India's Enormous Urban Potential

The Times of India website now gives itemized city news from close to 30 Indian cities. I am proud to say that I have not visited only 3 from the list: Rajkot, Surat and Hubli.

There are many reasons to celebrate this focus away from the corridors of power in New Delhi to all these cities. For example: From Rajkot has come the news that a local entrepreneur has bought a car that flies!

The first thing worth noting is that, as far as administering the affairs of these 30 cities is concerned, local knowledge is paramount. Sitting in New Delhi, I can scarcely even read the news from all these cities thoroughly, forget about administering their affairs. So we don’t need a central ministry for urban development. We need mayors.

As an aside, let me add my own local knowledge of the 27 cities on the list that I have visited: almost all of them are a complete mess. Some have hope. All need immediate action to stem the rot. The local man on the spot, the mayor, must be empowered to deal with these matters. Top priority must be given to roads, footpaths and pedestrian safety. Next, cleanliness. These are areas where local knowledge must be allowed to come first.

So shout a Big Boo to our The State from On High.

And three loud cheers for the mayor of your city.

The city news page on the ToI website also tells us that there are many, many more cities in India to choose from – not just the 5 metros. This tells us that if the scope of urbanization is widened, so as to include the thousands of big and small towns that surround these 30 cities, India’s urban future can be bright indeed. The 5 metros are beyond repair, and life in each of them is a daily recurring nightmare. If more and more cities and towns mushroom, there will be greater choice. People will choose better cities and towns to live in.

Where will I go? Why, Mangalore, of course! This is the city where smokers rule. The news has it that the smoking ban of pmk ramadoss is totally ineffective here. This is, indeed, Tobacco City, home to many famous bidi manufacturers, like Ganesh, whose bidis I found selling at the Davidoff store in Geneva. The use of snuff is also widespread – so Hayek, who used snuff, would have had been happy here. My only condition: Include ganja in the list of smokables allowed in this fair city. This will make all the ganja farmers on the western ghats happy. This will bring in tourists. It will also keep the Karnataka cops off my back. Last time around, the cops got pretty mean.