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2.1 CITIES, RESOURCE BASE AND RISKS
Most of the Indian cites have evolved from small towns formed along river banks, trade centers, administrative
centers and army cantonments. At the time of their formation, they were reliant on local sources of water,
since pumping and long distance water conveyance technologies did not exist. Therefore, access to
year round water sources was one of the main considerations for the formation and survival of these
towns. The rise and fall of cities were often linked with water resources ever since Indus valley civilization. A
majority of those towns are river bank or coastal towns.
Indian cities present diversity in hydrological situations ranging from river banks e.g. Delhi, Kanpur, Kolkata,
Cuttack to upper catchmentssmall river basins in semi-arid regions e.g. Bangalore, Hyderabad,
Indore. Water resource base of the large riparian cities has been exploited upstream, especially over
last two centuries of intense development of irrigation infrastructure. This has led to saline water intrusion in
to the local sources in many coastal cities especially Calicut, Mangalore and Surat. With agricultural
development upstream and the city growth, competition and conlict over traditional sources of water, large
cities like Delhi, Agra and Bangalore have been impacted.
The cities across India are already facing insuficient access to lifeline services and infrastructure to cater
the existing population. Both urban population growth 31 over 2001-2011 as well as change in lifestyles
has led to increase in total water demands. The decadal gross water demand growth can be more than 50,
considering both the factors. For large cities, additional demand implies tapping distant water sources, which
need large investments or unsustainable levels of ground water withdrawal as the case of Indore and
Bangalore.
India has renewable resource availability of only about 1,550 cubic meters cumcapitayear with 30.5
accounted by resources lowing from outside the country. India is already a water deicit country with the
total renewable water resources of about 1,907 cu.km. per year, as against a minimum need of about 4,000
cumcapitayear of water required for all uses
1
. FAO, 2010. With the expansion of cities and water demands,
new water infrastructure depending on distant sources
1 It includes water required for agriculture and industrial production, drinking water and environmental services to support a person.
are necessary to enable cities to expand to sizes beyond their local resource base as discussed previously.
The quality of life has suffered in the urban centres due to the cities’ inability to meet growing demands
of lifeline services as well as overcrowding. Although small towns are numerous, the 400 odd
cities harbouring about two-third of India’s urban populationoffering diverse employment opportunities
and means of livelihood are the main centres of attraction for migration, despite the fact that physical
infrastructure in terms of housing, drinking water supply, drainage are inadequate and unreliable.
Therefore, quality of life has suffered in these urban centres not only due to migration, but more so due
to expanding gap between the demand and supply of necessary services and other infrastructure facilities.
Unchecked land prices and unaffordable housing forced the poor to search for informal solutions resulting
in mushrooming of slums and squatter settlements Mundu Bhagat 2008. Slums usually develop to meet
these unmet demands on peripheral and marginal lands on the outskirts of city, on hill slopes and low
lying areas, drainage lines, and also on the land where the owners have either no control or ownership is
uncertain and not contested.
Growing trafic and congestion is another major challenge arising out of high density and preference
of private vehicles for commuting. As reported earlier, neglect of public transport over decades has given rise
to this situation along with formal and informal Para- transit system trying to ill the gap. The cities have
resorted to knee jerk actions of building lyovers, ring roads and bypasses, without paradigm shift towards
better public transport systems. Only recently, some of the cities have chosen to opt for metro railway
systems or Bus Rapid transport systems. With already congested narrow-road dominant central business
districts, it would be a challenge to extend these public transport systems to bring about a radical shift to
public transport.
With natural growth as well as push migration from rural hinterlands, most of the cities are likely to
expand signiicantly over the next few decades and the risk proile expected to worsen. Improved access
from new bridges and growing real estate demand,
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the cities have expanded from one bank to both banks of rivers, thereby constricting the lood plains. As the
city expands, the demand for high value land within and periphery leads to blockage of natural drainage,
encroachment of lood buffers reservoirs and tanks by landills, narrowing of river channels and lood plains.
These encroachments increase the lood risks of the cities. The haphazard peripheral growth led by the
private sector and individual houses by multiple land owners further add to the complexity of the challenge.
As the cities expand by multitude of land developers, natural drainage is often blocked and increase in
impervious areas as well as illing of lakes have increased the pluvial lood risks.
Growing gap between master plan projections and actual expansion of the cities can lead to increased
risks of loods, water logging as well as water scarcities in many cities over coming decades even
without any signiicant change in precipitation pattern. The recurrent loods and water scarcities in cities like
Delhi, Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Pune, Surat, Cuttack, and Kolkata highlight this challenge. While urban planners
are expected to incorporate these issues in developing expansion plans and master plans, in practice the
hydrological issues are not incorporated in master plans.
2.2 DEMOGRAPHIC PROFILE
Kategori