Mumbai
Deluge:
Crises in Urban South Asia
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Prepared
by Sudha Rajagopalan,
Ph.D.
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The devastating
impact of the rains in Mumbai draws attention to its inadequacies,
but these are problems the city has in common with other major regional
cities.
Many of
the world's largest cities or urban agglomerations are concentrated
in the South Asian region. (Source: Cities
in the world with more than 1 million inhabitants in 2005)
- Populations
within city limits: Ranks 1-3 are Mumbai (12,778,721), Karachi (11,507,254)
and Delhi (11,055,365).
- Urban
agglomeration ( population of the entire urban area including its
suburbs): Three out of the global top ten are Mumbai (17,431,305),
Delhi (14,145,956) and Calcutta (13,805,691).
- Urban
agglomeration exceeding five million:
- Dhaka
(11,560,211) in Bangladesh;
- Chennai
(6,691,180), Bangalore (6,140,818) and Hyderabad (5,863,694)
in India;
- Lahore
(5,989,395) in Pakistan.
This
Chaitanya guide also includes the Sri Lankan capital Colombo with
2,409,000 inhabitants and the Nepali capital Kathmandu with 1,229,000
inhabitants because these are the largest cities in their respective
countries and share the other metropolises’ characteristics
and challenges.
These
South Asian cities face in common the following urban crises--poverty,
unemployment, crime, lack of housing, inadequate solid waste management,
poor urban health, and high pollution. These exacerbate the effects
of natural calamities such as heavy rains, cyclones, tsunamis and
earthquakes.
United
Nations Settlement Programme (UN-Habitat), Changes
in Asia’s fast growing cities are closely watched across the
world.
US Agency
for International Development, Making Cities Work: South
Asia Brief.
Asian
Development Bank, The
Urban Sector, December 1999. See, in particular:
Theo Kotter,
Risks
and Opportunities of Urbanization and Megacities, International
Federation of Surveyors, August 2004.
We
invite you to send in links that you consider relevant and useful.
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Poverty
Poverty
is the most primary of all problems associated with urbanization.
Declining rural economies have forced migration to urban areas but
have not been accompanied by adequate employment opportunities in
the recipient cities.
Urban
Poverty. The World Bank Group. August 24, 2005.
Dileni
Gunewardena, Urban
Poverty in South Asia: What do we know? What do we need to know?,
Paper prepared for Poverty Reduction and Social Progress: new Trends
and Emerging Lessons, Regional Dialogue and consultaion on WDR2001
for South Asia, Bangladesh, April 1999.
Hossain,
Shahadat. Poverty,
Household Strategies and Coping with Urban Life: Examining ‘Livelihood
Framework’ in Dhaka City, Bangladesh. Bangladesh e-Journal
of Sociology. Vol2. No. 1. January 2005.
Wolfgang-Peter
Zingel. Alleviating
urban poverty – the Pakistan way. Manpower Journal, 34
(october-december 1998), 127-147.
Begum,
Sharifa and Binayak Sen Sharifa Begum and Binayak Sen, Pulling
rickshaws: a way out of poverty? in Unsustainable livelihoods,
health shocks and urban chronic poverty: Rickshaw pullers as a case
study, Programme for Research on Chronic Poverty in Bangladesh,
Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies, November 2004.
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Housing
Growing
populations and urbanization have caused an overwhelming demand for
housing that has not been met by city governments. This has led to
the growth of slum dwellings with abysmal living conditions, often
in areas least conducive to settlement. There are considerable shanty
towns within every major city in the region, as indeed in other metropolises
of the world. They have been at the centre of every major debate about
the city, either cast as ‘obstacles’ to ‘urban beautification
campaigns’ or as those worse affected by every other social
ill that plagues a city.
V.Ramaswamy,
Renewing
the City: Efforts to Improve Life in Calcutta’s Urban Slums,
Asia Source (A Resource of the Asia Society). Asian Social Issues
Program. no date.
Nagraj
Adve, Demolishing
Lives and Livelihoods in Delhi, Znet. April 27 2004.
UN Office
for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Pakistan:
Special report on informal housing, IRIN news.org., 10 November
2003.
Mamun
Rashid, Housing
at Uttara Model Town in Dhaka city. An analysis and exploring ways
to tackle the housing problem of middle-class, Lund University,
2002.
Sustainable
Development Network Program, World
Environment Day 2005 : Urban Design, June 5, 2005.
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Sanitation
Shanty
towns lack proper sewage facilities and these cities in general have
not always expanded the drainage network to match the growth in urban
populations. This was one of the primary reasons for the Mumbai floods.
Moreover, solid waste facilities are minimal, especially in shanty
settlements which house almost half of the urban population in many
cities.
Faisal
Ibney Hai, Solid
Waste Management in a Developing Country: Towards a Sustainable
Solution, Vision, April 22, 2005.
Mesbah-us-Saleheen, How
good is solid waste management in Dhaka city?, The Daily Star,
June 3 2005.
Prashanna Man Pradhan,
Solid
waste management crisis in Kathmandu Valley, OneWorld South
Asia,
Infrastructure
and solid waste management, Urban Resource Centre, 28 March
2004.
Surekha Sule. Municipalities
overruling the SC. India Together. July 2004.
Sudheendra Kulkarni,
Freedom
from Filth, Indian Express, August 31, 2005.
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Environmental
Threats
Rapid urbanization has
also caused Asian cities to suffer a deterioration in air quality.
The highest number of premature deaths due to air pollution occur
in Indian cities. Forest cover has been gradually disappearing in
areas encircling Asian cities as these expand to accommodate houses,
and since the nineties, shopping mall complexes. In coastal cities,
land reclamation has caused soil erosion, increasing the risk of floods
and the vulnerability of coastal settlements to calamities such as
the 2004 tsunami.
State
of Environment Report, South Asia 2001. UNEP: Regional Resource
Centre for Asia and the Pacific.
India:
environmental issues. Energy Information Administration country
analysis brief, February 2004.
Maheen A. Rashdi, Karachi:
Water issues: who is accountable, Dawn, 12 April 2005.
South
Asia Urban Air Quality Management: Improving health for all urban
populations. World Bank Group: Environment.
Romir Chatterjee, Meeta
Mehra , Shilpi Banerjee, Environmental
security in South Asia, The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI)
, February 2000.
A.Deepa. Malls
trampling Delhi’s Green Belt.India Together. August 2005.
Taranjot Kaur Gadhok,
Risks
in Delhi: Environmental concerns, gisdevelopment.net, Disaster
Workshop, September 2000.
Air
pollution in city on the rise again. The Daily Star (Dhaka).
June 19, 2005.
Senaratne, G. Colombo
residents demand halt to toxic pollution. World Socialist Web
Site. 29 November 2000.
United Nations Development
Programme, Reducing
Risks from Tsunamis: Disaster and Development, January 2005.
Liz Creel, Ripple
Effects: Population and Coastal Regions, Making the Link (Population
Reference Bureau), September 2003.
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Urban
health
The high density of urban
settlements, whether middle-class housing or shanty towns, coupled
with unsanitary living conditions are factors that are hardly conducive
to healthy living. South Asian cities suffer regularly from epidemic
outbreaks (invariably following a natural disaster or calamity) and
face the growing threat of the HIV/AIDS virus.
John C Caldwell and Bruce
K. Caldwell, Poverty
and Mortality in the Context of Economic Growth and Urbanization,
Asia-Pacific Population Journal, vol 17, no. 4, December 2002, 49-
66.
Elliott D Sdar, Pietro
Garau, Gabriella Carolini. The
21st century health challenge of slums and cities. The Lancet,
vol.365, March 5 2005.
AIDS
epidemic in South Asia,. the-south-asian.com, January 2004.
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Unemployment
and other labour issues
Employment opportunities
for the urban poor, in general, have not grown to absorb the steady,
unrelenting migration from rural areas. Every day the ranks of the
urban unemployed swell owing to continuous migration from villages.
In India, the expansion
of the service-oriented economy and slow growth in the manufacturing
sector mean that there are fewer low-skilled jobs available for rural
migrants and others in the city. Moreover, in the new ‘global
economy,’ many perceive middle-class interests to be privileged
over labour-interest issues; the city in globalized India appears
to some to be more exclusionary than inclusive.
Mohammed Shehzad, The
challenge of unemployment. Frontline, vol 21, issue 7, March
27-April 9, 2004.
P. Sainath, The
class war in Gurgaon, India Together, August 13, 2005.
Amitabh Kundu and Niranjan
Sarangi. Employment
Guarantee: Issue of Urban Exclusion. Economic and Political
Weekly August 13 2005.
Mumbai textile mills, long
part of the Mumbai industrial landscape, have declined with the shift
of industry to other areas in India and the growing emphasis on service-oriented
industries in the new global economy. Entire segments of this work
force have been laid-off.
More
mill workers being thrown out of jobs. Express Textile. 26 February
2004.
Anupama Katakam, Victims
of ‘new economy.’ Frontline, Vol 21 Issue 5, February
8 – March 12 2004.
Ashok Manohar, New
prospects for working-class movement in Maharashtra, Liberation,
April 2002.
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Informal
Sector and the Right to City-space
In South Asian cities,
the bulk of the workforce works in the unorganized sector. These workers
are employed on a contractual or sub-contractual basis, lack employment
guarantees and enjoy no social security. Moreover, although there
are minimum wage laws, their implementation remains very inadequate.
Street
vendors, a
symposium on reconciling people’s livelihood and urban governance.
Seminar July 2000 #491.
Ralf Hussmanns, Measuring
the informal economy: From employment in in the informal sector
to informal employment. Policy Integration Department. Bureau
of Statistics. International labour Organization, 2005.
Krishna Rupanagunta,
Economic
Rights as Human Rights. India Together. January 2004.
Making
a living in the Street: Public Space as an Asset for Sustainable
Livelihood, A Cardiff School of City and Regional Planning Project.
Challenges
for social protection in the informal economy. The Telegraph.
Kathmandu. July 21, 2004.
Sharifa Begum and Binayak
Sen, Unsustainable
Livelihoods, Health Shocks and Urban Chronic Poverty: Rickshaw Pullers
as a Case Study, Chronic Poverty Research Centre, November 2004.
R. Geetha, Long
March of ‘Invisible’ Workers, Humanscape.org, May
2005.
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Crime
and Violence
Crime and violence in urban
areas usually stem from economic, social and political discrimination.
They also arise from a lack of sufficient public areas in a city,
and the presence of unsafe spaces that provide opportunity for rape,
robbery and other crimes.
Peter Gizewski and Thomas
Homer-Dixon, Urban
Growth and Violence: Will the future resemble the past? Occasional
Paper, Project on Environment, Population and Security, Washington,
D.C.: American Association for the Advancement of Science and the
University of Toronto
June 1995.
Graham Dwyer, Urban
violence in Asian cities, ADB Review, Volume 35, No. 6, 2003.
Sandeep Pendse, The
under, the over, and the middle world, Seminar, No. 528, August
2003.
A.H. Cemendtaur, The
dream of a crime-free society, chowk.com, September 17, 2004
H A Chotani, J A Razzak
and S P Luby, Patterns
of violence in Karachi, Pakistan, Injury Prevention, Volume
8, 2002, 57-59.
Sasanka Perera, Public
space and insecurity in Colombo, Himal, August 2001 on the normalization
of the war in the city space in Colombo.
Labour
Migration and Human Trafficking in Nepal.
One World South Asia.
Caroline O N Moser, Urban
violence and Insecurity: an introductory roadmap, Environment
and Urbanisation, no. 10, October 2004.
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Postscript
for city-lovers
First
City? A Symposium on Remembering Delhi, Seminar 515, July 2002.
City
of Dreams: A Symposium on the Many Facets of Bombay,
Seminar 528, August 2003.
Changing
Chennai: A Symposium on the Queen of the Coromandel, Seminar
535, March 2004.
Sam Miller, The
cities we deserve, Seminar 545, January 2005.
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