With more than 136
crores, India has only eight metropolitan cities, namely Delhi-NCR, Mumbai,
Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, and Pune. Delhi-NCR and
Mumbai have a population excess of 2.4 crores each which is more than the total
population of the continent Australia. In contrast, U.S.A has a population of
33 crores approx. and has 51 metropolitan areas defined by the U.S. Census
Bureau. This clearly shows that for the required people, India needs more metro
cities.
Why Metropolitans Cities are
Important
Metropolitan cities offer
more employment and education opportunities, along with access to better
healthcare, connectivity, and housing facilities. With the intent to make a
fortune and change the course of their lives, people from rural areas migrate
to metro cities. Metropolitan cities are the centres for innovation,
development, education, trade, and commerce. They have the potential to absorb a
large amount of the population with the potential to uplift their living
standards. Metro cities are considered fortune making centres. These cities help
in the development of the public and are essential for the country's economy.
Crumbling Metropolitans
of India
As urbanisation and
development gained momentum in India, people started moving to big cities to
earn more. Cities like Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, and Delhi were more developed than
other cities, and most industries and educational institutes were located here.
Hence, these cities attracted a large amount of population. Later Hyderabad,
Ahmedabad, Pune, and Bangalore also become important centres of employment and
education.
Presently these eight
cities are carrying the excess weight of the population than they were
initially designed for. These cities face congestion, traffic management, poor
sanitation, overcrowding, crumbling healthcare system, income disparity, inadequate
residential facilities, rising crime rate, poor infrastructure, and inflation.
The metros, instead of providing better lifestyles with improved employment, education,
and healthcare facilities, and crumbling under the weight of population. They
cities are not able to meet the expectations of the migrants. Slums are
increasing in these areas and prices for basic necessities of life are soaring
each day.
With the influx of
population in large numbers, the demand for residential space has overgrown in
big cities leading to excessive demand resulting in rising prices. Similar
trend is observed in every sphere. Prices for healthcare, food, education etc,
all has shot up rapidly. With more concentration of workforce in a particular
area, the competition for securing employment is very tough, as a result of
which crime rate is also high in these cities.
Pollution levels are very
high in these cities, and clean drinking water is in short supply. In the past
decade, Delhi-NCR has been ranked as one of the most polluted cities in the
world, Chennai despite having floods in 2015, faces water shortages, Mumbai
faces problems of congestion, crumbling infrastructure, high prices and
increasing slums, while in Kolkata, poverty has reached to every high level. The
same issues are faced by other cities as well.
What can be done?
Major decongestion
programs across the metropolitan cities are the need of the hour. The population
needs to be moved out from the Tier 1 cities to Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities.
Presently, India has 104 Tier 2 cities, and the remaining towns are classified
under Tier 3 cities. The government needs to focus more on Tier 2 and 3 cities.
It should improve the infrastructure in these cities. Connectivity should be
strengthened by linking these cities with expressways, railway stations and
international airports. Purvanchal Expressway, Ganga Expressway, Delhi- Mumbai
Expressway, Jewar International Airport are significant projects that will help
develop Tier 2 and 3 cities. Similar projects throughout the country should be
undertaken.
It is also essential that
the industries are distributed across various unlike concentrating them in
select few areas. Like in the U.S.A., the drives are spread across numerous
cities, which is why it has more metropolitans. In India, the metropolitan
cities have Service, I.T., Entertainment, Manufacturing, Banking, and other
industries. As a result, they have become centres for all economic activity,
but their infrastructure is crumbling under this immense load. This load needs
to be distributed. Northern and North-Eastern areas of the country where it is
difficult to set up the manufacturing sector, I.T., and service sector should
be relocated there. Each industry should not be concentrated in one city but
should be spread across multiple cities. This will help in reducing the
economic disparity among various regions and would help in urbanisation.
India needs to reduce the
size of its cities but increase the number of cities.
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