Padma Prakash: Remembered villages?

MOOT POINT

What happens to villages during the process of urbanisation? Do they disappear? Do village settlements coalesce/transform into towns and cities?

Will the current and traditional links between villages and agriculture cease to exist? What happens to village societies, village markets, and also village mores, lifestyles, and local cultures?

In the current context of a new thrust on urban planning and urban renewal, are we paying sufficient attention to the multidimensional changes occurring in villages moving to the next phase of modernisation, which is, so far at least, inevitably urbanisation? It may be useful to revisit pointers that showed up a decade ago.

Unesco's initiative, "Management of Social Transformations (MOST)", had pursued some of these questions. Scholars of urban studies had pointed out that urban growth had become highly skewed.

Data showed that the share of urban centres with a population of 100,000 or more had risen significantly""from 26 per cent in 1901 to 65 per cent in 1991""but the percentage share of classes IV, V and VI towns (less than 20,000 people) had fallen precipitously from 47 per cent to 10 per cent over the same period.

Also, the number of urban centres, particularly smaller ones, had not registered a rise, as they were expected to, through a transformation of villages and rural settlements.

Consequently, while the density of existing urban centres rose eightfold, the number of urban centres only doubled. In other words, the transition from village-to-town-to-city was not taking place robustly.

This has led to a dual urban structure, with the larger cities rapidly growing linkages""of commerce and opportunities""with global economies, while the smaller ones remain connected only to the hinterland, causing in turn all manner of disparities across the size of settlements.

There is evidence that poverty levels in smaller towns are growing more sharply than in larger cities. The conclusion, drawn over a decade ago, was that economic and demographic growth was likely to be concentrated in about 60 cities in India, with more than a million people each.

Despite this, no corrections seem to have been applied either to urban development policies and programmes or to concepts of urbanisation so as to encourage the growth of linkages, physical and commercial, as well as social and cultural, between small and big towns, between large villages and neighbouring towns.

Take, for instance, road projects. In India, hundreds of kilometres of roads and railways have been added in the last decade. What happens to settlements along these tracks?

Travelling along a part of the Golden Quadrilateral project that has transformed the NH4 between Mumbai and Bangalore, the question pops up vividly.

It's a dream road""at least it will be when it is completed""to those who are travelling long distances between the metros, and to the big transport operators.

Large parts of this route are densely populated, well irrigated and rich in agriculture, with strings of villages and towns all along. But only a few of these merit exits/entries to the new highway.

On the old NH4, local produce used to be sold on the roadside""coconuts and watermelon grown on the banks of local rivers; imli, red chillies and sugarcane in season; freshly manufactured jaggery; an assortment of local vegetables and fruits; cane and grass baskets, mats, and so on.

Today none of that is to be seen on the roads. But of course, even if the roadside stalls existed, motorists whizzing by at 80-100 kmph would be unlikely to risk stopping at short notice, as they did on the old NH4.

What do the people who sold the roadside ware do now? How have they been reabsorbed into the local economic community? Have such super highways made communication between village and village and village and town easier and more frequent?

In what manner will all this change local perceptions of education, employment and people's aspirations? Will economic and social disparities across the region disappear?

How will this affect""for it most certainly will""local lifestyles, social, economic and cultural relations? We have no comprehension of the nature of such change.

Nor does the National Highway Authority fund and accommodate such ongoing research projects associated with the new highways they build.

Might not some of this understanding have led to creative, people-oriented planning of informal market spaces, for instance, along the highways?

One might contend that this roadside activity comprised a minuscule proportion of the local commercial activity that has now received a boost.

Possibly. But there is little hard evidence of that. Are roads really bringing in new industry or are they only accelerating migration to urban settlements?

Are new sources of income only replacing lost land-based incomes without adding to the net family income? Does the availability of cash lead to better access to health care, or, for that matter, better nutrition?

We need ongoing research studies that can capture the multidimensionality of the impact of such modernisation/urbanisation.

It would be a pity if anthropologists and historians rediscovered towns and villages only after they have disappeared.