Challenges to Sustainable Urbanization in India—Migration, Poverty and Urban Crimes

Urbanization is a strong indicator of productivity and growth. The world is getting increasingly more urbanized. India has been rather slow to urbanize. However, an aspiring India which has in recent decades demonstrated its potential for high growth cannot remain far behind the rest of the world. Even at the present low level of urbanization, the stresses and strains of urban expansion are being felt acutely. This paper raises some of the issues that pose a challenge to sustainable urbanization. India already has some of the largest urban sprawls in the world, while small and medium category towns are neglected, and newly emerging towns remain unrecognized and uncared for. Urban finances are in poor shape and urban governance is weak. Water supply in the towns is inadequate, sanitation poor and proper urban drainage system in bad shape in big and small cities alike. Urban environment is at great risk. Among many issues of sustainability, this paper particularly focuses on migration, poverty and urban crimes. Urban growth is largely supported by rural to urban migrants. Majority of these migrants are poor. Migrants face many difficulties in the cities. The most important is the problems of housing. They have to live in unhygienic conditions. Migrants face a variety of biases and discriminations. The pressure of limited provision of urban amenities is often blamed on migrants. They are blamed even for creating crime prone environment. Migrants loose family and community support when they move to the city, and quite often they have to leave behind even their entitlements for subsidized food etc. There is no job security in the cities, and in times of crises, they are the worst sufferers. They constitute the majority of the urban poor. The food-centric concepts of poverty are not quite relevant for measuring urban poverty and for identifying the urban poor. Residential, occupational and social vulnerabilities are the defining features of urban poverty. Crime rates are generally higher is urban areas, and crimes rates have been rising over time. Residential mobility, poverty, increasing inequalities, family disruption, lack of informal social control, and population heterogeneity are some of the factors that are suggested as contributing to the urban crime prone environment. Also, the failure of justice system and ineffective policing may be responsible for not keeping the crime rates under check. The situation is India is far from satisfactory in respect of the adequacy of police personnel, their training and their working conditions. While abatement of sociological factors behind crimes requires a sustained social and political movement over a considerable period of time, the quality of governance and policing can go a long way is alleviating the crime situation in the near future.