Due to the uncontrolled migration to the urban centers, the civic authorities are now facing a difficult situation. The increasing urban pollution has led to major health problems for a vast majority of the urban dwellers. Thus, cities and towns in India face a difficult future. Urban infrastructure and housing are inadequate and cannot absorb the massive migration from the countryside.
Urban economic and social conditions are deteriorating, resulting in high levels of unemployment and social unrest. In these adverse circumstances, Indian urban areas must become the focus for new policy initiatives with particular emphasis on population control, rural development, sustainable agricultural development and rural hazard mitigation.
The idea of introducing decentralized planning is now being considered. Regional economies can be developed through decentralized multilevel planning, local autonomy and people participation by combining the top-down and bottom-up approaches. It is an emerging development model in states like Kerala. City development got a boost and in cities like Cochin real estate developments got more streamlined. Planned development had its own unique characteristics and advantages.
At the dawn of India’s independence, British legacy had left India with a highly distorted spatial economic structure. A generally thwarted growth rate and large inequality levels in socio-economic development in the country was a major headache to the development experts and planning commission members. There were islands of development in the vast ocean of backwardness.
Focus on regional diversities guided entire research projects. Identifying elements and variables for the measurement of regional disparities was the main concern after the liberalization of the Indian economy in 1991. Several sets of indicators were identified to measure the emergence and continuation of regional disparities at the national, state and district levels.
