According to the 2014 World
Urbanization Prospects, released by the Population Division of the Department
of Social and Economic Affairs of the United Nations, India is going to add 404
million of people to its urban population by 2050, ahead of the projected
additions by China (292 million) and Nigeria (212 million).
That is expected to add to the
poverty problem of India, slowing down the rate of poverty reduction in urban
areas of the country. The Global Food Policy report by the International Food
Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in March said that the trend is bound to bring
more poverty to urban agglomerations.
But it is a double-edge
sword.
Why are people migrating to
cities or urban agglomerations?
Because they are not able to
find a sustainable livelihood back home, if they can call the place they come
from as home.
The primary reason to move to
cities is the additional source of income by finding jobs in the booming
infrastructure sector in India. And small jobs that these big urban
agglomerations support. Even if they will pay a heavy price. They will have to
live on streets, in slums, with no quality of life. Education, health, shelter
and amenities like piped water, electricity and roads will remain out of bounds
for them. But they will, at least, be able to feed themselves and their
families, that was not possible back there in their villages. Even if malnutrition
becomes an urban problem with this rural exodus, it is, at least, saving lives.
They were poor back there, in
villages. And they will remain poor even if they migrate to cities.
Because the sole aim of such
migration is survival and not uplifting the scale of life.
So, if we see from a
sociological perspective, it is a fruitful migration, as long as we keep on
failing our agriculture that still supports some 45 crore Indians, if we go by
an NSSO report which estimates the number of agricultural households in India
at 9 crore. It is an established practice that for statistical calculations, we
take the average size of an Indian family of five members. The number goes even
further if we count the population dependent indirectly on agriculture.
Because the farming distress is
very real. It, in fact, has been there for decades. Since 2001, over 2.30 lakh
farmers have committed suicide, i.e., 2 farmers per hour, and these are as per
the officials records of the government of India (NCRB figures). It is that
during the years of crisis, i.e., drought and overproduction years, the problem
becomes so intense that it starts spilling over on our conscience.
And it is always a chain
reaction, an eco-system built on all of its constituents with faming at the
core, be it rural markets, daily wage earners, transportation workers or even
service professionals like lawyers and doctors, farming sustains the flow of
money in the local eco-system by regulating the purse strings of majority of
its stakeholders.
India has to grow and fine
tune its process with this reality. It has to find solutions within the existing
framework of its problems because it cannot generate millions of jobs, even in
coming years, to support and sustain the chunk of population dependent on agriculture.
©SantoshChaubey