India and her neighbors are going through a tortuous process of urbanization - slow, messy and partly hidden. This is seen in severe problems of livability and congestion, making cities unattractive for rural migrants. As a result, whatever benefits urban agglomerations could have offered in terms of economic advance are getting diluted. This is the dire analysis of a 200-page World Bank report on urbanization in South Asia, released on Thursday. 

The report has some suggestions on how to set this right. Chief among them is more money for infrastructure. The report estimates that between 2010 and 2050, urban India's population will increase by about 497 million, going by present growth trends. To accommodate this additional population, nearly $600 billion (at 2004 prices) will be needed just to provide adequate water, sanitation and roads, the report suggests. 

That's about Rs 40 lakh crore for forty years or about Rs 1 lakh crore per year, at current exchange rates. This does not include housing, electricity, transportation, education or health, to name a few essential requirements for a decent life. If one includes these, the costs may easily double. Going by current trends, at least a third of this gigantic amount would have to be raised by local bodies.

The World Bank argues in this report that "urbanization leads to concentration of economic activity, improves productivity and spurs job creation, specifically in manufacturing and services." This has the "potential to transform ... economies to join the ranks of richer nations in both prosperity and livability," it says. 

Over 54% of the world's population now lives in urban areas, creating 80% of global GDP, consuming two-thirds of global energy and accounting for 70% of greenhouse gas emissions, according to World Bank data not included in this report. Nearly a billion urban dwellers are poor and deprived of decent housing and basic services. 

The report has some interesting insights on the growth of Indian cities. One is that the physical space occupied by cities has growing faster than the population. This 'messy' nature of sub-continental urbanization was revealed in satellite analysis of night lights, with urban areas growing by more than 5% per year compared to population growth of under 2.5% per year. This means low density sprawls at the peripheries. Night lights data also shows that multi-city agglomerations of two or more 100,000+ cities had increased from 37 in 1999 to 45 in 2010 in India.