psyph3r
Juggernaut
There are other more densely populated places in the world which aren't as congested as ours.
It's the unplanned and haphazard development we have here, the municipal bodies and city planners grant permissions without building wide roads. When buildings go into redevelopment, people still end up with the same, narrow 2 lane roads serving double the population if not more.
There should be a law for all employees of the city planning dept. to have at least 10000 hours in Cities: Skylines before getting the job lol.
Indian population is drastically coming down, that too below replacement levels in southern region which is being detrimental for them.
Lack of proper futuristic planning and corruption was the real concern.
mayank11280
Explorer
India is massive. Electricity today is available for 24x7 in almost all towns and cities. Almost all villages receive stable electricity.
Connectivity has improved massively too. There are 140 airports now, compared to 80 in 2010. Railway has improved with DFC operationalised in East and West about to be finished. Metros are operational in many cities now and getting constructed in even more. Road connectivity has improved to even distant villages, today, even in case of Bihar, it is possible to reach the capital from any district headquarters within 5 hours, which used to be over 10 sometimes.
Communication infrastructure has dramatically improved. Even villages receive 4G and 5G connectivity.
Utilities have improved. Tier 2 and 3 cities are also receiving piped natural gas. Payment infrastructure has been revolutionary with UPI. And so on.
I mean, it is not perfect, but today is better than 2010. There is no excuse for the private capital to reduce investment when infrastructure and its access have only improved for the masses of the country. Private capital even got PLI benefits. The end result? Jobless growth. Surging corporate profits, stagnant real wages, stagnant consumption, falling investments. That’s the point. It is the lazy greedy risk averse private capital. This is most starkly visible in the poor state of creative industry, look at the sloppy movies and show they come up with.
The boogeyman of population is hilarious and depressing. Demographic transition theory has proven itself credible. As development happens population growth rate goes down. India’s TFR has hit 2.0 already (from 6 at the time of independence), below replacement level of 2.1. Not far in the future we will be facing population crunch. The population expansion we see right now is mostly because of population momentum and it will run out soon. We can’t reduce the population even if we enforce some limit on children number, notwithstanding that would be disastrous.
We need to tackle the problem of uneven growth. Urban centres now produce 2/3rd of the GDP. It will produce 85% of the GDP by 2047, and host 50% of total population of India. It is natural that the working population will be pulled towards these opportunities. It is the sad state of urban planning and lack of sense of community ownership and awareness of rights among citizens to demand urban planning services and accountability from the government. Without proper resource management things will be difficult. We also need to ensure that growth happens in rural areas so that the population isn’t forced to migrate to cities.
The problem is overcrowding and skewed-development.
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I am referring to the population and not population density. Without resources (and not just land), you cannot survive.
You are right in that we crossed the inflection point eons ago when we stopped planning for the spurt. What you have now is 100 apples for a million customers. And we still have not learnt our lesson and choose to ignore this as a problem, so it will get worse.
The current generation is crying but I regret the next generation; it will only get rougher with time. We all hate it and this is dark, but Thanos was absolutely right.
Anyways, this is my rant for the weekend and wildly off topic for this thread. Mods may move or delete it.
mayank11280
Explorer
If taken literally, anomaly is that one can see apples thrown away near farms on the way from HP because there are none to buy.
That was an allegory to the fact that you do not have enough resources to support everyone. And that is evident in the decline of quality of life.
mayank11280
Explorer
Please give some sources and comparisons with the past to support this claim please?
psyph3r
Juggernaut
I think we have enough resources and a large enough landmass to sustain our population. It's the mismanagement that has led us to the state we're in. Most of our rivers have been reduced to sewage lines.
It's the flocking of migrants in search of opportunities to only a handful of urban centers that stretches resources thin and is a sureshot recipe for disaster in the future.
Cities like Bangalore and Pune already have water shortages, people continue to suffer at the hands of the tanker mafia and yet the cities continue to expand in all directions which I find really mind-boggling.
Developing tier 2 and tier 3 cities rapidly without repeating the mistakes of the metros should be the govt.s highest priority. Spreading out our urban population evenly across at least 2-3 dozen urban cities will offset some of the problems and make them more liveable overall.
Air pollution is the most obvious, you're accelerating towards your death with every breath. We have a serious problem with PM 2.5 pollution, global cities max AQI is our minimum baseline lol.
Some people in cities end up spending almost 4 hours daily on their commutes, they also get squeezed like cattle in public transportation, they have no time to spend with their families/friends or on their hobbies since chores, commute and work takes up most if not all of their time.
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mayank11280
Explorer
Water scarcity case: We have massive problem of floods in North Bihar and droughts in South Bihar: proper management of floods can resolve drought problem too. Our water management is poor throughout the nation.
Food scarcity problem: our buffer stocks are 3x the sanctioned quantity which can support the population for 3 straight years of crop failure.
Healthcare problem: we have 1.2 doctors per 1000 population, WHO recommends minimum 1/1000. There too we have ample human resources.
Overpopulation idea is a legacy of now defunct Malthusian hypothesis. But it has stuck with mass consciousness because it fits into the theocratic idea of doomsday.
Here are the facts on quality of life:
Life expectancy has doubled since independence from around 35 years to around 70 years now.
MMR has come down from 2000 in 1947 to less than 100 today.
IMR has come down from 150 in 1947 to around 25 in 2024.
Literacy rate has increased from around 20% at the time of independence to around 80% now.
TFR has come down from 6 to 2.
Poverty rate has fallen, whether seen from government data (MPI from 25% to 10%) or World Bank data.
There has been no major famine in India since late 1950s.
The story of economic transformation and increase in purchasing power is well known. From underdeveloped economy to a lower middle income level economy.
Quality of life has objectively improved in India.
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There is difference between life and quality of life. Yes, life expectancy has increased but the fact remains that unlike 10-15 years back, today they cannot even sustain a mobile connection for a five minute call.
mayank11280
Explorer
This has to be conceded. Here quality of life has degraded. But in larger scheme of things, we are still doing wayyyy better. Life expectancy is higher than ever before in our history.
This is not because we don’t have ample spectrum or resources to build and deploy mobile phone towers. It is again resource underuse and mismanagement.
And here is the definition of QOL -
Quality of life - Wikipedia
Do you have any evidence or metrics to indicate resource underuse ?
mayank11280
Explorer
Yes, I used HDI as the basis of my analysis. Life expectancy, Education and standard of living (income).And here is the definition of QOL -
Quality of life - Wikipedia
en.m.wikipedia.org
I don’t. However, 5 minutes of call doesn’t signify quality of life either, nor it is an objective fact for which sources can be cited either. Moreover, there have been newspaper articles discussing the problems of poor urban network connectivity in which experts have expressed concerns about companies not keeping up with increasing telecom density in urban areas leading to poor network coverage and quality. I am not an expert in this. I took the experts’ concerns at face value.
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mayank11280
Explorer
Decline means fall in comparison to the past.
Here is a comparison with the past:
This is the context of discussion. We were talking about whether quality of life has declined in India and i said it has improved using the FRAMEWORK of HDI to analyse change in Quality of Life in India when compared to its past to look into your claim of it declining. I did not say that I think India today is doing better than other countries as per HDI. I only used the framework. Let’s not shift the goal post again.
I see a call drop on every third or fourth call. This is across all phones and all family members. Objective enough ?
Again I said quality of life and not life itself. You and me are surviving with all of this, aren't we ? But 10-15 years back I used to enjoy uninterrupted phone calls. If that isn't regression then I don't know what is. This is just one example. Points have been made about stability of electricity supply, pollution, water quality and just general hygiene. I don't see any answers on those except that more and more people have access to these resources than before. What will access to dirty untreated water achieve ? See what is happening in Pune.
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mayank11280
Explorer
Do you think this is because of over population or is it because we aren’t using the resources efficiently? Have we hit the peak resource utilisation, or even decent resource utilisation to blame the population?
To answer the next question: you and I alone are not India and if we don’t experience improvement doesn’t mean things haven’t improved. Millions live a better life now, that matters a lot. There can be no islands of prosperity in an ocean of poverty, hence we are trying to improve quality of life for everyone. There is a good book Factfulness by Hans Rosling which you may find very interesting and informing. I loved the book and it helped me see what I couldn’t appreciate before.
Another aspect is dirty untreated water, here things are bad and they need to be worked upon. But that doesn’t mean things are not better than before.
It is like we are on the way but not there yet. Miles to go still.