The Sarasvati-Sindhu civilisation was spread over 1 million square kilometres and incorporated autonomously run city states which had immaculate urban planning.
Despite the evidence of social complexity and sophisticated trade and urbanism, there has been no evidence unearthed yet of a ruling class distinct from the plebians.
They offer one of the finest examples from the ancient world of how cities are complex adaptive systems and how if one gets the basic rules right it can have an impact at scale.
Complex adaptive systems are composed of millions of individuals making choices based on simple rules. The underlying rules and their enforcement aggregates to the system as a whole.
If the cities of the Sarasvati-Sindhu civilisation are a good example of complex adaptive systems done right, modern urban India is a good example of how complex adaptive systems can break-down when either the underlying rules are absurd or when they’re not enforced.
Over the last three decades, India’s economic growth and poverty alleviation have been at a scale never before seen in our history. Yet, our urban spaces do not reflect this economic growth.
A common sentiment echoed across the well-travelled classes of India is that India looks poorer than it is. This sentiment is true even without floods and other natural calamities wreaking further havoc on our cityscapes.
One of the primary reasons for this is that India suffers from One Percenter Urbanism. The one percenter population not only includes the top one percentile of Indians by wealth but also our bureaucratic, legal and political elites.
The tiny area in our cities where the one percenters live has well laid out and mostly pothole-free roads, well-maintained pavements for walking, stormwater drains, parks, traffic lights that work and good aesthetics.
In addition, there are no overflowing mounds of garbage, encroachments are kept at bay, loudspeakers don't blare at random hours and there is good connectivity with multiple modes of transport despite the denizens of such spaces requiring only their luxury cars for transport.
For the rest of us Indians, living in urban India is not value for money given the uneven and unpredictable quality of public services and aesthetics of our neighbourhoods.
An under-examined reason for brain drain is the low quality of life in urban India. Given similar (or more) salaries in India and say Malaysia, an average middle-class person will more often than not choose the latter.
This is not because of a lust for “experiencing other cultures”. This simply boils down to the quality of urban life in India.
Our One Percenter Urbanism is also manifested in our exaltation of some public spaces. Rather than using those spaces in a multiplicity of ways, these spaces are relegated to single use without any additional value to the public.
We do not realise that commerce can be engendered by public spaces by viewing them as a sphere of consumption. Subways and metro stations can double as shopping centres and public performance spaces.
Read More https://swarajyamag.com/ideas/indias-one-percenter-urbanism
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