Book review | The Indian Metropolis: An account of India’s challenged sprawling urban spaces

Feroze Varun Gandhi, a third-term Member of Parliament in Lok Sabha should be admired for his unwavering focus on India across rural and urban spaces alike. To his credit is now a new remarkable “The Indian Metropolis” that systematically deconstructs India’s urban spaces and reflects on the serious challenges confronting their aspirations for empowerment. Prior to that, his last book “A Rural Manifesto: Realising India’s Future through Her Villages” was well-received by the readers for the book’s merit in keeping an alternative approach to mainstream ideas of rural development. With both the books, Feroze Varun Gandhi has deliberately proved himself as a thinking person in public life. Written with an aim to begin a national conversation on the stratified characters of India’s urban spaces and somehow their reluctant propensity for the transition envisaged by the policies, “The Indian Metropolis” succeeds in providing a comprehensive account of issues besides offering solutions. A compassionate and detailed book was surely a rarity on India’s burgeoning urban places that are notin existential harmony, facing absolute and comparative deprivationamong the city-dwellers. This is just not another book of a politician, written with deep empathy and common sense, this is a must-read for all who believe in India’s potential and thus want a clear imagination prevails for an inclusive urban design. The book highlights how Urban India has grown significantly over the decades with emerging as the economic hubs in post-reforms times, adding about 90 million people to their fold. Who are they all? Not all of them are part of the ‘great Indian middle class’, a majority of them are forced and displaced with their economic miseries. They are destined to move from their own places, the reason being their pursuits of survival. While the cities are sleepless for all kinds of people, these are desperate centres for the people who are badly marginalised and struggle on a daily basis for their existential being only. [caption id=“attachment_12658202” align=“alignnone” width=“176”] The Indian Metropolis: Deconstructing India’s Urban Spaces by Feroze Varun Gandhi; Rupa Publications, 842pp (Hardback). Image courtesy: Amazon.com[/caption] The book’s back cover also the ‘writings on the walls’: “The majority of our urban population, however, is concentrated in the largest cities, and only 27 percent lives in small and mid-sized towns. India’s growth is increasingly found in small towns and cities. Some of them, being primarily state capitals, have significant competitive advantages over the metros.” Noticeably, to find an answer of causes behind growing divisions and endless sufferings of those left out in the process of India’s economic rise and finding a long-term solutions, the author makes it a point as he writes, “As we move past the Covid-19 pandemic, there is a clear need to improve urban planning. India has over 350 towns with populations between 1-5 lakh people, and over 42 towns with a population between 5-10 lakh people. Their growth needs encouragement, particularly for Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities, through better provision of public services.” For the human and sustainable urban development, it is much needed to recognise the growing impact of climate change that too has a class character as it affects the people differently based on their economic status. Global warming certainly comes heavily on everyone but eventually it affects the people working in 48-degree more than the professionals working in the air-conditioned comfort zones under 24-degree. The disparity remains the same while the weather makes the transition to rainy and later winter seasons, this necessitates a humane approach for urban development planning and implementation. The liveable cities with optimised resources and planning should be envisioned and they should be called ‘smart’, this is the glaring need of our time for India. The book deconstructs the complexities well and offers pragmatic way out for simplifying the urban planning with bringing people at the core, it says: “A push on designing around existing population density will require measures to enhance affordable housing, improve and integrate transportation options, along with greater funding and support for public health and the environment. Making our cities more affordable to the urban poor will require work across various dimensions, in a holistic fashion.” These are the words of wisdom and should be emulated by the policymakers having the privilege to shape the course of Urban India and without stopping its urge to embrace innovation and new technology. An inclusive commitment for Urban India should be top on the priority and public policy should give it an impetus, irrespective of the compulsions of realpolitik, there should be a consensus among the political classes to maintain a stand when it comes to dealing with the developmental paradigms of India. The book gives signals of it, also it makes direct reference in search of having an informed national conversation on various matters concerning the equitable growth of our cities. On page-94, an important issue of segregating areas into rural or urban and the developmental impact caused by it get aptly elucidated: “Our policies on public health and poverty elimination are perceived to focus more on rural areas than urban ones, as they have poorer socio-economic conditions than their urban counterparts. Thus, within the gambit of development needs and schemes, it is implicit that areas are correctly classified as urban or rural, and the failure to do so would lead to either inadequate provisioning of public goods or misallocations and improper targeting of public resources.” Spread in nine long chapters, the book catches the imagination of readers of all kinds. It surely opens up the world within Urban India with in-depth research, case studies and analysis of practically all critical aspects of urbanisation besides going far and wide on water availability, urban crime, healthcare, urban transportation, affordable housing, urban unemployment and businesses, urban financing and urban planning at large. The book is a monumental addition to a knowledge ecosystem that still cares to be inquiring about the possibilities—and thus in process, transpiring the changes required for making our cities work as places of home rather than despair. Emerging out of an unprecedented crisis like Covid-19 pandemic and aftershocks has not been easy for the world (including India), the post-pandemic world calls for giving increased attention to human development. For realising a positive way forward, how cities will work in the times to come will surely play the decisive roles. An “Urban India for All” should guide the plan, processes and goal-settings. Feroze Varun Gandhi’s “The Indian Metropolis” should be hailed as a masterpiece for bringing the right discourses to the fore. The author is a policy professional, columnist and writer with a special focus on South Asia. Views expressed are personal. Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News , India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.