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When people come to the cities and settle, we see only one side of the coin:

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Today worldwide the urban centres are becoming too large, complex and complicated. People are finding it difficult to come up with solutions with regards to city management. Currently, it was in the news that most of the free public spaces in Bangalore city will be made into paid parking spaces. These efforts are one of the measures to encourage public transport. In this proposal there is an effort to issue the parking passes, also monthly passes to the owners of the cars which they can buy and use to park cars beside designated public roads. This is just a proposal which was published in the newspaper recently. This is one example of how things are becoming complex in the cities. 


In another example, before few years in Delhi, it was in the news where the 'even and odd car number' system was introduced. Even after introducing the system, it was also not as effective as expected. Delhi also considered being one of the most polluted cities in the world. New Delhi was the world's most polluted capital city for the second straight year in 2019, according to a Swiss-based group that gathers air-quality data globally (Reuters). 


The problem has to be thought and analysed from the root, we need to identify what are the causes for the growth of the cities to this extent which is leading to so much pollution and also an imbalance in the geographical development.

In sociology there is a concept of push and pull, particularly this concept is used where the people get to migrate to the cities. 'Push' factors “pushes” people away from their home (villages and towns) and the reasons include things like poor health care, poor education, communal violence or inequality. On the other hand, 'Pull' factors “pull” people to a new home (cities and metropolitan) and reasons include things like better opportunities like good education, jobs, or good business opportunity, broadly, the reasons people migrate are usually economic, political, cultural, or environmental. The push and pull work together in a given situation.


The Hindu newspaper dated 18 FEBRUARY 2021 reported that ‘Air pollution led to 12,000 deaths in Bengaluru last year’. Air pollution is a deadly health spoiler, polluted air increases the likelihood of deaths owing to cancer and stroke, the spike in asthma attacks, and worsens the severity of COVID-19 symptoms. When people come to the cities and settle, we see only one side of the coin, we see people are getting opportunities and comfort, but as a society, we are failing by accumulating more and more population in few particular areas of the earth. The accumulation later takes the form of cities in the later stage, and cause serious urbanisation issues.


If we look at the villages, they are clean, pollution-free and full of energy and health. In villages there are many many economical opportunities, particularly the villages which are close to cities have good opportunities, as more economic ties can be built. The need of an hour is to develop a few infrastructures which villages need. We should look at developing the education system and the health system at the village level so that people get benefit from a good education and health system within the villages and get attached to their villages and lessen the push towards urban centres. If we look at the health, the rural areas enjoy a good amount of healthy life due to lack of various kinds of pollution and stresses.


When it comes to economic activities development, we need to develop good economic activities at the village and district level. The activities like agriculture, horticulture, organic farming, silk rearing, honey collection, timber etc. can be focused on. To give one example, Kolar district is a 1-hour distance from Bangalore, this district is considered as the second largest tomato 🍅 producer in Asia. There are 1000's of villages in the district which focuses on tomato and other vegetable cultivation. There is a government APMC market in Kolar city which is connected to almost the entire country. This has helped lakhs of people to stay back within the district even after being so close to Bangalore city.


At the village level the regional supply centres should be created, instead of accumulating all these products in an urban centre (example: already TAPMC, taluk level APMCs have been started). This might be a very strange idea, but in reality, if you look at the size of the cities in the world it is increasing at a neverending stage, and these efforts become crucial. Even with the addition of the metro, city railway, and a good amount of share taxis and also with the increase in the flyovers, the traffic and the pollution has not come to a control point.

 

 It is also important we look at these factors, how can we get our children educated in the social development sectors. Currently, universities like Azim Premji University, Tata institute of social science, IIMB, etc. offer courses where one can also make his career in these fields where we get an opportunity to do research on these social challenges.

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Contributed by: CLF

Email: reach.clf@gmail.com

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