The west reeled for centuries from the aftermath of indiscriminate industrialisation following the dictates of wealth over health and well-being. We haven't learnt from it.
"This childish belief in the industrialist as the divinely appointed agentof a Higher Power", Mumford notes further, "prepared the way for thecomplete un-building of the city." There was no limit to the chaotic urbanproliferation since all established standards of tradition, order, decency andaesthetics broke down, and the sole controlling agent was ‘profit’.
The lessons of the disastrous consequences of rampant industrialisation arewell documented in the centuries since the beginnings of the industrial town.Yet the industrialising countries of the Third World have followed the same pathof regressive urbanisation and the ‘Coketowns’ of the West visit almost allcities of the Third World with their anarchic prosperity, smoky industrialpigeon-holes and massive clusters of slums.
The nature and constitution of our industrial cities and towns is stuck in atime warp of, not decades, but centuries. Their growth has not been organic andorganised but haphazard and confused, subject to rampant corruption and thedictates of the land mafia. More often than not, these create and produce severeenvironmental dangers that hold not only urban populations to ransom but entireregions of virgin forest and other ecologically sensitive areas that are scarredand irreparably destroyed. The Bhopal Gas tragedy - to which over 22,000 deathswere ‘directly attributable’ - is one horrific example of what unregulatedindustry can do, and its massive power of destruction. Factories and industriesacross the country continue to discharge effluents and noxious gases untreatedinto the environment, and hazardous industries continue to exist cheek-by-jowlwith overcrowded residential areas and slums in innumerable towns.
Since Independence, the government has promoted the labour intensivesmall-scale industries to help with job creation and encourage decentralisedindustrial development. These industries account for 40 percent of allindustrial production, 35 percent of the total exports and employ almost 17million people in 3.2 million units. The resultant clustering of theseindustries leads to serious environmental problems. One small example can befound in the clusters of textile dyeing industries that have led to severeproblems for towns situated on small rivers like Pali, Balotra, and Jodphur inRajasthan, Jetpur in Gujarat and Tiruppur in Tamil Nadu.
In larger cities, polluting industries are required to be located indesignated areas, but this is seldom implemented. For years, administrationsturn a blind eye to illegal units, ignoring appalling working and livingconditions. In Delhi, thousands of such units flourished for decades, and inlarge parts of the city, residences, industrial smelters and sweatshops meldedinto an indistinguishable mass, chunks of putrefying hell on earth. Suddenly,overnight, in year 2000, the Supreme Court ordered the closure and removal ofthousands of polluting units. In a natural historical cycle, cities continuallygrow and purge themselves of all offending contaminators without such wrenchinganguish, but in Delhi, at one fell swoop, 138,000 workers and their familieswere displaced, with no provision for housing or other facilities in areas wherethese industries were relocated.
Unfortunately, the zeal to develop the industrial sector is not backed with acomparable zeal to develop orderly cities. "When you know how to build citiesand to rule them," said John Ruskin, "you will be able to breathe in theirstreets, and the ‘excursion’ will be the afternoon’s walk or game in thefields round them".
In a letter to his son, Dorab, in 1902 he wrote, "Be sure to lay widestreets planted with shady trees, every other of a quick- growing variety. Besure that there is plenty of space for lawns and gardens. Reserve large areasfor football, hockey and parks. Earmark areas for Hindu temples, Mohammedanmosques, and Christian churches."
Today, Jamshedpur is among the greenest of India’s cities, with a 75percent literacy rate that is unparalleled in eastern India. The water is ofsuch high quality that it is one of the few Indian cities where one can drinkdirectly from the tap. Each year, Tata Steel arranges for the cleaning up ofover 120,000 tonnes of garbage, spends Rs. 25 crore on the Tata Main Hospitalwhich takes care of employees and the general public, and expends Rs. 139 croreon the upkeep of the city.
The story of Jamshedpur is heartening, but behind the-well intentionedaltruism is another dark secret of industrial development. Set up in the tribalheartland, the success of the township would have come at some cost for thetribal inhabitants of the area.
‘Market forces’ must be allowed to function unhindered and developmentmust make inroads into all parts of the country. But when the two run uncheckedand bound by no semblance of rule of law, we set in motion a pattern ofdevelopment that took the West centuries to recover from, harkening back to amodel of industrialisation that the West has long turned its back on.