Just Like That: India’s cities are crumbling - and we’ve learned to live with it

Garbage, sewage, traffic, water, power, pollution, and growing slums are daily struggles for the common citizen—and now, increasingly, for the privileged too

Almost all of India’s urban infrastructure is on the verge of collapse, and the miracle is that it still continues to exist. There was a deluge in Delhi in the last two days, and the city literally came to a standstill. This is the situation in all our metropolises, and as far as the smaller cities are concerned—the less said, the better. Garbage, sewage, traffic jams, water, electricity, pollution, and the relentless proliferation of unauthorised slums are perennial issues affecting the common citizen—but increasingly, also the privileged.

Why has no radical and sustainable solution been attempted to deal with this looming and imminent crisis? (Representative photo)

Why has no radical and sustainable solution been attempted to deal with this looming and imminent crisis? We have duly elected municipal bodies, central departments are seized of this matter, and experts offer a range of solutions, but nothing seems to change. Every year, come October–November, Delhi becomes a gas chamber. Those with respiratory problems find it difficult to breathe, the Air Quality Index (AQI) touches unbelievably dizzying heights, there is much hue and cry, but no solution of an enduring nature is found—so the crisis repeats itself the next year too.

It is clear that the problem of Delhi’s pollution cannot be solved in isolation. Some reforms need to be made in the capital city too, but an integrated and lasting solution can only be found when all the neighbouring states—UP, Haryana, Rajasthan, and Punjab—where the parali burning continues unabated—are involved. However, not all these states are ruled by the same political party. For instance, if in Delhi there is now a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, in Punjab the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is in power. The net result is that any well-coordinated, holistic, and workable solution is finessed by political one-upmanship, which citizens watch mutely, because those who are supposed to find an answer to their annual ordeal are busy fighting with each other.

Undisposed garbage is another burning issue. In Delhi and its vicinity, there are—at the least—two mountain-sized garbage dumps, over which vultures—the few that still exist—keep a sharp eye. They are the locus of unbearable stench, disease, and unforgivable municipal neglect. Even within cities, at every corner, one finds heaps of garbage piled up without an efficient disposal system. We keep our homes spick and span, but what happens outside is not our concern—and apparently, not that of the government either.

We may soon become the world’s third-largest economy, but the supply of uninterrupted, good-quality electricity is still a dream. A few kilometres outside the national capital, habitations get electricity for but a few hours every day, with huge voltage fluctuations. For those who can afford it, the only solution is a diesel generator—which only adds to the problem of pollution.

The regular supply of water is also a big problem. In Bengaluru, even upscale residential areas of India’s IT capital get water for only a few hours a day. In the poorer areas across Indian cities, citizens have to line up for hours for the visit of a tanker to get water. The more resourceful among the water-deprived either dig an illegal borewell—for which they have to go hundreds of feet deep, since groundwater has fallen to such low levels—or, equally illegally, tap water supply lines directly and install a pressure pump that fills their tanks but siphons off supply to all the others.

According to World Bank data, 49 per cent of India’s urban population lived in slums in 2020—marginally down from 55 per cent in 2002. Some of the world’s largest slums exist in the most prominent metropolises in India: Dharavi in Mumbai, Bhalswa in Delhi, Nochikuppam in Chennai, Rajendra Nagar in Bengaluru, and Basanti in Kolkata. In other words, for all the tinsel we project about highways and overbridges, the vast underbelly of all our cities consists of millions of the poor and deprived, who, in overcrowded settlements, eke out a living without almost any basic facilities. In fact, the consequence of India’s unsustainable—and growing—economic disparity is that next to almost every affluent area, there is inevitably a slum—an ugly disfiguration for the privileged, but indispensable for the supply of cheap labour for those very people who resent it.

The disconcerting thing is that for most Indians, the lack of such basic amenities—which are taken for granted in other countries—is met with stoicism and resignation. In general, their approach reflects the sentiments of these lines of Ghalib: ‘Ranj se khoon ghar ho insaan tau mit jata hai ranj; mushkilen mujh par padi itni ke aasaan ho gayi’: if man is habituated to pain, then pain does not remain; so many hardships fell on me, that they did not remain.

But politicians and planners must understand that they cannot take the long-suffering acceptance of citizens for granted. One day, people may well say: enough is enough!

(Pavan K Varma is an author, diplomat, and former member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha. The views expressed are personal)