Urbanization is an important measure to judge economic, social and political progress of a country. There is a direct correlation between the country's development and physical growth in its urban areas. In India, the urban areas have witnessed good growth and better lifestyle in past couple of decades. However there have been mired by various problems. The rising scale of the urban population, jumbled and unplanned growth of urban areas, lack of infrastructure and poor living conditions have led to serious socio-economic problems. India's metro cities are not so well planned so as to accommodate the increasing population.
As the country is in the midst of elections and outcome is soon expected, the political parties are coming up with various promises to bring revolution in economy. An article in Business standard, states the views of a known Indian Economist Shankar Acharya. As per Mr. Acharya, India is much in need of revamping of urban institutional structures and policies for the existing cities, rather than build new costly cities.
In our view both, whether it is building a new city or revamp the existing policy, both require hard efforts from the governments. Even with new government coming in, one should note that major factors that influence the current urbanization problems will continue to remain the same until the necessary steps taken towards rejuvenating the overall economy. The issues of soaring prices, increasing cost of living, growing unemployment have left the country in sorry state. Not only that there are many other problems like power supply, restrictive labor laws and poor infrastructure that the country's businesses face today. Unless the government comes out with some real reforms and also commits significant capital, we may not be able to make significant headway.
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