Access to basic amenities in urban India
- 2018
- p.15-28.
Economists’ view of focusing only on the real per capita income as an indicator of development and achieving specific rates of economic growth both as the end and means had been changing with the times as a reflection of reality in many developing countries. Many strategies from ‘growth with equity’, ‘growth with redistribution’, ‘employment generation’, ‘provision of certain basic needs to the vast majority of population’, ‘human development’ ‘achieving certain targets of millennium development goals’ have been advocated and implemented. Among the many goals and targets, the provision of basic amenities like safe drinking water, toilet and electricity facilities is still talked about as many developing countries have not provided these basic needs to a vast majority of poor people. India’s record on providing basic amenities to the urban population from 1981 to 2011 reveals that it achieved a fairly good performance in having provided access to safe drinking water and electricity but the record on providing access to toilet facility is not up to the mark. The inequities exist among population residing in various town sizes and particularly between rural and urban population. The paper calls for development programmes that are not biased to any city size and the prioritization of addressing the inequities in the provision of basic amenities both to the urban and rural population. Reproduced.