Undeterred urbanites

The term city owes its origin to an era of unknown antiquity even as some 20 cities that emerged during that era have turned tourist destinations in our times. All had been well with cities across the world until recent past, their residents relishing their living environment marked by comfort and convenience with respect to housing, transportation, access to markets with plentiful consumer goods including food, facilities for healthcare, education, entertainment, and so on amidst glitz and glamour. This statement has to be in past tense in respect of most cities across the country, both Mysuru and Bengaluru being in their august company. A cursory look at the figures of population in these cities then (some 50 years ago) and now should set one pondering about the factors that have drastically changed the image of urban spaces, apart from that of rural areas holding fort in the face of a growing number of them wearing the look of a town, only to lose their tranquil ambience that has endured for centuries. For reasons that don’t need elaboration, the land’s rustics are yielding to both attraction of city life and compulsion of seeking livelihood resulting in an estimated 50 lakh of them taking residence in cities annually.

Agriculture having become an unrewarding calling for earning livelihood and most of the trades that had their roots in villages, such as pottery, weaving, producing tools and so on vanishing due to technologies adopted by urban-based industries, has resulted in mass exodus of rustics and their influx into cities, both unstoppable. A notable outcome of this volatile phenomenon is the birth of urban slums, whose residents are truly undeterred urbanites fighting a losing battle against poverty, abject poverty.

The debates on urban-rural divide on various counts don’t seem to have thrown much light on getting clear about its fall out, particularly the rush to the cities making a rising number of them virtually unliveable. Two Nobel Laureates, both India born, have bestowed their thoughts, on poverty. One of them, Amartya Sen (1998) published an essay in 1981 Poverty and Famines: Entitlement and Deprivation. The second awardee of the Prize, Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee (2019) has averred that too much emphasis on economic growth has shifted the Government’s focus from poverty eradication in India. Poverty of rural poor and that of their counterparts in cities are different kettles of fish. The condition in which slum dwellers in cities, accounting for nearly one-fourth of their total headcount, is tell-tale.

The prescription of Banerjee, published in the media this week, to provide welfare schemes for urban poor is well-taken. However, expecting those in charge of administration to either stall the rural exodus or ensure welfare of the urban poor mass amounts to asking for the moon. The more fortunate sections of society have their task cut out to empathise with the undeterred urbanites living in squalor.