Quality of Life in Metropolitan cities of Uttar Pradesh

Abstract

Urbanization is a population shift from rural to urban areas, "the gradual increase in the proportion of people living in urban areas", and the ways in which each society adapts to the change. Being a complex socio-economic process closely connected with scientific technological revolution, urbanization exercises a growing influence on all aspects of society, reflecting the nature of economic and regional development.

The numbers of metro cities in India are continuously increasing from 12 in the year 1981 to 23 in 1991, 35 in 2001 and 54 in 2011. This shows that urbanization is increasing but mostly in or nearby metro cities of the country. But the capacity of metro to assimilate increasing urban population is not as good as it should be.

The sheer magnitude of the urban population, haphazard and unplanned growth of urban areas, and a desperate lack of infrastructure are the main causes of such a situation. The rapid growth of urban population (decadal growth of total population in India is about 17.7 percentage points during 2001-2011 while urban population growth is about 31.8 percentage points)[1] both natural and through migration though there is decline of rural-urban migration[2], has put heavy pressure on public utilities like housing, sanitation, transport, water, electricity, health, education and so on. So the study of metro cities is needed.

 This study is about the quality of life in seven metro cities (Kanpur, Lucknow, Ghaziabad, Agra, Meerut, Varanasi and Allahabad) of Uttar Pradesh. For the analysis some index are used in this paper like deprivation index, multi-dimension poverty index and quality of life index. This could give us insight of the sustainability of the metropolitan cities.

[1] Census of India, 2011

[2] Amitabh Kundu, ‘Urbanisation and urban governance – search for a prospective beyond neo-liberalism’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XXXVIII, No. 29, July 19, 2003, pp. 3079-3087.