It is now universally recognised that the progress
of man depends upon social planning. Families, cities,
economic development, education, in fact, every important
phase of social life must be planned to ensure perfect
harmony between man and his total environment. It was
believed at one time that the human race cannot control
and shape its destiny and that men make matters worse by
interfering with the natural order of things and the natural
scheme of social evolution. Today, this belief is utterly
discredited. Already a great deal has been done to adapt
the physical environment to man’s needs and to overcome
the difficulties created by floods, drought, deserts, hostile
climate, niggardliness of nature, vagaries of the weather,
fuel shortage and paucity of industrial raw materials. The
world today is rapidly changing, more rapidly changing
than most of us imagine and are intellectually and morally
prepared for. We must learn to plan the change or at
least to anticipate the effects of the change and to plan
adjustments to them. Till comparatively recently, men lived
in village communities, and their culture, mode of living, food
and social organisation were adjusted to their surroundings.
Modern urban life has produced a new environment, creating
new problems of adaptation. Unfortunately, most modern
cities are a haphazard growth ; the effects of living in huge
cities have not been fully anticipated ; the social, economic
and psychological consequences of industrialisation and
urbanization have not been fully considered ; and the steps
which should have been taken to bring about an adjustment
between man and his new environment have not been
forthcoming in ample measure. This is particularly true in
the case of underdeveloped regions.
The old controversy between town and village life is
puerile. Much has been written against urbanization, but the
objection really is not to urbanization but to the unplanned
drift to the towns from the countryside and to centralisation
in industry and administration which has created so many
problems of a baffling nature. The critics of urban civilization
regard it as representing social decay. They deplore its
artificiality, its sophistication, its intellectualism and loss of
instinctive activity, its denial of family life and blood ties, its
loss of vitality and of the will to live manifested in the decline
in birth rate and in the high rate of suicides. They also point
to the growing evils of urbanization-juvenile delinquency,
prostitution, addiction to alcohol and drugs of the most
injurious kind, slums, crimes and suicides. This indictment
of urban civilisation is manifestly highly exaggerated on
many points and wholly unwarranted on many others. For
a balanced view on this question we must take note of two
fundamental points. There is no biological or sociological
evidence to support the theory of decay. Most of the evils to
which the critics of urban civilisation draw attention are not
inherent in it but are the result of a lack of social planning
and foresight. Urbanization has undoubtedly created many
grave social and psychological problems, but it has also
many outstanding achievements to its credit.
Life in villages is simple and unostentatious. The luxury of
the towns, as seen in the dresses of the people, in the hotels
and restaurants, in the various modes of entertainment, in
the social ceremonies and in expensive dwellings, provides
a sharp contrast to the simplicity, frugality and austerity of
village life. People in the countryside are strictly bound by
their customs and traditions and by family and communal
codes of morality. Individualism is deprecated and deviations
from prescribed behaviour are severely frowned upon.
The force of custom and tradition is not so strong in the
cities and departure from them is quite common. Villagers
are generally religious-minded and superstitious because their occupations, such as agriculture and fishing, bring
them into intimate relations with Nature and with what they
regard as the supernatural phenomenon. The urban people
largely living in the man-made environment and, more or
less, independent of the vagaries of the weather are less
superstitious and less aroused by the religious emotion of
awe and fear. They have more confidence in themselves
and in the ability of man to shape his environment and
mould his destiny. Since the villagers live in a small compact
community and generally know one another, their relations
are direct, intimate and personal, whereas city-dwellers live
in bigger communities and various associations and their
relations are impersonal, indirect and lacking in intimacy.
The members of a trade union are bound to one another
by the ties of a common cause rather than by those of
friendship and neighbourhood. In villages social regulation
is much easier because of the rigidity of the social mores
and the strength of family influence, whereas in towns and
cities the impersonal authority of the law and the moral
codes of the various associations constitute the restraining
influence.
Many factors have contributed to the rapid growth of
cities and towns. The most important factor, of course, is
economic. In this country agriculture which till recently was
organised on primitive lines and is still undergoing a process
of rationalisation cannot absorb all available labour. The
pressure of manpower on land is very heavy so that most
people depending on agriculture for their livelihood can
hardly make both ends meet. They are either petty peasantproprietors or tenants or agricultural labourers with only
seasonal work and inadequate wages or members of the
scheduled castes whose destitution and pitiable plight are
hard to imagine. Unemployment and under-employment
in rural areas have assumed staggering proportions.
Individuals and families migrate to near or distant towns
in search of employment and swell their numbers. Had the
alien rulers not destroyed the country’s cottage industries
and handicrafts, had our system of land tenure not been
landlord dominated and had the Government assisted
the farmers in making agricultural production scientific,
migration of the country people might not have been on
such a big scale. Today, the village economy is undergoing
rapid development and conditions are being created in
which rural pursuits will become viable, but so rapidly is
population expanding and so readily are our well-to-do
agriculturists taking to agricultural machines and electric
power that there is little possibility of rural unemployment
being reduced to any appreciable extent save through
migration to towns. Cities and towns are centres of trade
and commerce. Factories employing thousands of workers
are set up in them. It is in cities and towns that courts
and universities and colleges are established, films are
produced, newspapers are published, radio stations are
built, Government offices employing thousands of men
and women function, restaurants and hotels are started
and thousands of persons cater to the tastes of men and
women of fashion. Men of taste who patronise works of art,
lawyers, doctors, teachers, artists and intellectuals live in
metropolitan or other big cities. Ambitious men determined
to make their mark in life make towns and cities the seat of
their activity. Migration from towns to villages is insignificant
partly because those who are used to the amenities of
urban life are reluctant, despite attractive Government
offers to induce educated classes to go back to village, to
settle in the countryside where civic amenities and modes
of entertainment are of a very limited character.
Rapid urbanization has created a very large number of
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highly complex problems, particularly in underdeveloped or
developing countries. A critic has expressed the view that
the underdeveloped areas are over-urbanized in the sense
that the stage of their economic development does not
warrant such urbanization. The paramount need in these
areas is that their limited financial resources should be
utilised to the maximum possible advantage. If the trend
towards urbanization persists, the funds badly needed
for investment in productive enterprises may have partly
to be diverted to social investment, that is, the provision
of civic amenities-water, sewerage, schools, hospitals,
houses etc. In a democratic State social investment
cannot long be postponed. It is highly desirable that
industrialisation should not be highly centralised in the
existing big towns. We should aim at a balanced regional
development. Of course, in determining the location
of industries consideration will have to be paid to the
availability of raw materials, labour and power, but unless
some areas are to remain permanently depressed, centres
of industrial production will have to be widely dispersed.
The developing nations have one great advantage over the
industrialised States. The latter did not plan their industrial
growth, and urbanization took place in them haphazardly,
creating innumerable social and economic problems for
the Government, industry and labour. The former are in a
position to plan the growth of industrial towns. The new
towns situated in rural surroundings and providing all civic
amenities can become ideal places, with plenty of fresh
air, open spaces, hygienic conditions of work, adequate
housing facilities, short distances, well-equipped schools
and healthy entertainments.
The most noticeable evil associated with over-urbanization
is market deterioration in the environment of the city and
the appearance of slums. Cities in developing countries
become overcrowded partly as a result of the natural
increase in population over the decades and partly as a
result of the migration of persons from the countryside and
small towns where opportunities for gainful employment
are wholly inadequate. Large-scale house construction
to accommodate the poor worker or the petty tradesman
is not possible because he cannot pay high rents which
a housing entrepreneur expects. The poor are driven by
necessity to living on footpaths or in slums under most
intolerable conditions. They have to face the inclemencies
of the weather like storms and monsoons or live amidst
incredible squalor, dirt and disease. “Mobility from slum
to non-slum housing”, as the editors of the book, “ Slums
and Urbanization “ Point out in their general introduction,
“becomes almost impossible because of the continuing
gap between the rent they can afford and the rent that is
determined by market conditions”. Had industrialisation
been well-planned and had it been obligatory on the part of
the employers to build houses for their employees or had
the Government acquired land for house construction and
set up housing co-operatives for the benefit of the poor,
the present intolerable situation would not have arisen. In
the new industrial towns which are springing up there is
no problem of slum clearance which is so acute in our big
cities like Bombay, Madras and Delhi. Slums are a disgrace
to the community. They are unfit for human habitation.
Urbanization consequent upon industrialisation in
developing nations has not only created slums but also
denied to a large section of the people even elementary
civic amenities-pure drinking water, underground drainage,
hospitals and dispensaries, well-built and well-run schools
and pucca roads. Our municipalities alone are not to blame
for the present state of affairs. Where over-crowding is
already a serious problem, any large addition to population
is bound to complicate matters. The law cannot prevent
migrations to already overpopulated cities. Article 19 of
our Constitution gives every citizen the right to move freely
throughout the entire territory and to reside and settle in
any part of the country. But the municipal corporations and
the Government cannot remain passive spectators of the
scene and allow the creation or maintenance of slums and
inadequate municipal services and civic amenities. When
epidemics like cholera, typhus and malaria break out in a
most vicious form, it is not only the slum-dweller but the
entire community which suffers. These epidemics spring
from slum squalor and over-crowding and poor municipal
services. Rural people migrating to big cities find themselves
in a wholly alien atmosphere. Before they migrated to large
urban areas, they lived in fairly homogeneous groups, had
their traditional codes of personal and social behaviour,
participated in open-air entertainments, lived amidst their
families and were bound by the constraints of convention.
In big urban areas, living generally in slums and engaged
in occupations of a tedious and dreary character and
perpetually haunted by the spectre of unemployment and
starvation, the migrants forget their moral or social code,
throw away all the restraints which they had hitherto
observed and take to crime, drink and prostitution. Not all
the efforts to enforce prohibition and abolish prostitution
have been able to make any significant impact because no
other means of relieving boredom and giving some colour
to a drab life exist.
Urbanization has created another vital problem, that
of pollution of the environment. According to a biologist,
the price of pollution could be the death of man. Pollution
is the direct outcome of the application of science and
technology to human problems. Man has learnt to turn
deserts into fertile lands, harness the forces of Nature for
his benefit, add immensely to production in all spheres so
that the rapidly growing population may be well-fed, wellclothed, well-entertained and well-provided with all sorts
of luxuries and comforts and overcome the gravitational
pull of the earth and conquer space. But he has not yet
learnt to live in peace with Nature and preserve the balance
which has made life possible and given it such richness.
We all know that a full-fledged thermo-nuclear war would
destroy our civilisation and imperil the very existence of
the human race. But we continue to add to the mounting
stockpiles of these weapons of mass annihilation and
stage atomic tests despite repeated warnings by scientists
that these tests would contaminate the atmosphere and
make this planet unfit for human habitation, especially most
densely populated cities. The increasing use of science
and technology in industry and agriculture is playing
havoc with both urban and rural environments, but the
urban environment is affected much more because most
industries are located in the cities and more urban people
use cars and other power-driven inventions. The former
U. S. President, Nixon, had raised the question of pollution
of the environment in a most pointed manner. “The great
question of the 70s”, he had asked, “ is: Shall we surrender
to our surroundings or shall we make our peace with nature
and begin to make reparations for the damage we have
done to our air, to our land and to our water. “ The air is
being polluted by all kinds of poisonous gases and fumes
from industrial plants and automobile exhausts.
We are passing through a period of acute international
anarchy when the great powers are vying with each other
to build up huge stockpiles of thermonuclear weapons
and other engines of mass annihilation. It may be that
the instinct of self-preservation will prevail over suicidal
tendencies and mankind will destroy these dangerous
weapons ; but there is also the possibility of thermonuclear
weapons being employed and the nations having to face
catastrophic consequences of their folly.
