Cities require a renewal that factors in rural-urban migration

Highlights

• Residents of Bhavanpur, a village about 15 km outside Ahmedabad, have been protesting against their inclusion in the city’s urban area by the local urban development authority.
• Similar protests have been observed in villages elsewhere in Gujarat. It’s a strange trend, the fruits of urban development seemingly rejected. Meanwhile, pollution in India’s urban areas seems to have sparked off a reverse migration.
• Farmers from Haryana who had migrated to Delhi and Gurugram for work to escape an agricultural crisis are increasingly going back to their farms during winter, unable to take the toxic pollution.
• And it’s not just big cities. India’s urbanisation template is clearly ripe for change.

Towards a new model

• Perhaps we need a different model of urbanisation.
• The announcement of a new urbanisation policy that seeks to rebuild Indian cities around clusters of human capital, instead of considering them simply as an agglomeration of land use, is a welcome transition.
• We need to empower our cities, with a focus on land policy reforms, granting urban local bodies the freedom to raise financing and enforce local land usage norms.
•  For an India to shine, the transformation of its cities is necessary.

Source: The Hindu