SIEMENS

The roof over Laxmi Chinnoo’s head is an overpass, a road over a railroad track. Nearby, trains clatter day and night on their way to Mumbai’s Chuna Bhatti rail station. Laxmi, a woman in her mid 40s, lives on a foursided area of hard-packed earth. Little walls of dried clay serve as boundaries on the ground, marking where her little parcel ends and her neighbors’ begin. Laxmi has been living here for three years with her three daughters and her elderly mother. Sleeping, cooking, washing, reading — her whole life takes place outside. Her private sphere is limited to a partitioned-off space behind rugs hung from wires, where the women can get dressed.

Laxmi Chinnoo is an industrious woman. She has two jobs as a household helper for prosperous families in this metropolis of 14 million people. One of the families pays her 500 rupees a month — about $11, and the other job pays the equivalent of around $7. Her income is barely enough to buy food and send the girls to school. When the family moved from the countryside a few years ago, she had a room in a nearby slum district, but the authorities tore down the dwellings and Laxmi faced a dilemma: Should she be homeless but close to her work, or move to a squatters’ area farther away and spend a major share of her pay for transportation? She decided to live under the bridge.

Chinnoo’s fate, which the American journalist Robert Neuwirth describes in his 2005 book Shadow Cities, is the everyday reality faced by millions of Indians. Changing this state of affairs represents a formidable challenge. After all, India’s population is growing rapidly, especially in its cities. In addition, although remarkable wealth is being created, the gulf between rich and poor remains dramatic. To achieve sustainable development, India’s cities will have to reinvent themselves.

“Indian cities are far from realizing their potential,” says Dr. Shirish Sankhe, Director of the McKinsey & Company corporate consulting firm’s Mumbai location. “That’s a troubling situation, but the problems can be solved with the right policies.” In an extensive study titled “India’s Urban Awakening,” Sankhe and his colleagues investigated how much dormant growth potential there is in India’s cities, and how it can be brought to life — a topic that was also a focal point at the Future Dialogue symposium in late September 2011 in New Delhi, an event organized by Siemens and the Max Planck Society.

The challenge is huge. According to the United Nations, India is home to about 1.2 billion people, and the number is rising rapidly. Between 1950 and 1990 the country’s population increased from 371 to 873 million, with another 350 million people added in the 20 years since then. And the UN predicts the population will grow by another 300 million people by 2030, which would make a total of 1.5 billion. There would then be roughly 270 million more Indians in their employable years than there are today.

Most of them will seek work in cities. Although only one third of Indians now live in urban areas, more than two thirds of the economic output is generated there. So many people are leaving the countryside that city residents may account for over 40 percent of the population by 2030, claims the McKinsey report. Sixty-eight cities will then have over one million inhabitants and six megacities will each be home to more than ten million people.

Essentially, this bodes well for India’s development, because cities are “job machines.” Infrastructure projects, home construction, education, entertainment and services power the economy. Dynamic cities could quadruple India’s gross domestic product by 2030, to $5,060 per capita — and good planning could help boost the GDP by another one third by then, according to McKinsey.

But that won’t happen unless many things change. To date, India’s cities have mushroomed rather than grown. Neuwirth, the author, has lived in Mumbai’s Sanjay Gandhi Nagar squatter neighborhood. Many of the people there, like Laxmi Chinnoo, live outdoors or in settlements they build on unused land, often without access to electricity, water lines or sewage systems — usually on the borderline to legality. “Though many squatters work as drivers and maids and child-care workers, they are seen as anti-social elements,” says Neuwirth. “Whether a person is working as a scavenger or in a factory, whether they’ve started their own roadside business or are cleaning houses, they deserve to be treated with respect and dignity.”

Holistic Approach. In the biggest cities, where the urban landscape includes terrible slums, even affluent families are affected by poor air quality, noise and congestion. “Indianeeds holistic solutions for its cities,” says Sankhe. A key element here is the construction of modern infrastructures. “In the next two decades India’s cities will need to invest $1.2 trillion.” This means the average per capita investment in cities will have to be increased from the current level of $17 to $134.

But the effects of traffic congestion aren’t limited to slow travel and poor quality of life, they also contribute to reduced economic output, high fuel consumption and healthcare-related costs associated with serious air pollution. “Alongside new roads, India also needs an entirely new traffic concept whose central element is public transportation,” says Sankhe. In addition to over 19,000 kilometers of new roads each year, cities will also need up to 400 kilometers of new subway lines — that’s 20 times more than has been built in the last decade.

In the years to come India will need between 700 and 900 million square meters of new housing space annually. That’s an area equivalent to two cities the size of Mumbai. Water consumption per capita will increase by 45 liters a day. And energy use could double in the coming decade. “Without the latest technology, India’s cities will not be able to meet these challenges,” says Sankhe. “Infrastructure solutions like those offered by Siemens can make a crucial contribution.” indeed, Siemens is active in many fields in India. For example, the company delivers commuter trains for Mumbai, New Delhi, Kolkata and Chennai. It is helping to boost the energy efficiency of new buildings, including Mumbai’s Tata Tower, and it has installed treatment systems at the Panjrapur waterworks in Mumbai.

Infrastructure isn’t the whole story, however. Sankhe explains that Indian cities also need more effective administration and political reforms, such as the direct election of mayors. And government needs to invest in low-cost housing.

“Governments need to work in partnership with shantytowns and squatter communities to plan for the future,” says Neuwirth. Cities can offer reasonable quality of life only when they provide it for all inhabitants. And that includes not only India’s new elites, but also hard-working people like Laxmi Chinnoo, who will hopefully one day have a proper roof over her head — instead of a bridge.