swm@browncs.UUCP (09/11/86)
The state of India's environment The second citizens' report 1984-85 Center for science and environment- New Delhi Habitat: - India's urban population is today the fourth largest in the world. by the end of the century, it will be the largest. managing such a large urban population will call for extraordinary imagination and political will. - As towns grow, they gobble up precious agricultural land: some 1.5 million hectares already since 1950 and probably another 0.8 million hectares in the next 20 years. - Conservative official estimates, put the existing slum population at over 30 million and growing. By current trends, 75 percent of Bombay's population will be living in slums at the turn of the century. - Unable to find imaginative solutions, authorities in Bombay and Delhi have armed themselves with laws.: squatting is today a criminal offence in these cities and squatters can be arrested without a warrant and held without bail. If India wants to house its entire urban population, it must accept cities of shacks, not those built to please a foreign visitor. People must be allowed to improve their housing wherever they are. - Though the Central government officially accepts slum upgrading as the answer to the country's gigantic housing crisis, it is not able to fulfil its minimal targets. In 1985, there will still be 20 million people outside the ambit of slum upgrading schemes. - For the success of slum upgrading programmes, the key issue is security of tenure. The best slum upgrading effort is in Hyderabad, where security of tenure has been assured. - The face of urban India is rapidly changing. Bangalore, Pune and Dehra Dun, for long praised as idyllic--cool, green and quiet, are today boom towns--noisy, dusty and hot. - Hill stations are dying everywhere: Ooty in the south, Mahabaleshwar -Panchgani in the west, Darjeeling, Gangtok, Shillong, Mussoorie and Simla in the north. With tourists pouring in, forests have been destroyed and water crisis are common. - As people get pushed out of villages and into cities with little industry, they bring their rural occupations with them. Allahabad's livestock population has been growing faster than its human population. The city's municipal authorities make no pretence of even trying to cope. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Swaminathan Manohar ihnp4!brunix!swm Dept. of Computer Science swm@brown.csnet Box 1910, Brown University (401)-863-3264 Providence, RI02912