Management of Calcutta megacity: a transition from a reactive to a proactive strategy

Sustainable DevelopmentSust. Dev. 6, 59–67 (1998)

MANAGEMENT OF CALCUTTAMEGACITY: A TRANSITIONFROM A REACTIVE TO APROACTIVE STRATEGY

Samiul Hasan1* and M. Adil Khan2

1The University of Queensland, Australia2Human Development Initiative Support, UNDP, Myanmar

Until very recently urban management inCalcutta has been curative, reactive or adhoc in nature, and the major contributorto its own problems. The holistic andproactive approach adopted, since the1980s, by both the city government ofCalcutta and the government of WestBengal have, significantly, helped toameliorate some of these problems. Thereform measures in the rural economicsector, land tenancy and rural localgovernment systems contributed to thedecline of population growth in Calcutta.The improvement in the transportationsystem equally has helped in keeping thepeople outside the Calcutta MetropolitanArea (CMA). While these measures havereduced the demand on the city services,the bustee (home of almost 35% of theCMA population) improvementprogramme focusing on primary healthcare delivery, education and skillstraining, as well as improvement in theenvironment and physical condition, hasbeen able to bring about an overall

*Correspondence to: Dr Samiul Hasan, Department of Geographi-cal Sciences and Planning, University of Queensland, Brisbane,QLD 4072, Australia.

CCC 0968-0802/98/020059–09 $17.50? 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

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development in the quality of life of theresidents in Calcutta. The paper discussesthese aspects, emphasizing the replicablelessons learned from the Calcuttaexperience. ? 1998 John Wiley & Sons,Ltd and ERP Environment.Received 19 May 1997Revised 14 November 1997Accepted 21 November 1997

INTRODUCTION

I n 1995 an estimated 2.4 billion or 45% of theworld population lived in urban centres.Almost 20% of this urban population lived

in 26 megacities with more than eight millionpeople each. Three of these megacities are inIndia – Calcutta, Delhi and Mumbai. Calcutta isinhabited by more than 12 million people.

Calcutta has grown to a megacity from a smalltrading post of the English East India Companyestablished in 1690. Since India’s independence in1947 the fast growth in population coupled witha lack of good income opportunities and abilitiesto access services equitably have been contribut-ing to the increase in slum settlements, illegalconstruction and undesirable land-use changes, aswell as deterioration in air and water quality andpoor health and hygiene in Calcutta (GOI, 1996).These conditions have adversely affected thehuman environment and threatened social order.

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Table 1. Definitions of Calcutta and their dimensions

ComprisesArea(km2)

Population(million)

Density(km"2) Comments

Calcutta city Core city 100 3.3 33 000 Traditional cityCalcutta Municipal Corporation MC 140 4+ Municipal Corporation Act

1980Calcutta Metropolitan Area 3 MCs, 35 municipalities,

3 notified areas,20 panchayet samities

1380 11.86 8 594 Town and CountryPlanning Act administeredby the CalcuttaMetropolitan DevelopmentAuthority

Calcutta Urban Agglomeration 3 MCs, 35 municipalities,70 non-municipal urban areas

852 9.1 10 680 Contiguous urban areasalong both sides of theriver Hooghly

Calcutta Metropolitan District Urban areas mentioned aboveand 544 rural areas

1368 Notified by GWB in 1974

Calcutta MetroStandard Urban Area

All the areas mentioned in CUAand CMD

1488 12.5 8 400 GOI for Indian CensusOrganization

Source: Compiled from Chatterjee, 1996; Chakraborti, 1993; GWB, 1996a.

S. HASAN AND M. A. KHAN

Since the independence of India, subsequentcity governments in Calcutta, like many othersin large cities, have been finding it difficult toimprove the living conditions of its residents, and,due to refugee and other migration problemscaused by the independence, engaged themselvesin the crisis management type of short-termplanning. The long-term planning of Calcutta didnot start until about the late 1970s. The mainobjective of this paper is to highlight theselong-term proactive efforts and demonstrate howa long-term vision and a more holistic plan is thekey to successful management of urban areas,especially the megacities. The paper also attemptsto highlight the best practices in order to assist inmanaging similar problems in other situations,better.

CALCUTTA: DIFFERENT NAMES ANDDIMENSIONS

To understand its management implications onemust understand various concepts and definitionsassociated with Calcutta – the capital of WestBengal (a province of India). Table 1 demonstratesdifferent definitions, jurisdictions and authoritiesof ‘Calcutta’. The so-called Calcutta ‘core’ city is100 km2 in area with a population of 3.3 million;but the Calcutta Municipal Corporation (CMC)has an administrative boundary of 140 km2 with apopulation of a little more than four million,whereas Calcutta Metropolitan Area (CMA) has a

? 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

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population of 11.86 million living in an area of1380 km2 (Table 1). In this work, unless other-wise mentioned, ‘Calcutta’ refers to CalcuttaMetropolitan Area (CMA).

The CMA comprises three municipal corpora-tions (MCs), 35 municipalities, three notified areaauthorities and 20 panchayet samities (electedmid-tier rural local body) (Chatterjee, 1996). Thethree municipal corporations of CMA, Calcutta,Howrah and Chandonnagar, are the homes ofaround 44% of the CMA population. About 36%of the CMA population lives in smaller urbansettlements and around 13% in non-municipalurban areas. Rural areas constitute over one-thirdof the CMA’s land area and house 7% of itspopulation (GWB, 1996a; Chakraborti, 1993).

MEGACITY MANAGEMENT

The Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘manage-ment’ as ‘to control the course of affairs by one’sown action’. ‘Management’, in the sense ofresource management, may mean interventionswhich are compatible to exploration, use andconservation of resources in a manner that, on theone hand, maximizes its use and, on the other,minimizes the waste. The key element in amegacity management is to view the city and itspeople both as a source of production (resource)and as a participant in consumption (waste) and tohelp create a balanced link between the two,whereby consumption demands do not offset

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MANAGEMENT OF CALCUTTA MEGACITY

the production capacities. Thus explorationand understanding and appropriate use of the‘resource’ on the one hand and its protection andconservation and prevention of waste on theother will be the most essential aspects in mega-city management. Most importantly, however, inthe management of a megacity, as is the case inthe management of a nation, the planners mustview its residents as the movers of the economicactivities, and thus make provisions for healthyliving and economic participation.

Again management has two aspects to it –curative or reactive management and preventiveor proactive management. In most Asianmega, metro or large cities urban managementrefers mainly to curative, reactive or ad hocmanagement – attending to the demands of thenew arrivals in the city on a more localized basis.The preventive or proactive management orundertaking of some indirect measures to affectthe course of action in the future is yet to becomean established practice in most cities. As a matterof fact, during the early 1980s, due to the suddenand unforeseen political and economic changes atthe global level, and the new economic andpolitical role bestowed upon the cities by thesechanges, the city planners’ ability to sit back andtake a long-term view also has become somewhatstifled and constrained.

The case of Calcutta is particularly relevant inthis regard. Both national and internationalevents vastly changed the pattern of Calcuttaover time, and the speed with which thesechanges occurred rarely allowed its planners totake a more holistic and long-term view inplanning its affairs. In recent years, however,some elements of stability seem to havereturned to the city, which, among other things,is allowing its planners to take a preventive andproactive type of planning approach rather thana ‘fire-fighting’ type of planning. In fact, theinitiatives taken by the present government ofWest Bengal to view Calcutta more as animportant part of the state/national economy,rather than a stand-alone city, has helped itsplanners to treat the city and its problems in amore holistic and dynamic manner. This trendseems to correspond well with Drakakis-Smith(1995) who suggests that urban policies in thedeveloping world need to shift from ‘contain-ing urban growth to guiding it’. This ‘guiding’could be done in two ways: within the city ina localized form or outside the city (or acombination, thereof) in a broader form. Thispaper looks at how Calcutta has attempted to


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achieve both, in recent years, particularly in themanagement of urban services.

MANAGING URBAN SERVICES:REACTIVE TO PROACTIVEMANAGEMENT

The main function of a city government is toprovide its residents with basic urban servicessuch as housing, water, sanitation, sewerage andgarbage disposal facilities. The following sectiondescribes the extent of the problems of urbanservices in Calcutta and the measures that havebeen taken in recent times to tackle theseproblems. To keep the paper within a reasonablelimit only three major aspects of social services,viz., housing, water supply and sanitation andsewerage are discussed.

Housing

The residential structures in Calcutta range fromkutcha (mud built) huts to multi-storied buildings.About 44% of the total population in Calcutta,however, lives in very poor quality houses withvery low or no basic services. Most families (59%)within the CMA live in one-room units. Theaverage room density for a substantial number(26%) of CMA households is very high at sevenpersons per room. The West Bengal PremisesTenancy Act 1956 was enacted to ease acutehousing shortage, but the freezing of renthindered repair and renovation of buildings(GWB, 1996a). The number of dilapidated houseseven in middle-income areas in Calcutta is onthe rise. Homelessness, congestion and degradedliving conditions thus characterize the housingsituation in Calcutta (GWB, 1996a). The existenceof slums and squatter settlements adds grossly tothe problem.

Slums in Calcutta are thus, as in all Indian cities,one of the major problems of urban management.Calcutta has 2011 registered and about 3500unregistered bustees (slums). In addition, there areunauthorized bustees located on marginal landsadjacent to rail lines, canals and roads. Almost50% of the population in Calcutta city, andbetween 30 and 50% in other municipalitieswithin the CMA (an average of one-third of thepopulation in CMA), lives in slums and squattersettlements (GWB, 1996a; Chakraborti, 1993).Thus the total number of the slum population inthe CMA is around four million. The population

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growth in 10 years during 1971–81 in Calcuttacity was around 4.8%, but, during the sameperiod, the numbers of the bustee populationincreased by about 8.4% (Chakraborti, 1993).The rural poor coming to cities in search of aliving lack the financial resources to compete forserviced land and adequate housing, and oftenoccupy illegal settlements on hazard-prone orecologically fragile lands (World Bank, 1994b).Thus the city slums continue to expand.

A good percentage of slum dwellers work ashousehold helpers, and the hiring residents wantthe slums and their dwellers to exist as long asthey do not create any problem for the residents.In addition, there are other groups of people withvested interests in the existence of slums withinthe city areas. These are the land usurpers, themiddlemen and the individual hut builders. Themiddlemen or mustans, due to their muscle orpolitical connections, are a very powerful groupof people and as intermediaries function at threelevels, between the land owners and the builders,the builders and the tenants and the tenants andthe local administration, to make sure that theirclients are immune from any type of governmen-tal action. The problems of slums are aggravatedfurther by local politicians, who see the slumdwellers as captive vote banks. Promises of regu-larizing their colonies and ensuring protectionagainst civic action are among the election tacticsthat are used to win votes. Therefore, the moreslums the better it is for the politicians, and theyencourage more slums (India Today, 1994).

Until recently city planners and managersattempted to solve the problems of housing andslums through various service provision strat-egies. These strategies, for obvious reasons, com-pounded the problems instead of solving them. Inthe context of deteriorating rural conditions,improved slums only offered incentives forgreater rural – urban drift.

Since the early 1980s the West Bengal govern-ment has taken a holistic view towards solvingthe problems of slums. The government encour-aged more rural opportunities to abate rural –urban drift and link the peripheries of Calcutta toits centre with improved transportation. Theseapproaches seem to have been working quitesatisfactorily. Since the introduction of theseinitiatives, not only does there seem to havebeen slowing down of rural – urban migrationbut there are now recorded instances of out-migration. The following sections describe theseproactive measures and their impacts in somedetail.


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Creating Increased Rural Opportunities: The‘City-Out’ GrowthOne of the major reasons for housing problems inCalcutta is massive rural – urban migration forcedby the economic and social problems in the ruralareas. The West Bengal government rightly diag-nosed the problem and undertook major landtenancy and local government reform policies inthe early 1980s in order to reduce the imbalancein income and decline in poverty, by cuttinginequalities in access to land. This reform measureresulted in a growth in productivity and bettereconomic performance in the rural areas as awhole. The agriculture sector in West Bengal ingeneral has been growing 5.5% annually since theearly 1980s, but in the rural areas surroundingthe CMA it has grown by over 7%. As a result,the people tended to stay back in the rural areas.

This tendency of the people, resulting from theeconomic as well as administrative reformmeasures of the West Bengal government, seemsto have contributed to the slowing down of therate of rural migration to Calcutta especially sincethe 1980s. In the ten years ending in 1981 theCMA population grew around 2.2%, whereas inthe following ten years the growth was only 1.8%(UNCHS, 1996). This is mainly due to a decreasein the population in Calcutta Municipal Corpor-ation (CMC) area. Between 1981 and 1991,though the annual population growth rate inWest Bengal was more than 2%, the growth ratein CMC was only 0.2%. In 1961 the population inthe CMC was 43% of the total CMA population;in 1991 this percentage came down to only 29%.The flow of out-migration from Calcutta istowards the municipal areas in the north of CMC,where average growth during the same period hasbeen 2.5% (GWB, 1996a). The ratio of CMA’spopulation to that of urban West Bengal droppedfrom 80% in 1961 to only 64% in 1991 (GWB,1996a, 5.10). The growth of population inCalcutta in the 1980s was one of the lowestin any megacity in Asia.

Wider Transportation NetworkAnother important measure undertaken by thegovernment in West Bengal to solve the problemin Calcutta is improvement in the transportationsector. The urban core in Calcutta still accommo-dates major employment activities for the CMA.Thus while there has been a reduction in perma-nent residents the number of daily commutersfrom the outlying areas of Calcutta has increasedsignificantly. The improvement in the trans-portation system, especially the railway, servicing

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Calcutta has been a contributing factor in keepingthe people outside the CMA. People as far asBurdwan in the north (150 km away) commutedaily to their jobs in Calcutta. The number ofdaily commuters to Calcutta is estimated to be 1.5million (GWB, 1996a). This new phenomenonsaves the CMA from additional pressure of hous-ing, but puts pressure on the transportation sec-tor, and requires the city to provide additionalinner-city infrastructure.

There are a large number of people who workin Calcutta but keep their families elsewherefor extended family responsibility or economicreasons. Due to improvement in the transpor-tation network many of these people now staywith their families outside the city and commuteto work. As a result, in the recent past there hasbeen an improvement in the male/female ratio inCalcutta. In the 1970s there were 1395.7 males inCalcutta for every 1000 females and in the 1980sthe figure had fallen to 1294.1 per 1000 females(ESCAP, 1993). The improved transportationnetwork has thus been able to contribute to thedecrease of pressure on housing in Calcutta.

Attracting Private Sector Investment in HousingUntil recently, for many reasons the housingmarket has not developed in Calcutta. Theseinclude rent control, the tenant rights act, zoningby-laws, lack of housing finance etc. These controlmeasures, which force low or uncertain return inhousing, equally discourage repair and renovationof old stock. Individuals requiring a house buildtheir own, depending on their financial abilities.Private sector initiatives in housing have been lessthan forthcoming. The government, recognizingthe predatory nature of many existing regulationsand sensing the important role the private sectorcan play in the housing sector, initiated severalreform measures to ensure enhanced involvementof the private sector in the housing industry.

West Bengal is not alone in taking thesemeasures. The central government of Indiaequally emphasizes the important role the privatesector can play in various aspects of rural andurban development, and to attract their partici-pation the eighth and current five-year plan(1992–97) of the Indian government made thefollowing provisions, especially for the housingsector: fiscal incentives for investment in con-structing or buying a house, and for investment inhousing construction; exemption of capital gainsinvestment in a house; development of an insti-tutional structure for the mobilization of house-hold savings at the local level duly linked to an


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apex institution; adoption of liberal building regu-lations and circulation of a manual for low incomehousing; review of rent control laws to encouragehouse construction for renting; declaration ofhousing as an industry entitled to financial andother support and adoption of a policy of grant oftenure to slum dwellers coupled with an urbanbasic services strategy (Chatterjee, 1996).

In the recent past some non-governmentorganizations (NGOs) have worked in thedevelopment of bustee and squatter settlementin Calcutta. The NGO sponsored activities inCalcutta include programmes on education,health, awareness raising and institution building,women’s empowerment and varied economic pro-grammes. The number of bustee and squattersettlement people, however, is so large in Calcuttathat the NGOs so far have been able to reach outto only 10% of the vulnerable population in theCMA (GWB, 1996b).

Water Supply and Sanitation and Sewerage

Water is life and no urban centre can sustain itselfwithout the provision of adequate and safe water.Water may cause water borne (cholera, typhoid),water washed (diarrhoeal or skin disease), waterbased (parasite or worm infestation) and waterrelated (infectious viral) diseases (WHO, 1992).The quality of water is thus very crucial for thesurvival of mankind and it is more so in an urbancentre where the natural cleaning system is notavailable.

The Calcutta Metropolitan DevelopmentAuthority in 1979 recommended norms of sup-plying water in Calcutta. The residents inCalcutta, Howrah, other municipal areas and non-municipal areas within the CMA are to be sup-plied with 180, 160, 140 and 80 liter per capitadaily (lpcd) respectively (GWB, 1996a). The slumareas in Calcutta are to receive 50–100 lpcd ofwater. The CMA commits itself to supply more tothe rich (180 lpcd) and comparatively much less tothe poor (50–100 lpcd) and then poor areas arenot covered by the supply line. The situation thushas not improved.

About 20–25% of the residents in Calcutta areserved by a single tap connection in their housesrunning only for one hour twice daily. Another50% of the population in the CMC area who live,mainly, in the slums or squatter colonies collectwater from stand pipes. There are some 8000stand pipes in the CMC area and about 60% ofthe water going through them is considered to bewasted (Nath, 1993). The actual consumption of

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the majority of population in Calcutta is thusunlikely to be beyond 60–80 lpcd, because25–35% of the water overall is wasted throughleakages in the worn out pipes, public taps andstand pipes. In other areas within the CMA,average rate of supply is only 56 lpcd. In thenon-municipal urban areas and the rural areaswithin the CMA there is no water supply connec-tion (Nath, 1993). The people there make theirown arrangements for water.

The quantity of water in most households inCalcutta is very low; the quality also deterioratesdue to the non-availability of an adequate reser-voir of water. Further, due to intermittent supply,water supply lines are contaminated throughoutside waste and water related activities of thepeople. Impurities and contaminants in the supplywater also occur as the water is distributedthrough underground pipes. The great risk ofpollution occurs in the rainy season when flood-ing increases the chances of surface water con-tamination by sewage and garbage which mayenter the distribution system from stand pipes andother entry-points (Nath, 1993).

The Indian drinking water standards, however,do not have any limits specified for insecticides,pesticides, herbicides, poly-chlorinated biphenyl,disinfectant by-products, organo-tins and nickel.In normal physico-chemical water treatment pro-cesses the removal of such materials is quite smalland so it is anticipated that concentrations ofperhaps up to 0.1 or even 0.15 mg per liter ofthese compounds could be present in the watersupplied through the distribution network (GWB,1996a). Thus the people with less buying powerhave access to only a low quantity and quality ofwater; on the other hand the rich people obtainthe quantity but not the quality of water.

The three major criteria of a minimum sanita-tion system are a toilet to which people have easyaccess, a sanitation system that minimizes thepossibility of human contact with human excretaand a sanitation system that is easy to maintainand keep clean (Satterthwaite, 1995). If the abovethree criteria are used only a small percentage ofpopulation in Calcutta has an adequate provisionof sanitation. In terms of the sewerage system, thesituation in Calcutta is not very good either. Only50% of the CMA’s population and 27% of its areahave sewerage and drainage facilities (Muttagi,1994; India Today, 1994). About 55% of the CMCarea and 70% of the population have an under-ground sewerage system (Chatterjee, 1996). Off-site wastewater treatment and disposal facilities inCalcutta are also a neglected aspect. These are


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available in only three municipal corporations ofCalcutta, Howrah and Chandonnagar and sixother municipalities in the CMA area. In theremaining 29 municipalities, sanitation withon-site wastewater disposal facilities is available.In the slum and squatter settlement areas there areno toilet facilities whatsoever, and the dwellersuse open drains and spaces as latrines (Pugh,1989).

In the areas not covered with a seweragesystem, the people use low-cost septic tanks andpit latrines. The authorities in the CMA have beentrying to improve the situation with the use of avery unique toilet system known as the pour-flush(PF) system that has been in use in India for sometime now. The PF toilet consists of a hydraulicallyefficient pan which can be flushed with a few litersof water, connected in a pair of leach pits, usedalternately. Because of the water seal in the pan, itcan be installed inside the house. This systemcosts only 5 or 6% of the sewerage system andhas many advantages: it is simple, reliable,hygienic and affordable; it can be constructedwith local materials and requires little technicalexpertise for design and construction; it occupiesa small space, (suitable for slums and squattersettlements); it requires little water and it does notrequire any complex sewage treatment (ESCAP,1993).

Poverty Alleviation for Improved Access to Water,Sanitation and Sewerage FacilitiesOne of the major problems of the water, sani-tation and sewerage systems in Calcutta, like theother urban areas in India or in developingcountries in general, is the lack of people’s accessto the available facilities. The understanding ofthe fact that a large number of residents inCalcutta have a very low ability to utilize theurban services provided by the city prompted theCalcutta Metropolitan Development Authority(CMDA) to devise programmes for income gen-eration for the poor. The CMDA rightly under-stood that unless the economic and healthsituations of the poorest of the poor in the CMAare improved the city management cannot besuccessful in ensuring a healthy and clean cityenvironment. The health and employment pro-grammes are thus the major parts of the physicaland socio-economic improvement of slums in thecity, which includes infra-structure and housingimprovement through poverty alleviation andpreventive health programmes. CMDA is amongthe first housing agency in the third worldto undertake income generation and economic

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support programmes in the slums along withprovision of physical and social services (reportsof CMDA cited by GOI, 1996).

The CMDA has undertaken many innovativeprogrammes to improve the conditions of thepoor, e.g., Bustee Improvement Programme,Employment Generation Programme, RefugeeColony Improvement Programme, Health Pro-gramme. The programmes are supported by thefederal as well as the state government and insome cases by foreign aid agencies such as theBritish ODA (Chatterjee, 1996). The programmesare aimed at improving the capacity of the cityresidents to have access to urban services. TheBustee Improvement Programme is also the resultof the problems faced by the city government inthe 1950s and 1960s in undertaking bustee relo-cation programmes. Due to legal complicationsand the involvement of a huge cost, removal ofslum rehousing away from Calcutta was notsuccessful. Further, the programme createdadverse impacts on the dislocated people and theproblem was dispersed to a larger area. Further,relocation of the concerned people proved to be asocially unviable alternative and the programmeitself proved very difficult to implement.

The Bustee Improvement Programme under-taken by the CMDA has many important parts,e.g., primary health care, education, skills devel-opment as well as improvement in the environ-ment and physical conditions with on-site andoff-site sanitation to bring about a change in thequality of life (Chatterjee, 1996). The CalcuttaThika Tenancy (Acquisition and Regulation) Act1981 vested all land occupied by slum tenantswith the government of West Bengal. The objec-tive was to provide ‘greater security of tenure inthe slums’ (GWB, 1996a). It also intended ‘toprotect tenants with better accommodation’ and‘to undertake improvement schemes’. All theprogrammes made arrangements for empoweringthe people concerned in their activities, thus couldeasily attract the concerned people and keep theirinterests intact.

In addition, the West Bengal governmentundertook programmes for all the urban centres inthe province aiming at income generation for theyoung people. This programme, Schemes forUrban Wage Employment (SUWE), initiated in1990, aimed at addressing the issues of urbanpoverty. The objective of the SUWE is to provideemployment to the urban unskilled work force byengaging them in construction works of sociallyand economically useful public projects within themunicipal areas, with a population above 100 000.


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Another programme, the Community Environ-mental Management Strategy (CEMS), has beendesigned as a means towards poverty alleviationby enabling the disadvantaged and vulnerablecommunities of the CMA to have greaterinvolvement in and control over the managementof their living environment, at the household andcommunity levels. The empowerment of the vul-nerable groups to ensure their control over theirlives and the environment is thus one of thefundamental goals of the CEMS. In the CEMSprogramme empowerment is seen as the abilityof individuals, households and communities tounderstand and control the forces shaping theirenvironment. Empowerment in the CEMS pro-gramme is thus aimed to be achieved throughsocial and political organizations, social networks,availability and dissemination of appropriateinformation, appropriate knowledge and skills,productive assets and financial resources (GWB,1996b).

KEY LESSONS AND BEST PRACTICES

The main function of a city government is toprovide the residents with basic urban servicessuch as shelter, water, sanitation and sewerageand garbage disposal facilities. The government inCalcutta has undertaken some laudable measuresin the recent past to ensure better services to itsresidents. The government also encouraged theprivate sector to be involved in certain importantareas such as housing development. The liberal-ization of building regulations, offering incentivesfor low cost housing, and the declaration ofhousing as an industry, entitling it to financial andother governmental benefits, were some of themeasures undertaken to encourage the privatesector.

The authorities in the CMA have been tryingto solve different problems with innovativemeasures. The use of the PF toilet system, thatuses much less water than and costs 5 or 6% ofthe price of the ordinary toilet system, is one ofthose measures. Other city governments with alarge percentage of population may try this sys-tem at a very small cost and may gain a verygood result in the health sector.

The reactive measures alone cannot beadequate in solving the problems of urban servicedelivery in any city. In the recent past thegovernment in Calcutta has therefore undertakensome innovative proactive measures to guide the

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growth in Calcutta. As a result there has been asignificant decline in the growth of population inCalcutta. A better performance of the agriculturesector in the rural areas has been one of the majorreasons for this decline in the growth of popu-lation. The growth in productivity and bettereconomic performance in the rural areas havebeen the result of the West Bengal government’sland tenancy and local government reformmeasures, aimed at the redistribution of land anddecentralization of development activities. Agri-culture in West Bengal in general has grown by5.5% annually since the early 1980s, but in therural areas surrounding the CMA it has grown byover 7%. The people tended to stay back in therural areas and enjoy an improved quality of life.

The improvement in the transportation system,especially the railway, servicing Calcutta has alsobeen a contributing factor in keeping the peopleoutside the CMA. The urban core in Calcutta stillaccommodates major employment activities forthe CMA, but the people can live and in factprefer to live outside that area and commute daily.

Since the 1980s the government has beeninvolved in a bustee improvement programme inthe city. The programme focused on primaryhealth care delivery, education and skills training,as well as improvement in the environment andphysical condition with on-site and off-site sani-tation to bring about a change in the quality oflife.

CONCLUSION

The megacities of Asia are caught at the cross-roads of major economic and political changes,both nationally and internationally. Thesechanges, on the one hand, added new dimensionsto the existing problems of these cities but, on theother, equally offered new opportunities to tacklethese problems. For example, improved transpor-tation and better communication create somemanagement and control problems, but there arenow real chances of dispersing the populationconcentration from city centres to the peripheries.Similarly, at the international level, regional econ-omic grouping and formation of a customs unionetc indicate that not only can the productionfacilities be distributed among the countries andbeyond one’s national border, but the same canalso be done for the population.

The holistic and proactive approach adoptedby both the city government of Calcutta and the


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GWB significantly helped to ameliorate the prob-lems in Calcutta. Emphasis on rural reform andrural development contributed to the declineof population growth in Calcutta. Similarly,improvement in the transportation system (acity-out growth strategy), especially the railwaysystem to and from Calcutta, equally helped inkeeping the people outside the CMA. Alsopeople are moving out of Calcutta, resulting inthe improvement of the overall living conditionsof the residents in Calcutta.

Despite these measures, however, a largenumber of people continue to live in slums inCalcutta. The slum areas are still a major problem.In the 1980s the city government initiated theintegrated Slum Improvement Programme (SIP).The measures under the SIP have improved theconditions to some extent, but lot more needsto be done. Nonetheless, the key lesson thatemerges from Calcutta experience is that partialad hoc and reactive strategy is no solution to theproblems of any city, let alone Calcutta. A moreholistic approach based on national and inter-national factors and dynamics has to be taken intoconsideration in future city planning. Newoptions, such as city-out growth, improvement inthe transportation and communication network,private sector involvement in housing and servicedelivery and socio-economic development of thepoor, may prove to be key solutions of futurecities in Asia.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

This paper is an outcome of a larger researchproject titled ‘Asian cities: best practices andlessons learned’ funded by the Australian Agencyfor International Development (AusAID).

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SUSTAINABLE D

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BIOGRAPHY

The authors can be contacted at the followingaddresses.Dr. Samiul Hasan,Development Planning Programme,Department of Geographical Sciences andPlanning,The University of Queensland,Brisbane QLD 4072,Australia.Facsimile: 617 3365 6899.email: [email protected]. M. Adil Khan,Chief Technical Adviser,Human Development Initiative Support,UNDP, Yangoon, Myanmar.E-mail: [email protected]

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Documents

Management of Calcutta megacity: a transition from a reactive to a proactive strategy