Urban decay

While even a casual drive around most urban areas in the country reveals the extent of the decay, the results of the National Sample Survey Organisation’s (NSSO’s) latest household survey data are quite alarming.

On the positive side, the data show an appreciable increase in the availability of amenities like water and electricity. The proportion of rural households with drinking water facilities, for instance, has risen from 19 per cent in 1993 to 71 per cent in 2002 in rural areas and from 70 per cent to 84 per cent in urban areas.

In the case of electricity, similarly, the number of households with such facilities has gone up from 81 per cent a decade ago to 92 per cent today (it’s still a low 53 per cent in rural India).

Even these figures, needless to say, hide the true picture—independent survey estimates show that about a fourth of the urban households with access to drinking water get it through a handpump or a tubewell, water that does not even masquerade as being safe.

In any case, the NSSO data show that a fifth of urban slums do not get adequate water supplies. In the case of other urban amenities, like garbage disposal, things are much worse with just 60 per cent of urban India having access to government garbage disposal services—this goes down to as low as 40 per cent in areas (not the slums) where the poorer segments of society live.

Part of the problem, every politician and town planner will tell you, is the huge migration that takes place from rural to urban India in search of jobs—cities have seen growth of around 4.5 per cent in the last year.

But it is also true that two-thirds of those living in slums have been there for over a decade, so the large slum dwellings can’t be explained away as just a temporary shelter for those moving from villages.

Nor, the NSS shows, is the presence of slums explained by the proximity to the place of work (the where-else-will-our-servants-live argument) as just a tenth of those sampled said this was the case. The main reason is that slums provide low-rent accommodation.

While the NSSO data are frightening enough, they say nothing of the quality of the services provided.

An all-India survey by the Public Affairs Centre in Bangalore a couple of years ago, however, estimated this and found, for instance, that only a fifth of urban households was satisfied with the quality and quantity of water they got (contrast this with the NSSO’s figure of 84 per cent with access to water!) and around a third reported regular breakdowns of public hand pumps—not surprisingly, a UN report on the quality of water ranked India 117th among 120 countries.

That India needs a massive urban renewal plan is obvious, and the lack of funds with local municipalities is a serious problem. The Delhi government’s attempts to hike property tax collections through a new system of assessment could hold important lessons for other cities though it is still too soon to be able to evaluate its success.

And though they are yet to catch on, eventually more extensive use of conservation techniques like water harvesting and treating sewage into potable water will just have to be practised.