Planning Must Precede Demand to Aid India's Choking and Floating Cities

We have to think of a system in which the supply of people catches up with the infrastructure, not vice versa.

A rescue operation in Bengaluru.

(Photo: PTI)

Has good weather become a curse for Bangalore?

That is not an easy question to answer but one worth attempting. London, where bad weather has historically been a conversation starter for the famously stiff-upper-lipped English folks, stands in contrast to India's Silicon City now reeling under torrential rains, with rubber rafts out for rescue, parking lots submerged, schools closed, and technology mavens forced into a WFH mode after official orders.

You could argue with some imagination that bad weather inspired the British to travel across the planet and raise an empire where the sun never set to make up for the substantial lack of sunshine in its domestic climes.  London became a city richly endowed with infrastructure thanks to imperialist riches.

You just have to turn the whole thing upside down to get the picture for Bengaluru, with some implications for policymakers on how they have to overturn some things to offer help to India's choking and floating cities.

As this is being written, Delhi is on red alert for air pollution, while Chennai has barely survived a cyclone scare, and Kolkata awaits Cyclone Dana to make its landfall. We can safely presume that the messy traffic jams are where they usually are in Mumbai, so we do not leave out India's financial capital in a bird's eye view of an urbanisation crisis sweeping the country.

Bangalore was first a Garden City built by Hyder Ali, and then a colonial cantonment town in the early 1800s. It later became a good-weather town to help recuperate tuberculosis patients, and then as a pensioner's paradise for affordable retirements. A host of the Nehru-era public sector companies built in the two decades after Independence brought in a talented scientific workforce. Computers, software, and bandwidth did the rest.

But it should be clear by now that cities are like computers or smartphones. Roads and municipal facilities can go only a limited way as those seeking jobs and livelihoods crowd over a limited amount of infrastructure, much like computing, in which you need new devices as software upgrades only choke the machines into which they are thrust. 

Most of India's metros are having that hardware upgrade moment. Not everybody gets a fundamental truth of urbanisation: in the short run, cities need better infrastructure, but in the long run, it is the infrastructure itself that builds better cities.

In other words, India needs new cities or satellite towns on a larger scale. We can call this counter-urbanisation. This requires central policymakers to consider urban planning a counterpoint to the market economy, not an adjunct.

Take Delhi, for instance. As New Delhi emerged as the national capital of a newly independent nation, a lot of thought went behind urbanisation. The satellite towns of Faridabad and NOIDA were part of planned urbanisation, as were office complexes such as Nehru Place meant to decongest a Connaught Place-centric city. Other towns like Chandigarh, built from scratch with planned avenues and infrastructure to match, bear testimony to that era.

At that time, planning was strong, but resources were short. Ironically, we now have more resources, but planning is inadequate, except in a firefighting sort of mode or in master plans that only seek to extend what is already out there. More flyovers and metro trains in choking cities are like bypass surgeries performed on cardiac patients who may be better advised to lead healthier lifestyles.

The economic reforms that started in 1991 took away the government's focus from planning to market forces. What we are witnessing now is a result of the dubious triumph of energetic microeconomics over methodical macro-development. 

Gurugram, for instance, is a post-1991 phenomenon. Its infrastructure has sprinted to catch up with demand. A bit of latter-day planning by the Haryana government is giving band-aid solutions, but the Millennium City's traffic and sewage problems are real.

NOIDA, built by the Union government with forethought rather than afterthought, stands in contrast with an expressway, parks, and a sewerage system, in addition to sports and other facilities clearly earmarked for various urban activities.

As India's demographic transition causes an urban influx, it might be wiser to think of building infrastructure-rich new towns where there is no significant demand as a counter magnet than throw good money at choking cities. This requires some lateral thinking and spending gumption to match. 

Since 2014, much of the infrastructure focus has been on highways, ports, airports and power plants. These enable efficient industries but not efficient urbanisation suited to the jobs they are expected to create. Some satellite towns like Navi Mumbai, New Raipur and New Chandigarh are hinting at the way to go, even as NOIDA is being extended into its own tri-city format with an integrated view of the Agra-linked Yamuna Expressway zone with Greater Noida.

In all these initiatives, the planning and the funding precede demand.

Counter-urbanisation, in which the supply of people catches up with the infrastructure rather than infrastructure panting and moaning to serve the demand of the people, is a better long-term solution. Southern metros, Hyderabad included, seem to be lacking on that count.

It is time to think beyond highways in favour of infrastructure that focuses on lifestyles rather than the efficiency of industries. This requires a harmonious combination of town planning, finance, and tax incentives to match the needs of both the people and the businesses.

(The writer is a senior journalist and commentator who has worked for Reuters, Economic Times, Business Standard, and Hindustan Times. He can be reached on Twitter @madversity. This is an opinion article and the views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)