Will the Real India Please Stand Up

I often hear myself say to a foreigner visiting Mumbai, Delhi or a big city, "Well, this is not the real India, to experience that you need to go to the villages." Admit that this has happened to you too.

We have grown up believing that the 'real India' resides only in its villages and rightly so since 70% of Indians live there. Perhaps even more because it represents what India has come to mean for us and the world: a complete lack of infrastructure, power, water, transport, communication, decent education facilities and healthcare. It is also the place where our traditions are more alive and visible; folklore, superstition and unsavoury customs are practised even though they may be deemed illegal.

Strangely, our cities do not actually present a very different picture.

Here too there is a shocking lack of infrastructure, poor public transport and sanitation, ever growing slums in the shadow of multi million dollar apartments in spanking new sky scrapers, poor quality and erratic supply of water forcing people to buy water tankers almost daily, power outages, voltage fluctuations, flooded streets…and if that were not all….frequent epidemics of typhoid, cholera, dengue or malaria. Cities have the same disparity of incomes as in villages, as well as similar levels of prejudice and superstition.

With rapid urbanisation the distinctions between our cities and villages will blur even further.

A McKinsey study predicts a sharp growth in the urban population to reach 40% of the total by 2030 and more importantly contributing over 70% to the GDP. This continued migration from the villages will add 250mn, more so to the bottom of the pyramid. Even now almost 75% of people in cities live at $1.80 per day; this will only get worse. We will have 68 cities with over a million population; some mega cities will have GDPs more than those of countries. Given the absolute lack of urban planning, all of this will happen in the classic "Chalta Hai" model. This could lead to a huge shortage of almost 80% in terms of affordable housing, 50% less water than needed, 70% of the sewage being untreated as well as significant shortages in public transport, and such like.

It would just mean that the villages will have moved to our cities and we, in the cities, will be able to say this is the real India.