Book Review | ‘India’s Blind Spot: Understanding and Managing Our Cities’ by Devashish Dhar – A passionate plea for planned urbanisation in the country

By Amitabha Bhattacharya

The march of urbanisation seems unstoppable. How best can we embrace this rapid transition would determine our growth trajectory and the well-being of our citizens. The sporadic and reactive approach, often treating urbanisation as a necessary evil, has led us to a situation that can, indeed, be termed worrisome, or as ‘India’s blind spot’, according to the author of this book. Complex as the case may be, the redeeming feature is the increasing awareness of the enlightened citizenry and the government to dispassionately understand the problem areas and passionately engage in finding solutions for them. Devashish Dhar, based on an acute analysis of historical forces and current trends, points to the path forward.

In recent years, some interesting books have been published, such as AN Sarkar’s Smart Cities (2016) and Ashok Kumar Jain’s City Planning for a Changing India (2018), focusing at specific aspects of urban planning and development. The book under review takes a more holistic view, as titles of the ten chapters illustrate. Cities: Humankind’s Longest-running Experiment; Indian Cities: At the Centre Stage for Global Trends; and Urban Economy: Making Cities Engines of Growth for Everyone are indicative enough. Consequently, this is a kind of ‘go to’ book for interested readers, as also for urban planners.

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The strength of the book is the array of information collected and systematically ordered, mostly macro-level, that provides the basis for the recommendations on the eight crucial sectors—from urban economy to urban governance. Whether one would agree with the prescriptions or not, the secular selection of data indicating the sources thereof lends an integrity to the book and provides enough material to take the discourse further.

Besides, the book also seeks to identify the reasons for inadequate success of earlier initiatives and explains why it happened so. This would help the reader judge whether the much-publicised recent schemes of the government have been designed with imagination or not. The young author’s enthusiasm and hope helped him propose out-of-the-box solutions to many vexatious issues.

For example, while arguing how to make cities the engines of growth for everyone, he suggests, inter alia, ‘Night Economy as the Next Frontier of Growth’. He alludes to Nitin Pal’s calculation that if top ten Indian cities work through the night, “they could add USD 24 billion to the GDP (0.8 per cent of GDP) and pull 2 million people out of poverty.” And Dhar recommends it for 100 cities.

For a variety of reasons, the importance of cluster development approach where the workforce, academic institutions and industries are located in close proximity cannot be emphasised enough, even as we embrace the digital age. Therefore, Dhar’s lament, “This is contrary to how Indian universities have been set up post-independence and how they continue with the same model” is understandable. Nevertheless, his deduction that “India’s leading institutes such as IITs Kanpur and Kharagpur, IIM Lucknow and even ISB Mohali are outside the periphery of main cities. Thus, they fail to generate value from each other and for each other” seems to be rather simplistic.

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The book is written in a lucid language without undermining the complexity and range of issues involved. The first chapter is a treat to read and sets the tone of the tome. The author provides a historical perspective of how cities have been closely intertwined with the progress of human civilisation, observing “In fact the city is the last and greatest innovation of the village and has since been humankind’s longest-running experiment. In the success of the city lies our progress…” In his passionate espousal for the sustainable growth and management of our towns and cities, he regrets how, in India, we have been unfair to the idea and merits of urbanisation, “so much so that it has become our greatest, biggest, and perhaps, the most fatal blind spot…” Undeterred, he proceeds with a forward-looking blueprint.

With so much of research, information and analysis packed between two hard covers, the high-pitched advocacy of Dhar would appear quite justified.

India’s Blind Spot: Understanding and Managing Our Cities

Devashish Dhar

HarperCollins

Pp 408, Rs 899

Amitabha Bhattacharya is a former IAS officer who has also worked in the private sector and with the UNDP