For the first time in 90 years, more people have added to the urban population than rural. While migration is an irreversible process, are Indian cities ready with infrastructure, opportunities and human rights for the masses?
Shobhan Saxena | TNN
Tired and angry, Bishram Singh picked his gun and started firing inside the South Delhi office of a company where he worked as a guard. As he sprayed bullets on other employees, Singh kept screaming about his low pay and long working hours. After hitting four people, Singh, 23, turned the gun on himself. The migrant from Etah in UP and two victims of his rage died on the spot. Singh’s family in a faraway village heard about the incident on television. They were horrified to know that their boy, who had gone to Delhi to make money and pull them out of poverty, was dead. Three weeks later, on September 23, another poor family — this time in Reva (Madhya Pradesh) — was devastated when they were told that their eldest son, Umesh Kant Pandey, 23, had been shot to death by a man who refused to pay a fee of Rs 27 at a toll plaza on the Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway.
Both Singh and Pandey had come to the Capital in search of a job, some money and a better life. While Singh belonged to a family of farmers, Pandey was a computer graduate who was forced to sit at the toll booth as he couldn’t get a job back home. Now, as Singh’s family struggles to accept that he killed innocent people, Pandey’s parents, wife of four months and a physically-challenged brother stare into a dark future as they have lost the family’s only breadwinner. The aspirations of two young men — both migrants from the country’s poor dustbowls — and dreams of their families ended in meaningless violence.
Migration is not a new phenomenon. Indians began shifting from the countryside to urban areas in big numbers when the British started setting up factories, ports and army cantonments in cities even as they squeezed the farmers. In post-independence India, due to a lopsided industrial policy and lack of land reforms, there has been a
spurt in migration. Now, these numbers are so big that for the first time in 90 years India's urban population has grown more — 91 million more than in the 2001 census — than the rural population (90.6 million).
Should this be a cause for concern in India where just 31% people live in urban areas, up from 27% in 2001 but still significantly lower than the rate in many developing countries? While experts like P Sainath have claimed that millions of Indians are being “forced to leave their villages for cities and towns because farm incomes are drying up”, others argue that the government’s flagship job guarantee programme, NREGS, has actually checked migration of workers from villages to cities.
But numbers don’t lie. Neither do images of Indian cities choking under power cuts, scarcity of water and polluted air, or reports of conflicts and tensions caused by the burgeoning population in urban India. In Punjab, according to the census figures, while the total population grew at 13.73 %, the urban population increased by 25.72%. “If the urban growth rate is twice the general growth rate, it can be said that 50% of this growth is due to migration,’’ says S L Sharma, a former professor of sociology who now heads a task force on urban development.
Poor farmhands from eastern UP and Bihar have been migrating to Punjab since the Green Revolution days, but a lot of them landed in the industrial hubs of Ludhiana and Mandi Gobindgarh as their native areas remain trapped in poverty. Though their financial condition has improved, their living conditions remain subhuman. According to Punjab Urban Development Authority, in 2007 there were more than 3,000 unauthorised colonies in Punjab. “In 28 class I and II cities, one-fourth of our urban population is living in slums,” says Sharma.
Indian cities are cruel to migrants, but they are streaming in for various reasons. In Karnataka, crop failure and low farm income in the northern part of the state have forced many to move to Bangalore in search of jobs. In Jammu & Kashmir, two lakh people have moved to Srinagar in 10 years because of lack of education and health centres in the villages. “Migration to cities is natural as that’s where the jobs are. When they come to the city, pressure on infrastructure increases and there is possibility that they may not be sufficient jobs for them when there is slow down in the economy,” says V Ravichandar, an expert on urban affairs.
Migration may have put pressure on big cities, but the real story might be unfolding in small towns. According to urban planners and researchers who recently met at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences to analyse the process of urbanization, it was turning into a horizontal process with more big villages turning urban rather than existing towns adding more people. Amitabh Kundu, professor at the Centre for the Study of Regional Development, Jawaharlal Nehru University, attributes the phenomena to ‘census activism' wherein more 'census towns' are created by definition—2,774 in the 2011 census. "If the rapid urbanization is actually true, we will be faced with the major challenge of creating manufacturing, jobs and services in these newly-created towns. We need a JNNURM for smaller towns," says Kundu.
But the migration story is not all about pressure on urban infrastructure or violence against migrants. A large number of migrants have not only become successful entrepreneurs and pulled many others out of poverty, they have also helped Indian cities become multi-lingual and multi-cultural. In 1966, TR Misra came to Ludhiana from Gonda, UP, with Rs 5 in his pocket and worked in a factory for Rs 45 a month. Today, he owns a firm with an annual turnover of Rs 25 crore. "I still remember the times when I used to run after the jeeps passing by our village. Today, I am manufacturing engineering goods. Sometimes, I do not believe that I have come so far,” says Mishra, who unsuccessfully contested the Lok Sabha election from Ludhiana in 2009 and plans to field three migrant candidates in the forthcoming assembly elections.
That the migrants have become a political factor in elections — local to national — in Mumbai and Delhi is old news. Now, they are also affecting the local culture. “Now, it’s cool to be Bihari. Many of my classmates try to speak like me,” says Kumar Anuj, a third-year student of Delhi University who came to the capital from Motihari three years ago. “A few decades ago nobody would have imagined chhath puja becoming an important event in Delhi and Mumbai, but it has.”
This may be one of the positive fallouts of migration but it can’t hide the problems caused by it. In recent years, migrant workers demanding better living conditions have gone on strike and rampage in Punjab. Two years ago, Ludhiana burned for three days when migrants took to streets to protest against crimes against them. The increase of new towns with poor amenities and few jobs could trigger massive social unrest that can derail the India story for good.
Shobhan.saxena@timesgroup.com
With reports from Madhavi Rajadhyaksha, Mumbai; S Seethalakshmi, Bangalore; Ramaninder K Bhatia, Chandigarh; Vaivasvat Venkat, Ludhiana; M Saleem Pandit, Srinagar, and Ravinder Makhaik, Shimla.
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