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Indian cities develop gradually but grow rapid

By SiliconIndia | Wednesday, 04 August 2010, 04:31 Hrs | 2 Comments

Mumbai: India has Asia's third-largest economy and the increasing global clout that goes with it. It is already home to a quarter of the world's 20 most densely populated cities. One of them is Mumbai, where some 18 million people crowd into slums and skyscrapers, stretching the city's amenities and making it less attractive for investors, reports Reuters.

Indian cities over the next two decades will also house 40 percent of the country's population and generate some 70 percent of new job opportunities, McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), the research arm of consultancy McKinsey, estimates in a report.

To cater to this growth, India needs to invest $1.2 trillion in capital expenditure, mainly infrastructure, over that period, an eight-fold increase of current spending levels, MGI said.
India now spends $17 per capita on urban infrastructure, compared to rival China's $116.

That figure is clearly inadequate: while it took about 40 years for India's urban population to rise by nearly 230 million in 2008, it will take only half that time to add the next 250 million people, analysts say.

India will, over the next two decades, see an urban transformation the scale and speed of which has not happened anywhere except China, with many cities becoming larger than many countries, in terms of population size and GDP.

Historically, India's politicians and policy-makers have focused on villages. Urbanization has largely been a result of existing cities expanding economically and demographically, rather than anything planned, Sharma said.

This largely haphazard growth has created inequity. With more than 500 million mobile phone subscribers, more people in India have access to a mobile phone than a toilet, a "tragic irony", a recent UN report noted.

Lack of affordable housing means India has the largest urban slum population in Asia. Mumbai boasts some of the world's priciest real estate but some 60 percent of its residents are homeless or live in slums.

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Reader's comments(2)

1: I feel the development should go along with the growth.

Posted by:mackey - 04 Aug, 2010

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well i have a different view.i think that new cities should be allowed to evolve.Cities like Indore,Jaipur,nagpur,mohali and lucknow which have the basic infrastructure should be given good projects and by projects i not mean infrastructure projects but also new companies from different sectors like IT,retail,education and manufacturing and for this to happen both the state and central goverment will have to play equal role..