Urban governance

INEQUALITY, MOBILITY, AND URBANISATION China and India: Amitabh Kundu - Editor; Indian Council of Social Science Research and Manak Publication Pvt. Ltd., G-19, Vijay Chowk, Laxmi Nagar, New Delhi-110092. Rs. 600.

THIS IS a collection of papers presented at a seminar held in Beijing in April 1997 under the joint auspices of the Indian Council of Social Science Research and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. The focus of the seminar was the challenge posed by the current process of urban industrial development in terms of displacement or rural population and their absorption within the urban population in India and China.

Many developing countries have been facing problems of regional imbalance, exodus of population from less developed to more developed regions and deficiencies in basic amenities in their urban centres.

China and India are no exception to this. They may follow different models of development but social scientists have found a few similarities between them in respect of the process and pattern of migration and urbanisation.

Moreover, certain aspects, such as spatial distribution of population, movement of labour from agriculture to manufacturing and tertiary activities and rural-urban migration, have not been in the core of development debate on globalisation.

The need for addressing these issues was being felt by social scientists in recent years. That was the context in which the Beijing seminar was held, providing an opportunity for sharing the experiences of the two countries.

The introductory chapter by the editor, who is an acknowledged expert in urban affairs, presents an excellent overview of the contribution of both the Chinese and Indian scholars at the seminar. As he has noted, the papers presented by the Chinese scholars provide interesting insights into the development dynamics of contemporary China and mostly touch upon the aspects of rural-urban inequality, migration and urbanisation. The analysis of urbanisation and migration trends, with reference to the development strategy followed by the government, brings out the fact that China's distribution of urban population in the late 1970s became much more balanced, with a higher proportion of population living in the small and medium cities than in 1949.

The post-1978 policies too have resulted in the number of small towns increasing six-fold between 1978 and 1994. A significant increase in the number of small and medium towns as also in their demographic growth in the next two decades has been projected.

At the same time the scholars have cautioned against allowing unrestricted rural-urban migration as that would lead to serious problems in many of the cities.

Another point made in the Chinese presentations is that liberalisation has had a negative impact on rural economy. Initially there was rise in rural income with collective farming giving way to household responsibility system but soon thereafter there was transfer of resources from rural to urban area and consequent decline in investment in agriculture. As a consequence, economic and social infrastructure in rural China came to be in a bad shape.

The urbanisation process has naturally brought with it problems for the migrants in urban areas, increase in crime rate in the cities, environmental pollution in the cities and rural-urban disparity in wages. But it is realised that since the process of urbanisation cannot be reversed it has to be regulated in a manner that would help absorption of surplus rural labour in urban areas and lead to a balanced development of small, medium and large towns.

All these aspects are covered in the Chinese presentations, which not only analyse the situation but also suggest strategies to be adopted to achieve the objective of sustainable urban development.

The presentations by Indian scholars provide a comparative analysis of the pattern of urbanisation and migration in different states.

Diblab Dasgupta brings out the contrast between the mono-centric pattern in urbanisation in West Bengal and the pluralistic pattern in Punjab and between both West Bengal and Punjab on the one side and Kerala on the other. He concludes that the Kerala pattern, though desirable, is not easy to replicate largely because of its ecological requirements.

Meera Kosambi focuses on Maharashtra where she finds the wide disparity in degree of urbanisation among the districts leading to uneven spread, besides the tendency towards metrpolitanisation. K. Nagaraj's paper presents a case study of Dakshina Karnataka while M. Vijayanunni's provides an inter-state analysis of housing and other basic amenities in urban areas.

O. P. Mathur has highlighted the crisis of urban governance, while Manoranjan Mohanty, who led the Indian delegation to the seminar, has presented a comparative study of structure of urban governance in India and China.

Amitabh Kundu and Shalini Gupta have brought out the declining population mobility, liberalisation and growing regional imbalances.

The authors attribute this, inter alia, to the growing assertion of regional identity, adoption of land use restructions at the city levels and others.

They point out that decreasing mobility of population poses a major challenge for the development strategy being followed.

Though four years have passed since the seminar was held the findings of various studies presented therein should still prove useful for students of urban affairs besides planners and policy- makers.

The presentations bring out some striking similarities in urbanisation process between the two countries and the scope for learning from each other's experiences.

B. S. PADMANABHAN

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