Planning for an urban planet

But apart from locations there are market-related economies, demand for goods and availability of skilled labour and pure external economies like knowledge spillovers, known before ‘outsourcing’. Centrifugal forces include costs of urbanisation, travel costs, rents of scarce land, pollution and costs of public services. In the work I did for the United Nations University I argued that these insights required strategic planning, a land use policy, urban systems policies and integrating both within city transportation and the policy of integrating land use with transport sequencing. The urban land ceiling was dysfunctional but a land use policy was essential. At that time this was all heresy and was intellectually lynched.

The urban pessimists in India said that urbanisation was not rising, would not and should not rise fast. They were some of my best friends and colleagues at the Sardar Patel Institute, JNU and the Planning Commission. My argument that the urbanites had a point went unheeded. Actually the population share of very small towns was going down and that of very large ones was going up. These trends were accentuating from the ’80s onwards, after which we were growing fast. The share of population of Class IV, V and VI towns (some just large villages) was going down, from 13.6,13.0 and 3.1 per cent in 1951 to 7.8, 2.6 and 0.3 per cent in 1991, I said but I was asked to keep quiet. In those days after saying India was growing fast you ducked. In addition, to say that India was urbanising was to be the devil incarnate. The Technical Group on Population Projections at that time projected an urban population up to 2016, which extrapolated would give a median figure of 465 million by 2020. Later we did actual measurements to show that the urban growth rate in Gujarat was twice that officially recognised as this column has argued.

Very tired of all this at the Asian Institute of Transport Development, we actually used a model to make alternate projections. Krugman has a beta which is the percentage growth of the large urban configurations to per capita income growth. With an income growth figure, base-level urban populations and this beta, or elasticity as economists call it, urban population can be projected. In the period of high growth this beta was around two thirds of one percent. In other words, if as was seen in those days income growth was 6 per cent the population of large towns would grow by 4 per cent. Smaller towns would disappear, but the urban population would be close to 550 million and not 465 million. These numbers would be higher now since we are growing faster. Unfortunately we don’t do long-term visions any more. But the crisis in land, energy and pollution would lessen if we start thinking again. Inter-urban transport will need to be structured, with urban location and land use policies. The distance of badlands from a city is not just a physical concept but depends on transport. Rocky areas of the Ridge will be ‘closer’ with a metro. We must get out of the land ceiling syndrome and concentrate on larger policy issues of land use within and between towns.

The public management issues involved in rapid and decentralised urban growth are so obvious that they do not need elaboration. Awareness of technology, systemic interrelations, decentralised planning foci, self-reliant institutions which can productively borrow and build and run systems, have all been discussed and yet only a small beginning has been made. These are going to be the great challenges of the next phase. The ability to raise and use resources productively will be at the heart of the matter. The planners are asking for a large infrastructure programme. It will be a fitting response to the meltdown.

The writer, a former Union minister, is chairman, Institute of Rural Management, Anand express@expressindia.com