A New Manifesto for Urban Area Development and Living -India- 1

A good and "smart" City is where people rich and poor are able to work and play comfortably. And strive for a dignified journey thru the 'bhavsagar', i.e. work for "arth" and "kaam" in a "dharmic" way to achieve "moksha".

There is no gainsaying that our cities leave a lot to be desired : many are just dumps. Successive governments having realized this reality have launched many Urban Development and Rehab schemes, unfortunately with little effect.

Albeit, exploding populations have put paid to the gains made under all such schemes. The current PM Mr Narendra Modi has elevated the level of concern in a manner that is uniquely his own.  Jury is still out after two and half years.

 I suspect that philosophical insights underpinning the Urban Development policies have run their course and need rethink from basics. Most urban development insights and rules have been developed in the west, mainly USA and Europe.

Let's first consider a few vital physical parameters of India and USA. 

	Area	Land	Arable	Perm. Crops	Perm Pastures	Forests	Other	Population
	M Sq Km	M Sq Km						Millions
USA	9.833	9.147	16.8%	0.3%	27.4%	33.3%	22.2%	321
India	3.287	2.973	52.8%	4.2%	3.5%	23.1%	16.4%	1252

 USA (9.15 Million Sq Km land) has 3X area than India (2.973 Sq M). India serves 4X population of USA  (1252 Million vs 321 Million).

 Per unit of land, a finite resource, India supports 12 people vs 1 person that USA supports. Europeans are also blessed with similar geographical advantage.

This miracle has mainly been possible for the fact that we are largely vegetarians, who need about 3.5 times less agricultural area vs the largely non vegetarian populations of USA. The rest of the difference ~3.5 times is made up by poor nutritional intake by us and by intensive cultivation.  Please note that the arable lands of USA -153.7 Million hectares is comparable to India's 157 million hectares.

 The Population growth rates of India do add another level of pressure on lands.

Therefore, Land is critical to our well-being - hoped for- which must be used wisely. Our Land use policies must recognize these realities, but don't.

 Hence the need to rethink our Urban Development Policies.