New Delhi and Mumbai are world class cities. Just askanybody who's never been outside of India. But don’t go to the United Nations.
According to a new UN study of the world’s largest cities,India’s most prestigious metropolises are neither lovable nor livable. Despitefrequently patting itself on the back for its trees (what of the garbage strewnaround their boles!?), New Delhi ranked dead out of 95 cities on the UN’senvironmental index. And neither Delhi nor Mumbai was able to break into thetop half in “prosperity”.
On environmental sustainability, Delhi scored only 0.448 outof 1, much lower than Dhaka or Kathmandu, a national newspaper reported.
The study rated air quality (particulate matter10), CO2emissions and indoor pollution.
“While Delhi has progressed a lot and urban infrastructuredevelopment has been significant, the pollution level here is higher than mostof the other cities,” the paper quoted Eduardo Lopez Moreno, head of the citymonitoring branch of UN Human Settlement Programme, as saying.
Delhi’s miserable air quality was blamed on a massiveincrease in personal cars and motorbikes over the past several years.
Of course, it’s easier to live here than it is in many otherIndian cities, if that's any consolation.
Releasing the report, AK Mishra, secretary, ministry ofhousing and urban poverty alleviation, said that surveys have found that about60 percent of people in urban areas in India don't have an assured source ofincome and that most of the urban funds, whether meant for roads, sewage orwater supply, go to “well-off” areas as compared to undeveloped areas inhabitedby the poor, the paper said.
In terms of “prosperity,” which can loosely be defined asquality of life, neither Mumbai nor Delhi scored too well, the newspaperreported elsewhere.
Mumbai ranked 52 among 95 cities while Delhi came in 58th,according to the paper.
Shanghai, Beijing and Bangkok were all ranked higher thanthe two Indian cities, but on this measure, both managed to outscore Kathmanduand Dhaka.
Since environmental factors like air pollution played a rolein the prosperity ranking, India's terrible scores there dragged its citiesdown. But gross inequality was a factor,too, the newspaper said.
The report for the first time has exposed the trend of howcity planning and urban development always protect the interest of the rich. Itsays that in many cities, urban planning has been controlled by the real estatebusiness, the paper said. "Cities that report to the interests of thebetter off or only focus on strategic economic interventions in specificspaces, tend to create enclaves of prosperity for a select few," thenewspaper quotes the UN report as saying.
Meanwhile, across Asia, Africa and Latin America, thewealthy and politically connected elite make sure life remains hell for thepoor.
"Through political influence, bribery and corruption,these powerful groups manage to distort urban plans, dodge spatial or legalrules, reduce the production of public goods and manipulate the power ofeminent domain; in the process they capture unfair shares of a city'spotential, resources and prosperity to the detriment of large, poor majoritiesof urban populations," the report says.
