South Asia: India, Giant of the Subcontinent - Dragons and Tigers: A Geography of South, East and Southeast Asia - page 235

According to geographers Brian Berry and Howard
Spodek (1982), in the residential geography of the
traditional Indian city , socioeconomic status was the dom-
inant theme. However, modernization is transforming
communal caste status to communal class status.High-
status areas are central by location; low-status areas
are peripheral by location. With rapid growth and
change after independence, by the 1960s, distinct
familiaar eas and male migrant areas had emerged
around factories and port facilities. And there was some
suburbanization.
In the 1960s, planning direction shifted from con-
trolling metropolitan growth to diffusing it. Greenbelts
and satellite towns were installed but were largely inef-
fective in stemming urban growth. Many of the new
towns were too close to the main city and were quickly
engulfed by squatter settlements. Construction was
shoddy and buildings quickly deteriorated (Figure 8-14).
More recent efforts include relocating squatters to
new housing even further away . There, families find
themselves without basic services, including transporta-
tion to the city where they can conduct their informal ac-
tivities. Many men are forced by circumstances to find
shelter in the main city . Many of these men start new
families, thereby fracturing their original family , leaving
women and children destitute.
Mumbai (Bombay) is located on a series of small,
joined islands and reclaimed land. T Traffic congestion is
exacerbated with north-south commuting. The govern-
ment decided to develop a New Mumbai (Navi Mumbai)
on the mainland to decentralize the ever-choking stream
of commuters. Success was deemed likely because similar
plans had been effective in Japan, China, South Korea,
and Singapore. With jobs and housing available in Navi
Mumbai, congestion would be relieved and more indus-
try would be attracted away from the central city . Similar
schemes were planned for all of India' s major cities. Un-
fortunately , success at decentralization has been limited,
at best.
India is a place where conflicting interests and
powerful lobbies can distort any plan. Industry and
business, real estate and construction, middle class
and poor: all have their different goals. Besides, the Indian
government has generally stood as champion of the poor,
so how could it legitimately support projects benefiting
the other groups? Maharashtra state government showed
little interest in the plan. Moreover, it permitted further
land reclamation and building development at the
southern end of Bombay Island, adding to the existing
congestion.

An Indian company (ITC Limited) introduced
a network of internet kiosks called e-choupal into
several villages in 2002. T Two years later there were
close to 2,000 kiosks, each serving its host village
and four others within a 5-kilometer (3 mile) ra-
dius. E-choupal are allowing farmers access to all
the various stages of agricultural pricing. Further-
more, they no longer have to sell to intermediary
traders.
There are hundreds of such programs across
India. Many of these are private initiatives, connected
by a common theme of finding inexpensive, digital
solutions to the critical problems of the poor. In
rural India, where the majority is semi-literate and
live in remote communities unconnected by road or
phone, this is indeed a digital revolution!

Urban Landscapes

Indian cities have their roots in Harappan civilization.
Later, they centered on the Indian princely states. Such
indigenous cities were nodes in functional regions, offer-
ing protection in return for food. With British intrusion,
powerful economic systems shifted the emphasis to
coastal cities. Interior cities became peripheral in impor-
tance to the larger international economic system in
which spatially peripheral (coastal) cities became central
to economic interchange. Furthermore, two separate
administrative systems operated: that of the Indian
princes and that of the British.
Similarly when British institutions and infrastruc-
ture were superimposed on traditional landscapes, two
urban structures emerged. English cantonments and civil
lines operated differently from the rest of the city , and
straight avenues brought order to the perceived chaos of
the Indian areas. Calcutta, Madras, Bombay , and later
New Delhi and others emerged as dual cities.
In 1947, there were 582 princely states and estates of
which 115 were gun-salute states. The number of gun
salutes—21, 15, 10—indicated the importance of the
prince, not the economic system tied to the princely city .
When states were reorganized in 1950 and 1956 along
linguistic lines, princely states lost primacy , prestige, and
power. Only five of these are still state capitals: Bhopal,
Hyderabad, Jaipur, Srinagar, and Thiruvananthapuram
(T (Trivandrum).