This refers to Shankar Acharya's column "India's urbanisation challenge" (A Piece Of My Mind, May 8). The carrying capacities of our cities are already under tremendous strain and focusing on new showcase cities will aggravate the problem. We should be focusing on making our current cities better and liveable. By 2030, about 600 million, about 41 per cent, of the population will be living in cities and India will have to invest about $1.2 trillion, about eight times the current levels, to provide basic amenities such as water, education, sanitation, pollution control, electricity, housing, transport and a host of other facilities. The growing disease burden in urban areas will be another major challenge. Nutrition, lifestyle choices, accidents and injuries are some of the other challenges that need to be addressed. Only 20 per cent of India's urban sewage is treated before disposal, and few cities have sanitary landfills for solid waste-handling arrangements. About 70 per cent of new jobs will be created in cities by 2030. Many of our cities have inadequate public transport and we should move from personal to mass transport systems, if we have to avoid the fate of other cities that are plagued by air pollution.
H N Ramakrishna Novi, Michigan
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