Challenges and Opportunities for Planning Sustainable Urban Settlements in India.docx

Challenges and Opportunities for Planning Sustainable Urban
Settlements in India
 Jit Kumar Gupta
 Jit.kumar1944@gmai.co
m
India is urbanising rapidly and massively due to; rapid increase in population,
uncontrolled migration of people from rural to urban areas and from small to large
urban areas; large investments being made in urban housing, increasing
capacity of road network, accelerating urban transport, ensuring universal water
supply, improving power-related infrastructures; promoting mission related to
smart cities, and focussing on rapid urban growth, development and expansion
of cities. Historically, number of urban centres and cities have also increased
numerically and physically, though not proportionately, when compared with the
increase in the urban population. Majority of increase in population is getting
localised in the existing towns/cities, leading to increase in density and causing
high degree of concentration and congestion.
Looking at the prevalent trends , urban growth is expected to continue at rapid
and massive pace, in the years to come, led by rapid migration, urban pull and
rural push with poverty pushing people from rural to urban areas . During last
110 years(1901-2011), India witnessed, urbanization level going up by merely 3
times; urban settlements numerically growing 4 times; total population multiplying
5 times; urban population increasing by whopping 15 times and rural population
increasing merely by 3.5 times. Massive shift of population to urban areas,
cannot simply/merely be rated as shift of demographics but has led to placing
cities/towns at the centre/core of India’s development trajectory. Cities
accordingly, has been rated and labelled as engines of economic growth,
generators of employment and providers of best social and physical
infrastructures. Smart City Mission has already documented that nearly 31% of
India’s current population lived in urban areas and contributed 63% of India’s
GDP (Census 2011). With increasing urbanization, urban areas are expected to
house 40% of India’s population and would contribute 75% of India’s GDP by
2030.
Urbanisation in India, remains typical and complex. It includes two variants of
urban areas- statutory and census town. Statutory towns are the urban areas
which have legal backing and declared as such under Municipal laws and called

as urban areas, whereas Census towns are not recognized as urban area by the
government, because they have been classified as urban by the Census of India
and not by any law. Census towns. Out of a total of 7935 towns in India, only
4041 were the statutory towns in 2011 census whereas remaining 3894 were
Census towns .During the decade 2001-2011, largest growth was recorded in
the number of Census towns , which increased from 1362 to 3894. During the
same period number of statutory towns increased from 3799 to 4041. Further the
level of urabanisation is also not uniformly distributed across different states of
the country. Southern India is more urbanized when compared to Northern India,
in terms of , having higher proportion of population living in the urban areas and
having larger concentration of cities having population more than 0.1 million .
Looking at the rapid industrialization and location of higher level of institutions
involved in technical and other education and large availability of qualified
manpower, southern and western states shall continue to dominate the Indian
Urbanisation in years to come.
Image; Urbanisation in India 2011, 2031; Source; au.pinterest.com
Despite the fact globally, India is currently ranked as second largest urban
system in the world after China but India , as a nation, has already achieved the
distinction of being the most population nation in the world, with human numbers
placed at 1.44 billion in 2024. Considering the existing rate of demographic
growth, India by the year 2050 will have a population of 1.6 billion. Further, as
per estimates made , 800 million people will be living in urban areas in 2050, as
compared to 379 million living in the year 2011.

Being the most populated country and having large share of urban population,
urban India will bring large number of issues, challenges and opportunities for
the nation. Challenges posed by rapid and massive urbanisation will include;
ensuring /promoting rational and planned development of the urban settlements;
making cities safe against growing vulnerability to climate change/global
warming/ natural/manmade disasters; overcoming problems of acute shortage of
affordable housing; rationalising/regulating pressure of uncontrolled migration;
minimising poverty; removing spatial inequalities in urban areas ; making cities
sustainable and resilient; overcoming problems related to exclusion and
ensuring rational economic development; ensuring universal accessibility to
basic infrastructures; generating adequate resources for urban development;
empowering urban local bodies; empowering and involving communities;
providing optimum quality of life; creating best of urban governance; making
cities zero- carbon and zero- waste.
Looking at the way cities are mushrooming and growing rapidly; major
planning, developmental and management issues and options to rationalise
urban development emerging in the Indian context would include;
Challenge of Uncontrolled Population Growth; The most challenging part
of the sustainable development in India, is the rapid increase of its massive
population, both urban and rural. In Indian context, it has been estimated that, on
an average every one second a human being is added and, after every 3 second
somebody is getting decimated. In conclusion, on an average, there is one
addition to Indian population@ every 2 seconds.
Based on the Census 200-2011, India , on an average, added 18.1 million
people every year. Based on Worldometer’s elaboration of the latest United
Nations data, the current population of India is placed at 1,462,961,992 as
of Saturday, June 7, 2025 . With population density placed at 492 per Km²
(1,275 people per mi²), Globally, India is ranked number one in the list
of countries by population. India is said to hold population equivalent
to 17.78% of the total world population, which means every sixth global person
is resident of India.
Holding such population and meeting its basic requirement of food, clothing,
shelter, healthcare, education, skilling and employment poses the greatest
challenge in the Indian context, unless population growth is rationalised and
population is brought under control to the level of available resources. With level
of urbanisation currently placed at 37.08%, Urban India holds 542.74 people,
when compared with 31.2% (377.78 million) in 2011, Indian cities and towns
continue to face enormous challenges of irrational and unplanned development.

With majority of population facing exclusion from shelter, infrastructures, skilling
and employment, Indian cities will continue to grow and expand in a most
irrational, unplanned and unsustainable manner. Accordingly, priority must go in
for regulating and controlling population growth and migration of people from
rural to urban areas and from smaller to larger urban areas.in urban areas. If
poverty and lack of education has been considered to be the major factors for
large addition to population, then , skilling, education and providing resources to
manage family remains the most effective tools to manage uncontrolled growth of
population. In addition, opting for a policy norm of two child family by the Indians
can help India in limiting the size of the family and growth of population. In
addition, empowering rural areas by adopting the policy of Regional Planning,
can help in rationalising distribution of population between urban and Rural
areas. In India, Kerala , as a state, has emerged as the role model of limiting the
size of state population, based on achieving goal of 100% literacy.
Indian States, having large population base, low level and urbanisation, limited
industrial growth, low level of literacy, subsistence agriculture, and high
percentage of poverty, remain the major contributors to the Indian population and
migration to other states/cities. These states need empowerment by skilling,
education and making communities literate besides providing opportunities of
gainful employment in understanding the context and distinct advantages of
limiting the size of the family. Governments can also adopt the mechanism of
providing incentives to the families opting for two child norm and
discouraging/de-incentivising families having more than two children. Having a
single/uniform civil code for entire country, restricting multiple marriages can also
help in limiting the size of the family in the Indian context. Eliminating reservation
in jobs, based on caste also need to be eliminated for reducing lopsided growth
of population .It needs to be understood and appreciated that compact and
skilled nations remain more progressive and more efficient/productive , when
compared with countries having large unskilled population. In order to make
optimum use of young population and make them yield dividend to the society
and the nation , it will be critical that this section of society is appropriately
educated, adequately skilled made aware about the challenges faced by India,
so as to make them active partners in lowering down and rationalise the growth
of population in India.

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