Our people living in cities

To solve problems of the people of India, to conquer illiteracy, erase poverty, overcome gender inequality, eradicate child labour, we must know how the Indian people live. When we think about “how India works” we see that it is the people, the hopes that they have that keeps the country moving on. People work hard and sustain themselves and their families. These bonds and relationships they have in their cultural set up keeps them connected. They have each other to keep themselves going. They show each other the pathways to the realisation of their basic needs—access to jobs, access to education, access to loans, access to housing facilities and so on. This inter-dependency leads to clustering of people and thus villages came about. When specialists were needed like iron smiths, gold smiths, carpenters, masons, shop keepers, vaidhs (doctors), bigger villages came about. Then towns formed may be on banks of rivers or around specialisations (religious specialisation lead to the making of Varanasi). With Industrialisation much later on, towns became cities. We have municipalities and townships, which are committed to look after the towns and cities. However they may try, they are not able to meet the needs of the people. All cities have poor waste management systems. Piped water for drinking is not provided to all. There is a steady flow of migration from rural to urban India; and we cannot cope with the problems related to this migration. There are areas which have become slums—no water connections, no electricity no sewage system. But civic authorities spend well on roads, sports complexes, swimming pools etc. For the very poor, there is no place to live, may be pavements, if allowed. Some minimum living space must be provided to the new arrivals to the cities. Since pitching tents is not allowed, a shed could be made for them.These people are illiterate and cannot ask for their rights. Among the citizens of city are street children, destitute persons, construction labourers, domestic servants, daily wage earners, coolies, small traders, rickshaw pullers, drivers etc. They have dire needs (no place to stay) and they are not heard. We classify the Indian people in terms of gender group or age group or we differentiate them on basis of urban or rural, in order to deal with their problems. But this is not the right way to visualise the situation. Only real classification is rich and poor. Having access to civic amenities and not having basic amenities differentiates a class of neglected people. Poverty has to be addressed first. Only after solving that we can look at the other problems of the people. Only after that we can look at urbanism and how to best resolve stressful life in cities.
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