DPU Working Paper - No. 19

Author: Nigel Harris

Publication Date: 1990

The 1988 report of the National Commission on
Urbanisation to the Government of India notes that,
while India's urban dwellers have increased four times
over since 1947 (from some 50 to over 200 million),
public attitudes to cities have remained ambivalent:

"On the one hand, we see them as heroic engines of
growth...On the other, these urban centres have also
generated the most brutal and inhuman living
conditions".

Later, the Report suggests that the second observation
has more substance for "The urban centres... should be
generators of wealth; instead, they have degenerated
into parasites looking elsewhere for support"(1).

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