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For the first time in over two years, Afroz

Most Read Most Shared Most Commented
Shah and his team of volunteers did not set
foot on the 2.5 km stretch of beach at Versova Bharat Bandh: 9 dead; Supreme Court to hear case
today
in Mumbai on the last weekend of November
for their routine collection of refuse that gets How your financial life is going to change
completely from April 1
washed ashore. “Volunteers abused by goons
for picking up garbage,” Shah had tweeted Dalit organisations call for Bandh on April 2: Bus,
mobile internet services suspended in Punjab
earlier. “Administrative lethargy, non clearance
of picked up garbage and abuses is what we 13 militants, three soldiers among 19 killed in
are facing. World largest beach cleanup is Kashmir
In early November, PM 2.5 in the national capital suspended. Tried my best and I failed. Why Congress and the BJP are in overdrive on
reached levels 30 times what is deemed acceptable by Bharat Bandh by Dalits on SC/ST issue
Forgive me my ocean and my country (sic).”
the WHO.
More »
Shah’s tweet had the desired effect.
Related
Maharashtra CM Devendra Fadnavis, Aaditya Thackeray,
We must have tall buildings in all
cities: Hardeep Singh Puri who heads the youth wing of the Shiv Sena, which runs
the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), and
Union Minister of State (Independent charge) of Housing and Urban Affairs Hardeep Singh
Puri all met him and assured him of their support.

Shah, who won the top UN environmental prize in December 2016 and found a mention in
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s radio address in May this year, told ET Magazine: “We can
only do so much, the BMC has to take it forward.” Shah said that after his tweet, the BMC
cleared up 90% of the garbage which had been uncollected for five months. He also
announced that he would resume his efforts in response to promises by the state and
Central governments. The following Sunday, he was joined on the beach by Thackeray
and Fadnavis, who has said his government is working on banning plastic in the state. The
clean-up drive has so far removed reportedly 7,000 tonnes of waste from the beach.

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4/9/2018 India: Urban India needs to break with the status quo for a sustainable future - The Economic Times

Waste is among the biggest challenges facing urban India. A Union government report in
2014 estimated that the country’s 377 million urban residents, nearly a third of the
population, generated 62 million tonnes (mt) of solid waste annually, which is expected to
rise to 165 mt by 2031, and 436 mt by 2050. According to one estimate, only twothirds of
the waste are collected and less than a tenth is treated. Addressing this is the objective of
one of Modi’s marquee initiatives, the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, implemented by the
Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs in cities.

Last year the government ranked 75 cities on cleanliness and Mysuru topped the list; this
year it assessed 434 cities, with Indore emerging the cleanest.

Starting next year the government will assign star ratings to cities based on their
cleanliness. “Not all cities can be in the top 10 or even in the top 100. So we are rolling out
this new concept,” says an official in the Ministry of Housing. The cities will be categorised
from one to seven stars. “The stars will be assigned on parameters such as door-to-door
collection of garbage, their segregation, frequency of sweeping and placing of bins, etc,”
says the official. Another official says the government cannot achieve its objectives without
imposing penalties. But fines for littering in 1,126 cities, for which data is available with the
ministry, are just around Rs 3 crore a year. A key component of the Swachh Bharat
Abhiyan is to make India open defecation free (ODF). The target is to make 4,041 cities
and towns ODF by October 2019, but so far only a third have been declared such. And
open defecation can be found even in some of the cities that have been declared ODF.

“The ODF certificate is valid for six months and the status is re-validated every six months.
If any OD spot is found during the re-assessment, the certificate is withheld or withdrawn,”
says Adil Zainulbhai, a former chairman of McKinsey India, who heads the Quality Council
of India, which is evaluating cities. The QCI is also finalising a plan to geo-tag public
toilets, initially in 130 cities. The public will be able locate them on Google Maps and even
rate them on hygiene.

Waste management and sanitation are but two of the issues planners have to grapple with
as urban India swells. The UN estimates that India will add 404 million urban dwellers
between 2014 and 2050, a sixth of the global total, compared with China’s 292 million. The
Census of India defines an urban area on the following criteria: a minimum population of
5,000; at least 75% of the male main working population engaged in non-agricultural
pursuits; and a population density of at least 400 persons per sq km
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/urban-india-needs-to-break-with-the-status-quo-for-a-sustainable-future/articleshow/62098814.cm
4/9/2018 India: Urban India needs to break with the status quo for a sustainable future - The Economic Times
pursuits; and a population density of at least 400 persons per sq. km.

By 2050 India will see four more cities — Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and
Ahmedabad — in the 10 million-plus population category, which now has the urban
agglomerations of Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata.

Water Woes
Access to clean water should be a top
priority for any government. More than
two-thirds of urban households do not
have access to water within the house
and only around 60% get treated tap
water. This is one of the issues tackled
by the 100 Resilient Cities initiative of the
Rockefeller Foundation in New York. It
has selected cities from across the globe
based on challenges they face and their
administrations’ commitment to
overcoming them. Four Indian cities —
Surat, Chennai, Pune and Jaipur — are
on the list. Surat, which is susceptible to
flooding and whose main water source,
the Tapi river, is polluted, is being aided
by the city of Rotterdam on its water
management strategy.

Madhav Pai, India director at the WRI

Ross Centre for Sustainable Cities, says
cities provide a huge opportunity: “On a
smaller carbon footprint if you can do a
higher amount of economic activity, it’s
good for climate change.” Nearly two-
thirds of the country’s GDP is generated
by urban areas, which could go up to
three-fourths by 2020, according to
Barclays. “India’s growth depends almost
entirely on its cities.... On average, as the
share of a country’s population that is
urban rises by 10%, the country’s per
capita output increases by 30%,” writes
Edward Glaeser in his book Triumph of
the City. He adds that people report being
happier in countries that are more urban.
“So cities like Mumbai and Kolkata and
Bangalore boost not only India’s economy,
but also its mood.”

But happiness can be hard to achieve

without something as basic as clean air,
which is in short supply in Delhi and the
wider National Capital Region (NCR). In
early November, PM 2.5 reached levels
30 times what is deemed acceptable by
WHO. Schools were shut, flights and
trains were cancelled. In the second week
of November, the Delhi government
enforced a ban on civil construction,
diesel gensets and brick kilns. But there
was no attempt to tackle a problem at the
source: the fields in Punjaband Haryana
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4/9/2018 India: Urban India needs to break with the status quo for a sustainable future - The Economic Times
source: the fields in Punjaband Haryana
where the paddy stubble is burnt after
harvest, with no government wanting to
jeopardise their political clout among
farmers.

Satellite data received by the Punjab

Remote Sensing Centre (PRSC) reveals
that there were 43,660 stubble-burning
incidents in the state between
September 27 and November 18, but
almost half of them took place in just
eight days beginning October 28,
pointing to a clear link between the
burning of crop residue and the smog
in Delhi. While Delhi CM Arvind
Kejriwal met his Haryana counterpart
Manohar Lal Khattar to discuss the
problem, his request to meet his
opposite number in Punjab, Amarinder
Singh, was turned down by the latter,
saying the meeting would be
“meaningless and futile”.

Baldev Singh Dhillon, vice-chancellor

of Punjab Agricultural University in
Ludhiana, says the government must
first provide, at subsidised rates, the
machinery for cutting rice stubble and
sowing wheat. “Second, the rice
cultivation area in Punjab has to shrink
not just to tackle pollution but also to
curb the growing water crisis.” A 2015
IIT-Kanpur study of air pollution in
Delhi found that in winter, stubble-
burning and vehicles account for a
quarter each of PM 2.5 emissions, and
in summer, road dust, coal and fly ash
contribute more than half the
emissions.

Minister Puri says “things will

improve”. “The prime minister has
designated his principal secretary to
coordinate with the state governments
concerned, and I can say this much
that, you won’t see the problem of
pollution in November 2018,” he told ET
Magazine. (See interview “We Must
Have Tall Buildings in All Cities”) While
pollution rises sharply in Delhi around
November, it is a problem through the
year. Data released by WHO last year
found the annual mean PM 2.5 in the
city to be 12 times the acceptable level.
Ten of the 20 most polluted cities were
in India including Gwalior Patna and
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4/9/2018 India: Urban India needs to break with the status quo for a sustainable future - The Economic Times
in India, including Gwalior, Patna and
Allahabad.

Problem on Wheels
A key component of making cities
livable is public transport and
infrastructure. Pai says there needs to
be an integration of different modes of
public transport like buses, trains and
the metro. But in a city like Mumbai, it is
easier said than done because buses
come under the BMC, trains under the
Railway Ministry and the metro is
handled by the Mumbai Metropolitan
Regional Development Authority. Ajoy
Mehta, who heads BMC, says cities like
Mumbai have legacy systems. “To
disrupt them for no reason doesn’t
make sense. We can’t run the trains or
build the Metro, but yes, coordination
has to be better between agencies.”

Unlike in Mumbai, where water is

provided by the municipal corporation, in Bengaluru and Delhi, there is a separate body
which does that. Moreover, when Bengaluru’s Varthur and Bellandur lakes started frothing
due to solid waste and industrial effluents, there wasn’t one agency that could be tasked
with fixing the problem, since the city’s development authority, the water and sewerage
board and the state pollution control authority all have a stake in it.

Saurabh Gaidhani, a programme manager with 100 Resilient Cities, says the problem of
different government agencies being in charge of a city is not unique to India. “Even the
best cities have silos, including New York and Paris. Singapore is an exception because it
is a city-state.” When asked about the difbig ficulty in tinkering with the responsibilities of
different bodies in a city like Mumbai, Gaidhani says the old system was not made for the
kind of change Mumbai has witnessed.

The September 29 stampede on a footbridge at a central Mumbai railway station, which

claimed 23 lives, got everyone talking about the city’s inadequate public infrastructure.
Despite complaints about the inability of that footbridge to handle the surging traffic in one
of the city’s key commercial hubs, the railways had failed to provide an alternative. The
government’s strange decision to seek the army’s help in building three footbridges,
including at the station in question, has come in for a lot of flak. (The Bharatiya Janata
Party is in power at the Centre as well as in Maharashtra.) The flooding during the
monsoon in Mumbai and Chennai, both of which have experienced worse situations
before, also pointed to the lack of preparedness.

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4/9/2018 India: Urban India needs to break with the status quo for a sustainable future - The Economic Times

Given that 44% of Mumbai’s residents use public transport (only Kolkata has a higher
figure among the metros, at 57%), 28% walk and less than a tenth use cars, it is clear
where the priorities should lie.

But, as Pai says, “roads are designed for cars,” whereas they should be designed for
slower speeds. “Other than on trains, people don’t travel very long distances. You need to
improve the walking environment and eliminate on-street parking.” He adds that Mumbai’s
ambitious 30 km, Rs 12,000 crore coastal road will deprive the city of its waterfronts, which
are among its few open spaces.

The first phase of the Mumbai metro rail has been operational since June 2014 and the
city’s residents hope that the next phases will ease the pressure off the congested roads
and train network. Other cities are following suit. Last month, Hyderabad became the latest
to do so, the others being Kolkata, Delhi, Chennai, Bengaluru, Gurgaon, Jaipur, Lucknow
and Kochi.

The Rs 14,132 crore Hyderabad project is the world’s biggest metro rail project to be
executed through a public-private partnership. NVS Reddy, MD of Hyderabad Metro Rail,
says on its first day the metro carried 2 lakh riders on the 30-km stretch. “Once the metro
is up and running for the entire stretch of 72 km by the end of next year, 15 lakh people will
use it every day.” Union minister Puri says metro rail cannot be the solution for every city.
“Every city has to decide which is the best solution for its transportation woes.”

Roof Over The Head

Beyond transport and public infrastructure, city
administrations have to make sure housing is
affordable.

Pai says renting should be encouraged more

than owning homes. Darshini Mahadevia,
executive director of the Center for Urban Equity
at CEPT University in Ahmedabad, believes
there should be a detailed land-use inventory.
“Indian cities are moving too fast. There is no
political will for evidence-based intervention.”

Housing within the limits of a large city is too

expensive for most people who stay in cheaper
suburbs or neighbouring towns and cities and
travel for work. RNCOS, a consultancy, estimates
India’s urban housing shortage to rise from 18.8
million units in 2012 to 34.1 million units in 2022.

The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs earlier

this year launched a livability index, which would
measure the quality of life in 116 major cities,
including those that are part of the Smart City
Mission. Of the targeted 100 cities, 90 have been chosen for the mission, which gives each
city Rs 500 crore (with an equal contribution from the urban local body) over four years.

Its objectives range from mixed land-use to preserving and creating open spaces. There
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/urban-india-needs-to-break-with-the-status-quo-for-a-sustainable-future/articleshow/62098814.cm
4/9/2018 India: Urban India needs to break with the status quo for a sustainable future - The Economic Times
j g p g g p p
may be a multitude of schemes aimed at making urban living better but they may not mean
much as long as those in cities keep wishing they lived elsewhere.

0
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