Sustainability comes from a multi prong approach like (1) Awareness at public and political levels (2) Urban transport and environment (3) Water resources and demand management (4) Risk of climate change- our big cities are all coastal.
India is a multicultural country. There are both urban and rural challenges that need to be overcome for India to maintain its sustainable development. Urbanization is taking a toll on both urban and rural development. Close to 30% of the Indian population is living in urban areas and this number is bound to reach 40-50% in the next twenty years. This means a large population has to be sustained in small pockets of high density areas. Now with more people moving into urban areas India is slowly shifting away from an agricultural economy to an industrial economy. This would mean a severe resource crunch. This would mean cities have to expand and agricultural land has to be given up to meet the basic need of shelter for people. But this again brings us back to square one, a vicious circle, because less agricultural land would mean less produce of agricultural products and a greater burden on India’s exports as far grain and pulses are concerned.
Another area where India might face challenges in the future will be in electricity generation to meet all her industrial and domestic needs. The 123 agreement between India and the United States of America equips India sufficiently with the necessary technical knowhow but keeping in mind the rapid progress that India is making and also taking into account her population size there would be some hurdles in meeting the electricity demands. First of all to go nuclear would entail a huge investment in infrastructure and this would mean cutting down budgets from other areas. Secondly international political issues come into the picture if India uses this nuclear technology for her defense tests because this would mean a termination of the 123 agreement and a complete cut in the supply of nuclear fuel from other nuclear powered countries like France, Australia etc. This would hamper India’s progress and would tend to be one of the major barriers in her sustainable development.
The urban transport in India needs a changeover. Most of the cities are choked with vehicles. With India becoming the preferred location for manufacturing of automobiles by world’s leading auto majors we can only assume that the number of vehicles on road would increase by a tremendous amount in the next twenty years. The need for India is to have a good public transport system that caters to the needs of the common man without hassles. Now more vehicles on the road would mean more pollution and this defeats the sustainable urban development program as far as environment is concerned. The challenge is how to encourage investment in the automobile industry in India and also simultaneously giving thoughtful consideration as to how to cater to the needs of a clean and green environment with such a large number of vehicles on road.
Even though India boasts of a long coast line and many rivers that run through her lands, she would lack in providing sufficient portable drinking water to its citizens. To take advantage of the large quantities of sea water available to us we need the right technology to convert salt water into portable drinking water. This needs sufficient capital investment in setting up of the technology and system, maintaining it and also closely monitoring it. A second solution would be to link all her rivers but this again would encounter local political situations where one state would not allow waters to pass freely to another state.
Sustainable development competes with many deeply entrenched values and therefore progress is slow. With a proper feedback mechanism, which includes monitoring, learning and adaptation we can strive to put in a procedure which aims towards creating a sustainable India. Many of the projects described above either would take a long time to get implemented if the government alone tries to pursue it. More public-private partnerships with foreign direct investment would help in speeding up the process of implementing things.
No comments:
Post a Comment