HYDERABAD: A whopping 44 per cent, that’s the share of urban population in Telangana. The numbers are predicted to rise sharply in near future which means soon, more than half of the State’s population will be living in cities. But, where are these cities? The other South Indian States have at least two to three well-developed cities apart from the State capital but that is not the case in TS. The recently released Ease of Living Index has amply highlighted this aspect.
The number of cities from Telangana that made it into the rankings is just one example of the current state of affairs -- among 111 cities ranked by the study, just three, Karimnagar, Warangal and Hyderabad, are from Telangana. Meanwhile, 12 cities from Tamil Nadu, which has double the population of Telangana, have made it to the list of which two were in the top 10. Similarly, seven cities from Karnataka and four cities from Andhra also made the cut.
What’s ailing Telangana?
The rankings duly highlighted the progress made by Karimnagar, a fast developing city that was ranked at 11th spot in the country, much higher that the State capital Hyderabad that came 27th. However, the same study also exposed the poor state of affairs in Warangal, a city that has been in existence for decades.
In the overall rankings, Warangal came 61, but under the category of cities with a population between 0.5-1 million it came 11, after places like Solapur, Ajmer, Jhansi and Ujjain. “Although the methodology used by the study is not perfect, we can use the rankings in the right spirit for further development of cities,” says V Srinivas Chary, Director of Centre for Energy, Environment, Urban Governance and Infrastructure Development at Administrative Staff College of India (ASCI).
Srinivas Chary is not happy with the methodology as the study has applied the same parameters to rank small as well as large cities.
“The presence of a large, mega city like Hyderabad, that continues to grow at current rate, can slow down the growth of small cities and towns in the State,” says Chary. “But, there are ways to accelerate growth in smaller towns. For instance, instead of focussing on developing already established industrial sectors, the government should focus on developing new and innovative industrial clusters in the growing cities.”
“This will attract more investments and talent to these places. If the government keeps focussing only on IT, which is centred around Hyderabad, there won’t be enough growth in new cities,” added V Srinivas Chary. The worst ranking of Warangal among 15 different parameters is in ‘Transportation and mobility’ as it is ranked a sad 106 out of 111 cities, whereas for Karimnagar it is ‘Mixed land use and compactness’ as it was ranked 81 for which the share of mixed land use area in the city and Net Density was considered.
Poor economy and employment in cities?
The State government has been making tall claims of generating a lot of jobs and boosting the economy. But, the study seems to disagree with that. The cities have been ranked by the study under four major categories — Institutional, Social, Economic and Physical. All three cities from the State that made it to the list scored the low in economic category — they were ranked at 59, 31 and 87 respectively. The economic category ranking were decided based on the following: increase in VAT/GST collection, increase in collection of Professional Tax, increase in issuance of construction permits and percentage of vendors registered and provided formal spaces.
Miles to go for Hyderabad to become ‘global city’
The ranking of Hyderabad for its physical infrastructure is a grim reminder that the city is miles away from achieving its dream of becoming a global hub. With regard to physical infrastructure, Hyderabad has been ranked at a low 44 among 111 cities. The ranking of physical category was done based on nine parameters. And only in one of those parameters did our city come in top 10. It was ranked 6 in power supply.
Although the city is riding high on metro rail its rank in transportation and mobility is 21. Some of the parameters considered for ranking under transportation and mobility are geographical coverage of public transport, availability of public transport, mode share of public transport, percentage of road network with dedicated bicycle tracks, availability of passenger information system, percentage coverage of footpaths — wider than 1.2 m and percentage of traffic intersections with pedestrian crossing facilities,
The State regularly boasts of the green and blue bin policy for waste collection, but the city was ranked a poor 76 in solid waste management.
On drinking water supply, it came way behind at rank 67. The situation of physical infrastructure is equally bad in Warangal as the city was ranked 55 in the Physical category whereas Karimnagar city was placed better at 28.