By IANS
New Delhi : India and China have 37 percent of the world's slums and their approach to urban growth will be critical to the future of humankind, says a UN report released Wednesday, seeking to end the myth that urbanisation was bad for development.
The 'State of the World Population 2007' report of the UN Population Fund (Unfpa) also says that policymakers have generally been unwilling to accept urban growth and have tried to prevent it by discouraging migration.
"Such policies are ineffective, reducing housing for the poor and, therefore, promoting the growth of slums," the report says. "Migration actually has a positive impact on cities."
The policies that tend to retard urban growth should shift to positive factors such as social development, investment in health and education, empowerment of women and better access to reproductive health services.
"On reflection, it is surprising how rarely this agenda has influenced policy decisions, as opposed to an anti-migration approach," it says, adding that 56 percent of the urban population in India and China lives in slum conditions.
"Decisions taken today in cities across the developing world will shape not only their own destinies but the social and environmental future of humankind," it says and adds that urgency is needed to addresses the challenges and opportunities.
The report says that for the first time in world history more than half of the global population, 3.3 billion, will be living in cities and that the future of those in developing countries, and humanity itself, will depend on today's decisions.
In India, however, it estimates urban areas to hold less than 30 percent of the population, growing to 40.7 percent by 2030. It says this lower ratio is also the result of the definition of 'urban' adopted in India.
The report says that Indian policymakers hoped to retard urban growth with the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme enacted in 2005 to provide 100 days of employment every year to a member of every household in some 350 districts.
"It remains to be seen what impact it will have on rural-urban migration," says the report, adding that natural increase, rather than migration, has been the main reason for the increase in India's urban growth.
The report, which focuses on urbanisation this year, says job opportunities in the formal sector in India have not been expanding and much of the urban labour force works in the informal sector.
"But this does not prevent migrants from coming in search of the intangible advantages, opportunities and amenities of larger cities. Poverty in small towns has always been higher than in the million-plus cities and medium-size towns."
Giving s historical perspective, the report says societies that allowed free movement of people within their borders saw a decline in rural poverty, while those that controlled migration saw either no change or deterioration.
The report also feels that "organisational ingenuity" was needed in cities so that they could adapt to an ageing population of the future, while citing the example of Chennai.
"In Chennai, where the total fertility rate has already fallen below replacement level, the city is closing 10 maternity clinics, retraining staff and reopening them as geriatric units."