, which aims to create 100 smart cities equipped with basic infrastructure does not throw light on the situation of informal labourers in such smart cities. While labourers would be needed not just for the construction of smart cities but also to provide various types of services after its completion, plans for where they will stay and work are not featured in the guidelines. Scholars and critics speculate that such over-planning of cities, as in the case of smart cities, can either lead to exclusion of the informal workers from such cities and resettle them to the urban peripheries or it would inevitably pave the way for indiscriminate growth of informal housing within the cities. Moreover, smart cities should not focus on rebuilding everything from the scratch but instead opt for in-situ upgradation or retrofitting (city improvement).

Rather than focussing on the frenzy to become ‘world-class’, the government should divert its attention on making cities more ‘humanised’ or ‘people-centric’. In order to move in this direction, participatory and democratic urban governance is needed which facilitates awareness of people’s rights, community participation in the decision-making process, adequate housing and livelihood in the city space, capacity-building of Urban Local Bodies (ULBs), properly implemented laws and schemes and most important of all, a life of dignity.

The Way Forward

India is undergoing rapid urbanisation but at the same time it is neglecting the housing and livelihood issues of a large section of its population- the urban poor. In order to address the problem of lack of affordable housing and evictions of informal settlements, priority should be given to make housing habitable, affordable and accessible through community-based, cooperative and non-profit rental and owner-occupied housing programmes; services for the homeless and zero evictions should be included in all the National Urban Policies. The informal workers who contribute to India’s growing economy should be given access to worker’s rights, basic services, legal entitlements such as decent work and wage. Thus, there is a growing need for making cities more inclusive and where there is a synergy of environmental preservation along with urban development.