The Hindu Business Line : Down the abyss?

NOT only in India, but in the rest of the world too, those who were once fondly called city fathers are finding themselves unable to cope with the demands of urban management. In India especially, the problems have reached explosive proportions, and most corporations have practically given up all pretence of managing. At least in the Southern and Western States, and to an extent in the nation's capital, there are some visible signs of civic services, but the bimari (disease) in the BIMARU States of Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, and in the Eastern and North-Eastern States, has landed civic administration in a mess.

Exponential rise in population, addition of new residential areas, pressure on schools and hospitals, unreliable public services, suffocating pollution, proliferation of slums, spectacular growth in the number of all categories of vehicles on limited number of roads and rapidly receding water table have made urban areas unlivable.

Even with everyone — citizens, officials, private and public sectors — functioning at peak efficiency, the toll taken by these factors will be heavy. But when chronic maladies such as lax enforcement of laws and poor tax collections are aggravated by the indiscipline, lethargy and inefficiency of the workforce over which the civic bodies seem to have little control, the resultant misery can only touch unbearable levels. If the situation has already deteriorated to such an extent as to seem to be beyond remedy, one feels a chill down the spine to think of the conditions in the coming decades.

Is there a way of averting the creeping paralysis? The President, Dr Abdul Kalam, has been advocating the concept of PURA (provision of urban amenities in rural areas), but the practicality of this counsel is doubtful considering the lack of urban amenities in urban areas themselves.

ZPG (zero population growth) can help contain the severity of the crisis, but in the two or three decades it may take to achieve, things are bound to get worse. As of now, there is no light visible at the end of the tunnel and the future looks bleak. But, perhaps, some spectacular technological breakthroughs obviating the need for surface transport and brick-and-mortar workplaces, for instance, may pull us back from the dark abyss into which we are staring.

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