India's cities are today its biggest challenge and its biggest opportunity. This is partly a matter of numbers. India's cities are growing. There are many more second and third tier metros now than ever before. By and large, their growth is led by politicians and real-estate developers rather than by planners or community leaders. The market-led growth of Indian cities is inevitable in a democracy, where central planning has been under attack for almost 30 years, since Rajiv Gandhi first encouraged liberalisation, new technologies and innovation.
The question now is: what are the alternatives to urban planning if cities are not going to be state-led, centrally-planned and managed by technocrats? The market is part of the answer. A certain amount of growth will be led by the emerging middle classes, in search of superior housing, gated communities and economic mobility. But the fate and public inclusion of the working classes, the informally employed and indigent classes is both theoretically and practically unresolved.
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At first glance, the idea of smart cities appears to require a high level of technological development, significant pre-existing communication technologies and a high existing level of literacy. These requirements appear to make the idea of "smart cities" less relevant to India. But the Aadhaar experiment, the Right to Information Act, and the growing use of internet technologies to expand social welfare in India suggests that Indian cities can also be assisted to be "smart cities" with appropriate incentives from the State and the market.
There are also positive factors in Indian cities: the high and growing rates of mobile telephony, the growth of cable television, the large number of IT professionals, the number of non-governmental organisations that are assisting poorer citizens to make use of new media technologies and the relative cheapness of new media compared to older ones.
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At the end of the day, Indian cities face a major fork in the road, in the era of new media, aggressive market forces and new patterns of consumption and class. They can be truly face-to-face societies, in which urban alienation, stress and uncertainty are partly alleviated by social contact, direct social relationships and mutual recognition and acknowledgement. Or they can become back-to-back societies, where urban groups become isolated and inward-looking, avoiding contact with one another except in conditions of hostility and hierarchy. This back-to-back order remains one of the worst aspects of the caste system.