We often hear of Tier I and Tier II cities of India, but not many are sure on what basis cities are classified. There are two kinds of city classifications in India. One has been made by the various pay commissions to determine the HRA that government employees should receive. The latest such was made by the 7th Pay commission in 2017 according to which there are three categories. a) Category X (population of 50 lakh and above) b) Category Y (population between 5 and 50 lakh) and category Z (population below 5 lakh). In common parlance, these are called Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities respectively. According to the last census of 2011, however, there is a different classification in terms of million-plus agglomerations, which are 53 in number, including mega cities (population greater than 10 million) like Mumbai and Delhi. Then there are statutory towns - any town having a municipal corporation and at the third level are census towns having a population over 5000 people with most people engaged in non-agricultural work.

Hence, the classification of cities in India is itself not standardized. However, one thing is clear: Most of the infrastructure budget is spent on metros, BRT corridors and expressways in these cities of Mumbai, Delhi NCR, Chennai, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Hyderabad.

Meanwhile, Tier II cities, such as Surat, Bhopal, Kochi, Lucknow, and Vadodara, continue to have poor public transport facilities and reel under alarming air pollution levels. Several of these cities are billed to be among the top 10 fastest growing cities of the world! It is worth examining if mere fast growth is anything to be proud of when quality of life for its citizens remains one of the worst.

Inter-city bus services are typically nonexistent except perhaps for state capitals. The municipality in Jalandhar has tried to run a bus service off and on since 2006 with little success. It outsourced the job to private players who abruptly quit in 2014 protesting against auto drivers who were taking away their business. Since then residents rely on shared autos or private vehicles to commute inside the city. The result is chaos and traffic congestion, a scenario shared with all smaller Indian cities. Public transport accounts for a mere 1 per cent of all trips in Surat. Skeletal bus services run in most Tier II cities where inter-city buses start from the main bus terminal. 
 
These are run by the state road transport undertaking and private operators. Passengers hop onto these inter- city buses and get off on the way if their destination lies on the route, which naturally means there is limited connectivity. A good bus service in a smaller Indian city is rare to find, with the South faring better on this aspect.

Public utilities are poor. In Indore, only 60 per cent of households are connected to water supply provided by the public utility. Even if there is access, limited and unreliable hours of water supply in Tier II cities lead to some households depending on groundwater extraction using borewells, which, in turn, keeps depleting water reserves. This is also true of electricity where uncertain supply and power outages lead people to meet most of their electricity demands through diesel powered gensets, which has an adverse ecological impact. A few cities, though, like Pune and Surat have been innovative on the energy front, developing energy efficient programmes through renewable sources.

The most damning indictment of India’s Tier II cities is that nine of them fall in the ‘list of the world’s top 15 most polluted cities’. Agra, Lucknow, Varanasi, Patna, Jaipur, Jodhpur, Srinagar, Faridabad and, of course, Kanpur, which tops the list. Uncontrolled construction due to rapid urbanisation and in some cases like Kanpur, pollution caused by specific industries has bestowed these cities with this status.

Several of the Tier II cities feature in the 100 cities selected for the Smart Cities mission whose objective is “to provide core infrastructure and give a decent quality of life to its citizens, a clean and sustainable environment and application of ‘Smart’ Solution”. The Smart Cities mission is good for Tier II cities because it turns the spotlight towards India’s smaller cities which are often left out of the conversation on urban development and urban renewal. 
 
They will thus benefit from large resources that the central government has allocated for infrastructure and urban service delivery under this project. The challenge now is to empower local governing bodies and encourage them to innovate, relook at old models of service delivery and enable them to raise funds required for improvements. Given that the baseline of development is rather low, this would be a huge challenge for the city but one that is well worth undertaking to pull itself out of years of neglect.

(This article was originally published on The DNA. Read the <a href="https://www.dnaindia.com/analysis/column-tier-ii-cities-accelerated-growth-but-poor-quality-of-life-2695740">original article</a>)

(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed above are the personal views of the author and do not reflect the views of ZMCL)

We often hear of Tier I and Tier II cities of India, but not many are sure on what basis cities are classified. There are two kinds of city classifications in India.

We often hear of Tier I and Tier II cities of India, but not many are sure on what basis cities are classified. There are two kinds of city classifications in India. One has been made by the various pay commissions to determine the HRA that government employees should receive. The latest such was made by the 7th Pay commission in 2017 according to which there are three categories. a) Category X (population of 50 lakh and above) b) Category Y (population between 5 and 50 lakh) and category Z (population below 5 lakh). In common parlance, these are called Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities respectively. According to the last census of 2011, however, there is a different classification in terms of million-plus agglomerations, which are 53 in number, including mega cities (population greater than 10 million) like Mumbai and Delhi. Then there are statutory towns - any town having a municipal corporation and at the third level are census towns having a population over 5000 people with most people engaged in non-agricultural work. Hence, the classification of cities in India is itself not standardized. However, one thing is clear: Most of the infrastructure budget is spent on metros, BRT corridors and expressways in these cities of Mumbai, Delhi NCR, Chennai, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Hyderabad. Meanwhile, Tier II cities, such as Surat, Bhopal, Kochi, Lucknow, and Vadodara, continue to have poor public transport facilities and reel under alarming air pollution levels. Several of these cities are billed to be among the top 10 fastest growing cities of the world! It is worth examining if mere fast growth is anything to be proud of when quality of life for its citizens remains one of the worst. Inter-city bus services are typically nonexistent except perhaps for state capitals. The municipality in Jalandhar has tried to run a bus service off and on since 2006 with little success. It outsourced the job to private players who abruptly quit in 2014 protesting against auto drivers who were taking away their business. Since then residents rely on shared autos or private vehicles to commute inside the city. The result is chaos and traffic congestion, a scenario shared with all smaller Indian cities. Public transport accounts for a mere 1 per cent of all trips in Surat. Skeletal bus services run in most Tier II cities where inter-city buses start from the main bus terminal. These are run by the state road transport undertaking and private operators. Passengers hop onto these inter- city buses and get off on the way if their destination lies on the route, which naturally means there is limited connectivity. A good bus service in a smaller Indian city is rare to find, with the South faring better on this aspect. Public utilities are poor. In Indore, only 60 per cent of households are connected to water supply provided by the public utility. Even if there is access, limited and unreliable hours of water supply in Tier II cities lead to some households depending on groundwater extraction using borewells, which, in turn, keeps depleting water reserves. This is also true of electricity where uncertain supply and power outages lead people to meet most of their electricity demands through diesel powered gensets, which has an adverse ecological impact. A few cities, though, like Pune and Surat have been innovative on the energy front, developing energy efficient programmes through renewable sources. The most damning indictment of India’s Tier II cities is that nine of them fall in the ‘list of the world’s top 15 most polluted cities’. Agra, Lucknow, Varanasi, Patna, Jaipur, Jodhpur, Srinagar, Faridabad and, of course, Kanpur, which tops the list. Uncontrolled construction due to rapid urbanisation and in some cases like Kanpur, pollution caused by specific industries has bestowed these cities with this status. Several of the Tier II cities feature in the 100 cities selected for the Smart Cities mission whose objective is “to provide core infrastructure and give a decent quality of life to its citizens, a clean and sustainable environment and application of ‘Smart’ Solution”. The Smart Cities mission is good for Tier II cities because it turns the spotlight towards India’s smaller cities which are often left out of the conversation on urban development and urban renewal. They will thus benefit from large resources that the central government has allocated for infrastructure and urban service delivery under this project. The challenge now is to empower local governing bodies and encourage them to innovate, relook at old models of service delivery and enable them to raise funds required for improvements. Given that the baseline of development is rather low, this would be a huge challenge for the city but one that is well worth undertaking to pull itself out of years of neglect. (This article was originally published on The DNA. Read the original article) (Disclaimer: The opinions expressed above are the personal views of the author and do not reflect the views of ZMCL)

Smart Cities Mission puts spotlight on India's smaller cities

Soon after Diwali, Chhath puja was celebrated by people from Bihar and Jharkhand. The main religious ritual involves making offerings to the rising and setting sun, &nbsp;from the banks of a river. &nbsp;Like every year, hundreds of people from these eastern states gathered on the banks of various rivers in north India, including the Hindon, a tributary of the Yamuna. The Hindon originates in the lower Himalayas and flows through Meerut, Ghaziabad, Noida and Greater Noida before joining the Yamuna just outside Delhi. The Hindon has great significance in Indian history and culture as a site of the Indus Valley Civilization, Alamgirpur, lies on its banks. In the Mahabharat, the lac palace which the wily Kauravas had lured the Pandavas into in a ploy to burn them alive, lies in a place called Varnavat (now Barnava) in Baghpat district.&nbsp;

But looking at the froth in the polluted waters of this ancient river, no one can tell its cultural significance. The Ghaziabad district administration, &nbsp;the municipal authorities of the city and the Central minister of state General VK Singh (who is an MP from Ghaziabad) had promised people that the Hindon would be cleaned up before Chhath puja. However, that turned out to be yet another empty promise by the state. Some piecemeal efforts were made to release water into the Hindon but the problem runs much deeper as hundreds of litres of sewage water and garbage from the city is dumped into it. Essentially, once again, hundreds of Chhath puja devotees stood in highly polluted waters of the Hindon. A few years ago there were pictures of a red Hindon on social media as illegal stone crushing units had dumped their waste into the river with impunity. In 2016, some villages in Baghpat district of UP had decided not to vote in the 2017 assembly elections in protest as the unimaginable pollution of the Hindon was resulting in more cancers and neurological diseases than the people had ever experienced.

The environmental activist GD Agarwal or Swami Sanand died earlier this month due to fasting in protest against the government’s inaction on cleaning up the Ganga. The river was so dear to this civil engineer- activist monk, that he spent much of his long life fighting to save the Ganga from man-made projects that would hamper the river’s uninterrupted flow in the upper reaches. In the flurry of Bollywood weddings and other meaningless WhatsApp forwards, the news of his death and the cause he stood for barely registered with the masses. However, a consortium of seven non-profit organisations which have been organizing an annual event called India Rivers Week, which ends on November 26, dedicated this year to the late activist. &nbsp;The main question being asked is, despite the decades that have passed since efforts to clean up and revive the Ganga, and the several hundred crores that have since been spent, why is the state of the Ganga worse than it ever was, and how can this issue be solved?

The pollution of the Ganges from Rishikesh right until Diamond Harbour, near Kolkata, is an issue that has got the attention of the world, even though nothing dramatic has happened to control it. But it is almost impossible to find an Indian river which is unpolluted for most of its journey. In its latest study, the Central Pollution Control Board discovered that the number of polluted rivers in India has risen from 121 to 275 over the past five years. Tamil Nadu is fighting Karnataka not only over the Cauvery’s waters but also for polluting the river with industrial effluents even before it enters Tamil Nadu. Cauvery water which was the main drinking water source for lakhs of people, is now toxic beyond safe limits.

Ramaswamy Iyer, an expert on Indian rivers, having been secretary at the Ministry of Water Resources and author of India’s first National Water Policy in 1987 attributes near death of India’s once great rivers not just to heavy pollution but also to other factors like violence to their physical components such as the river-bed, banks and floodplains. The underlying cause, he says, is a poor understanding of what constitutes a river and the deeply flawed attitudes and approaches towards rivers and the environment in general. Every river in India, except the Brahmaputra, is a female and has significance in Hindu epics and scriptures. Just as women are worshipped as devis and abused like nowhere else, rivers are worshipped as bountiful mothers (Ganga maiyya, for example) &nbsp;but havoc is wreaked on them. This election season, voters need to realise that the only religious issue that matters is the downright insult to our river goddesses happening across the country. 
 
(This article was originally published on DNA. Read the <a href="https://www.dnaindia.com/analysis/column-india-s-once-great-rivers-are-victims-of-ecological-violence-2689285">original article</a>)

(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed above are the personal views of the author and do not reflect the views of ZMCL)

Soon after Diwali, Chhath puja was celebrated by people from Bihar and Jharkhand. The main religious ritual involves making offerings to the rising and setting sun, from the banks of a river.

Soon after Diwali, Chhath puja was celebrated by people from Bihar and Jharkhand. The main religious ritual involves making offerings to the rising and setting sun, from the banks of a river. Like every year, hundreds of people from these eastern states gathered on the banks of various rivers in north India, including the Hindon, a tributary of the Yamuna. The Hindon originates in the lower Himalayas and flows through Meerut, Ghaziabad, Noida and Greater Noida before joining the Yamuna just outside Delhi. The Hindon has great significance in Indian history and culture as a site of the Indus Valley Civilization, Alamgirpur, lies on its banks. In the Mahabharat, the lac palace which the wily Kauravas had lured the Pandavas into in a ploy to burn them alive, lies in a place called Varnavat (now Barnava) in Baghpat district. But looking at the froth in the polluted waters of this ancient river, no one can tell its cultural significance. The Ghaziabad district administration, the municipal authorities of the city and the Central minister of state General VK Singh (who is an MP from Ghaziabad) had promised people that the Hindon would be cleaned up before Chhath puja. However, that turned out to be yet another empty promise by the state. Some piecemeal efforts were made to release water into the Hindon but the problem runs much deeper as hundreds of litres of sewage water and garbage from the city is dumped into it. Essentially, once again, hundreds of Chhath puja devotees stood in highly polluted waters of the Hindon. A few years ago there were pictures of a red Hindon on social media as illegal stone crushing units had dumped their waste into the river with impunity. In 2016, some villages in Baghpat district of UP had decided not to vote in the 2017 assembly elections in protest as the unimaginable pollution of the Hindon was resulting in more cancers and neurological diseases than the people had ever experienced. The environmental activist GD Agarwal or Swami Sanand died earlier this month due to fasting in protest against the government’s inaction on cleaning up the Ganga. The river was so dear to this civil engineer- activist monk, that he spent much of his long life fighting to save the Ganga from man-made projects that would hamper the river’s uninterrupted flow in the upper reaches. In the flurry of Bollywood weddings and other meaningless WhatsApp forwards, the news of his death and the cause he stood for barely registered with the masses. However, a consortium of seven non-profit organisations which have been organizing an annual event called India Rivers Week, which ends on November 26, dedicated this year to the late activist. The main question being asked is, despite the decades that have passed since efforts to clean up and revive the Ganga, and the several hundred crores that have since been spent, why is the state of the Ganga worse than it ever was, and how can this issue be solved? The pollution of the Ganges from Rishikesh right until Diamond Harbour, near Kolkata, is an issue that has got the attention of the world, even though nothing dramatic has happened to control it. But it is almost impossible to find an Indian river which is unpolluted for most of its journey. In its latest study, the Central Pollution Control Board discovered that the number of polluted rivers in India has risen from 121 to 275 over the past five years. Tamil Nadu is fighting Karnataka not only over the Cauvery’s waters but also for polluting the river with industrial effluents even before it enters Tamil Nadu. Cauvery water which was the main drinking water source for lakhs of people, is now toxic beyond safe limits. Ramaswamy Iyer, an expert on Indian rivers, having been secretary at the Ministry of Water Resources and author of India’s first National Water Policy in 1987 attributes near death of India’s once great rivers not just to heavy pollution but also to other factors like violence to their physical components such as the river-bed, banks and floodplains. The underlying cause, he says, is a poor understanding of what constitutes a river and the deeply flawed attitudes and approaches towards rivers and the environment in general. Every river in India, except the Brahmaputra, is a female and has significance in Hindu epics and scriptures. Just as women are worshipped as devis and abused like nowhere else, rivers are worshipped as bountiful mothers (Ganga maiyya, for example) but havoc is wreaked on them. This election season, voters need to realise that the only religious issue that matters is the downright insult to our river goddesses happening across the country. (This article was originally published on DNA. Read the original article) (Disclaimer: The opinions expressed above are the personal views of the author and do not reflect the views of ZMCL)

India’s once great rivers are victims of ecological violence

In the mid 19th Century, when the persona of Santa Claus began to gain popularity in the United States, gifts became part of the imagery. Slowly, this trend grew, until in 1924, the department store Macy’s included a Santa in their Thanksgiving Parade and soon after Selfridges started decorating its shop front window for Christmas, urging customers to buy stuff around Christmas time.

Until then, Christmas had been a family function, not the crazy commercial shopping extravaganza that it has now grown into in the West. Over the past 100-odd years, gift giving has become a competitive, exhausting activity, so much so that the American mom fretting over lists of who gets what gift in the holiday season has become a cliché in popular entertainment.

Commercialisation of Christmas and the whole forced cheer of a Santa lookalike in every high street store is known to psychologically affect all the lonely people who do not feel so ho-ho-ho.

It led to the creation of the oxymoronic phrase “holiday season blues” to indicate how those who are single or are not able to be with their families, end up feeling lonely and depressed, watching the hyper celebrations of others.

The culture of conspicuous consumption is also leaving out all the poorer people of rich countries who cannot afford to go on a buying spree.

So the effects of this practice have implications for many sections of society.

But the governments of these countries are not interfering and ordering a trial ban on gift purchases or limiting gift buying to one weekend only during the holiday season. I am obviously drawing a parallel to our own courts intervening in how festivals should be celebrated.

In India, we have been told that not lighting crackers on Diwali is no big deal because crackers were not always there and got added on Diwali about a hundred years ago for commercial reasons by some Sivakasi businessmen.

Well, there are Mughal miniature paintings showing lighting of sparklers on Diwali and historical records that go back much further. If you check in any family, at least three generations will attest to having burst crackers on Diwali as children. That’s enough of a tradition, even if you don’t want to delve into history. In one fell swoop, being dismissive of a tradition that has endured all through living memory of most people, is disrespectful, to put it mildly.

So I get it that crackers are harmful to the environment. But I have to roll my eyes at this because everyday, on the road I see at least one auto, two-wheeler, tempos or truck spewing black exhaust with impunity right on the face of the car behind and whizz past.

We have to slow down and let the offender pass in order to avoid the toxic cloud. In the construction frenzy that prevails in NCR throughout the year, dust clouds are always rising around the whizzing cement churner and JCB when one passes any under-construction building of which there are hundreds around Delhi.

These are perineal sources of air pollution while crackers happen for a few hours annually. Are crackers the main culprit or are the people who find a few hours of pleasure in them, ie, typically children celebrating Diwali, just easy prey to impose rules on?

An activist for air quality has been quoted saying crackers were “low hanging fruit”. That’s another word for soft targets. The high hanging fruit —those in the construction business or truck owners or stubble-burning farmers who are potential vote banks — are too prickly to be touched.

How about cigarette smoke? Tobacco smoke particles and outdoor PM2.5 pollution share some similar chemical compounds and have a similar role in cancer causation.

A controlled experiment in Italy found that fine particulate matter emitted by cigarettes is 10 times greater than diesel car exhaust. But who can dare to say that cigarettes can only be smoked for a few hours, as specified by the court, to help reduce air pollution?

Yes, crackers add to air pollution. But there are bigger fish in the sea who are the main wrongdoers! No one is meddling with them because there are powerful lobbies, money and vote banks involved. Crackers are a lesser evil, but they are being targeted because their users are children and families who will meekly comply.

It is this bias that jars. It is a bit like the income tax department threatening small entrepreneurs and white collared workers while beer barons and diamond czars have flown the coop.

The nanny State interfering in all aspects of life is anyway pointless. Everywhere one hears people asking “But how are they going to ensure no one lights a cracker after 10 pm? Is the police coming to each verandah to check?” 
 
(This article was originally published on DNA. Read the <a href="https://www.dnaindia.com/analysis/column-cracker-regulations-aimed-at-soft-targets-not-powerful-lobbies-2682707">original article</a>)

(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed above are the personal views of the author and do not reflect the views of ZMCL) 
&nbsp;

In the mid 19th Century, when the persona of Santa Claus began to gain popularity in the United States, gifts became part of the imagery. Slowly, this trend grew, until in 1924, the department store Macy’s included a Santa in their Thanksgiving Parade and soon after Selfridges started decorating its shop front window for Christmas, urging customers to buy stuff around Christmas time.

In the mid 19th Century, when the persona of Santa Claus began to gain popularity in the United States, gifts became part of the imagery. Slowly, this trend grew, until in 1924, the department store Macy’s included a Santa in their Thanksgiving Parade and soon after Selfridges started decorating its shop front window for Christmas, urging customers to buy stuff around Christmas time. Until then, Christmas had been a family function, not the crazy commercial shopping extravaganza that it has now grown into in the West. Over the past 100-odd years, gift giving has become a competitive, exhausting activity, so much so that the American mom fretting over lists of who gets what gift in the holiday season has become a cliché in popular entertainment. Commercialisation of Christmas and the whole forced cheer of a Santa lookalike in every high street store is known to psychologically affect all the lonely people who do not feel so ho-ho-ho. It led to the creation of the oxymoronic phrase “holiday season blues” to indicate how those who are single or are not able to be with their families, end up feeling lonely and depressed, watching the hyper celebrations of others. The culture of conspicuous consumption is also leaving out all the poorer people of rich countries who cannot afford to go on a buying spree. So the effects of this practice have implications for many sections of society. But the governments of these countries are not interfering and ordering a trial ban on gift purchases or limiting gift buying to one weekend only during the holiday season. I am obviously drawing a parallel to our own courts intervening in how festivals should be celebrated. In India, we have been told that not lighting crackers on Diwali is no big deal because crackers were not always there and got added on Diwali about a hundred years ago for commercial reasons by some Sivakasi businessmen. Well, there are Mughal miniature paintings showing lighting of sparklers on Diwali and historical records that go back much further. If you check in any family, at least three generations will attest to having burst crackers on Diwali as children. That’s enough of a tradition, even if you don’t want to delve into history. In one fell swoop, being dismissive of a tradition that has endured all through living memory of most people, is disrespectful, to put it mildly. So I get it that crackers are harmful to the environment. But I have to roll my eyes at this because everyday, on the road I see at least one auto, two-wheeler, tempos or truck spewing black exhaust with impunity right on the face of the car behind and whizz past. We have to slow down and let the offender pass in order to avoid the toxic cloud. In the construction frenzy that prevails in NCR throughout the year, dust clouds are always rising around the whizzing cement churner and JCB when one passes any under-construction building of which there are hundreds around Delhi. These are perineal sources of air pollution while crackers happen for a few hours annually. Are crackers the main culprit or are the people who find a few hours of pleasure in them, ie, typically children celebrating Diwali, just easy prey to impose rules on? An activist for air quality has been quoted saying crackers were “low hanging fruit”. That’s another word for soft targets. The high hanging fruit —those in the construction business or truck owners or stubble-burning farmers who are potential vote banks — are too prickly to be touched. How about cigarette smoke? Tobacco smoke particles and outdoor PM2.5 pollution share some similar chemical compounds and have a similar role in cancer causation. A controlled experiment in Italy found that fine particulate matter emitted by cigarettes is 10 times greater than diesel car exhaust. But who can dare to say that cigarettes can only be smoked for a few hours, as specified by the court, to help reduce air pollution? Yes, crackers add to air pollution. But there are bigger fish in the sea who are the main wrongdoers! No one is meddling with them because there are powerful lobbies, money and vote banks involved. Crackers are a lesser evil, but they are being targeted because their users are children and families who will meekly comply. It is this bias that jars. It is a bit like the income tax department threatening small entrepreneurs and white collared workers while beer barons and diamond czars have flown the coop. The nanny State interfering in all aspects of life is anyway pointless. Everywhere one hears people asking “But how are they going to ensure no one lights a cracker after 10 pm? Is the police coming to each verandah to check?” (This article was originally published on DNA. Read the original article) (Disclaimer: The opinions expressed above are the personal views of the author and do not reflect the views of ZMCL)

Cracker regulations aimed at soft targets, not powerful lobbies

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Zee News Rajasthan

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Vandana Vasudevan

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