Urban India 2015

The opening section of this book looks closely at the standard narrative of Indian urbanisation: its top-heavy nature, the potential demographic dividend that could be the base of an employment and growth transition, and the potential impacts on economic and social inequalities.
One: it demonstrates the emergence of high density population clusters around established urban centres accompanied by a massive increase in people living in settlements with between 5,000 and 20,000 people. This points to a "grey" population that remains classified as rural but is increasingly urban in character as well as deeply connected to established urban spaces and their economic and social development.

Two: improvements in socio-demographic variables like sex ratios and workforce participation show persistent regional differentiation despite overall improvements. This indicates the need for regionally disaggregated approaches to managing urbanisation rather than sweeping national imaginations and public policy interventions.

Three: we juxtapose the hypothesised benefits of our demographic dividend against the reality of inadequate education, skill development and low workforce participation rates. This suggests that we may not only lose the benefits of our young population but also that our urban areas may be accumulating serious social, economic and political risk through a concentration of unemployed, semi-educated youth in inadequately governed environments.
The poverty chapter questions the current measurement frame, and asks what are the necessary bundles of assets, goods and services that urban residents need to live a dignified life in Indian cities. In spite of a rapid decline in consumption-based poverty, we find significant variation between the status of different socio-economic groups, pointing to deepening urban inequality and a replication of rural exclusion. Disaggregated analyses by rural areas, large cities and other urban settlements, underlines the fact that vulnerability and deprivation are often concentrated in smaller urban centres and in particular locations in larger cities and metropolitan regions. While arguing for a broader notion of the term poverty, we offer alternative notions such as the Proxy Wealth Index and Quality of Housing Index, based on ownership of assets as well as access to infrastructure and services across the six largest Indian cities.
The next chapter examines the urban water supply and sanitation sector. Nearly 40 per cent of urban households do not have access to treated tap water and around 13 per cent still defecate in the open. Of more concern is the fact that almost 88 per cent of waste is unsafely let into the environment leading to health hazards and pollution. Our analysis in this chapter looks at the state of delivery of urban water and sanitation services in India in the broader context of available resources both at the national and local levels.

The transport chapter marks the absence of a comprehensive or conclusive empirical picture of mobility in Indian cities. Within what we know, it marks a particular cusp where walking, bicycling and public transport remain the dominant ways of moving about Indian cities. This is changing rapidly due to increasing sprawl, declining densities and increasing trip lengths, the rapid growth of two-wheeler and car sales and consequent massive congestion, an epidemic of road accidents, and large cities that have amongst the worst air quality in the world. It argues for a more rigorous debate on the relationship between mobility, inclusion, public health and the environment, and the relationship between planning, economic development, mobility infrastructure choices and the dynamics of future travel demand.

The concluding chapter examines the urban energy sector, focusing particularly on residential energy use. It maps the energy and carbon emissions profile of the country. The analysis shows that income and population growth are the major drivers of energy use and carbon emissions in India. In addition, over 2006-10, energy intensity improvements have slackened along with an increasing carbonisation of the energy system. Going forward, providing universal energy access, addressing energy security concerns amidst complex geopolitics, wide scale and supply-linked power sector reform and aligning domestic policy with the globally agreed climate change agenda will be the key elements of sustainable energy and climate policy.