City Plights

India's urban population has swelled from 62 million in 1951 to about 217 million four decades later. Its cities have distended, 23 of them with more than a million people in 1991. Work opportunities and employment centres have mushroomed, along with rising incomes and, yes, the demand for mobility, the pressure to travel. Urbanisation has had a strong bearing on modes of transport and travel demand in this country.

And the air has grown perceptibly darker. Vehicular pollution is no longer an intangible threat in urban India. Because to go to work, one needs traverse distances, between residences and workplaces connected anyhow, across cities grown haphazardly. Because the absence of adequate public transport systems has seen a veritable explosion in personal vehicles. (Though only one person in 455 owns a vehicle, the owners live in cities.) Because getting to work often translates into squirming through two-lane roads only to land in a snarl. Because for all these reasons cars move slowly, so burn fuel inefficiently, and emit more exhaust.

Our cities have grown. Now they are groaning.