Urban Sustainability in India: Evolution, Challenges and Opportunities

Abstract

Indian policy-makers have long recognized the inevitability of urbanization as a necessary ingredient for national growth. India is steadily proceeding towards accommodating about one-eighth the share of the urban population of the world by 2050. The challenge of crafting an urbanization trajectory that is sustainable for its large cities as well as innumerable smaller towns has drawn attention from citizens and policy-makers. More recently, the renewed emphasis on sustainability, created by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), has brought cities across the world under focus. This chapter attempts to shed light on the state of sustainability of Indian urbanization as a whole. The challenge before India is formidable as its urban governance suffers from lack of capacity, data, evidence, and a holistic approach towards urban planning. At the same time, emerging there are stories of smaller progress, demonstrating enhanced interest from the common urbanite, civil society, private sector, and a more informed political class, in changing the state of affairs of the space they thrive in.