As we saw in Part I, India had its tryst with urban mobility, beginning with the urban rail in Mumbai in 1853 and in Calcutta in 1854. When it happened, it was a tremendous first-mover advantage over peers in Asia. And what a great leap forward it was. India got urban rail/suburban rail 170 years ago, tramways 150 years back, cycle rickshaw and cycle 140 years back, urban bus hundred years ago, electric trolly bus 90 years back, auto rickshaw 75 years back and waterborne borne urban transport in 3 Century BC, if not earlier.
In Part I of the piece, I traced nearly 100 years (1853-1947) journey of urban transport in the country. In Part II, I cover what happened in 75 years (1947-2023) period post-independence. I take a detour to explain what went wrong and how India got lost to the motorisation.
URBANISATION CIRCA 1947-2023
But before moving further, I begin with the context- “Why does urban mobility matter?” And to do justice to the question, I must begin the progression of urbanisation in the country since 1947. When India got independence in 1947, it largely had a rural economy with close to 90 percent of its 35.70 crore population living in villages.
Unsurprisingly then, urbanisation, urban infrastructure, and urban mobility were not even part of the governance agenda. It is no longer the case today.
Over decades, the urban population of the country has grown manifold. And the contribution of urban India to the economy has grown even faster. From 8.23 crore in 1961, the urban population increased to 16.60 crore in 1981, 37.7 crore in 2011 and is estimated to be 48 crore in 2021. With regard to the percentage of the total population, the urban population has catapulted from 18 percent of the total population to nearly 35 percent in 2021. Instructively, in the 2001-2011 decade, India’s urban population for the first time grew faster than the rural population. Out of the total 181.4 million persons increase, the contribution of urban areas was 91.0 million while that of rural areas was 90.4 million. Ever since, the urban population has been growing faster than the rural population.
THE CONTEXT JUST CHANGED
A quarter of a year is too small a time in the history of a nation. But the last quarter has been one of such disruptive changes for India. Here is what transpired.
One, three months ago, India was the second most populous country in the world. It is no longer the case. As per the United Nations’ latest estimates and projections of the global population, in April 2023, China ceded its long-held status as the world’s most populous country to India whose population at 1,425,775,850 people first matched, then surpassed that of mainland China.
What about the future?
The prognosis is India’s population shall continue to grow for many decades. Contrarily, that of China will continue to fall and could drop below 1 billion before the end of the century.
Two, yesterday’s India lived in its villages. Today’s India is getting more urban. Even villages and peri-urban areas are getting urbanised and swallowed by the nearby cities and towns fast.
And the above is just the trailer of the big picture of tomorrow’s India which will be predominantly urban. As per UN-Habitat’s ‘World Cities Report (2022)’, India’s urban population will be 54.74 crore in 2025, 60.73 crore in 2030, and 67.45 crore in 2035. The UN also estimates that in 2050, India’s urban population will be 81.4 crore “as the country celebrates 100 years of Independence it will be more urban than rural.”
Three, cities account for three percent of landmass but account for 63 percent of India’s GDP, a contribution that is likely to hit 75 percent by 2035 and 80 percent by 2047. If urban India has to play such a defining role, cities must be liveable. And seamless, safe, secure, comfortable and affordable urban mobility is a primary requirement for the same.
Clearly, with India becoming the world’s most populous country and with the disproportionate contribution of the urban population to the fast-growing Indian economy, the problem of urban mobility is the country’s defining problem. And it is time to assess the adequacy or otherwise of urban mobility in India @1947-2023 and beyond.
I begin with where we stood in 1947 and trace the journey to where we arrived, including what went wrong and what course correction is needed to ensure that India successfully harnesses the twin benefits of the “demographic dividend” and “urbanisation dividend”.
WHAT WENT WRONG
Firstly, the vicious cycle of unbridled motorisation. As per the Statista database, independent India began with a modest vehicular base of 0.3 million in FY1951. This increased from 1.9 million in FY1971 to 5.4 million in FY1981 and 55 million in FY2001. The vehicular population thereafter increased rapidly to 127.2 million in 2011 and 326 million in 2022. Clearly, the growth of automobiles has been many times that of the growth of the population. And while the increase in personalised automobiles has taken a quantum leap, we will see sooner that the move towards provisioning of sustainable public transport has been excruciatingly slow and tentative.
Secondly, fast decline in the use of sustainable mobility modes use. The alarming growth of the automobile is accompanied by a steep decline in the use of sustainable modes of urban mobility – walking, cycling, intermediate public transport and public transport.
Thirdly, urban mobility headed in the wrong direction. The urban mobility situation in the country is as chaotic as it can get, with the life of all categories of road users jinxed beyond description. Worst is the lot of the “foot-soldiers” (pedestrians and cyclists), who, unable to compete with the motorists for safe pathways, are the biggest casualty in road accidents, road rage and natural calamities.
Despite governments competing with each other to fast-track provision for road infrastructure for personalised transport, the fate of users of automobiles is only slightly better with their movement slowed down by mixed traffic, traffic signals and road junctions. It is not out of place to postulate that the average speed on roads of most Indian cities is back to the horse carriage days. Equally difficult is the life of users of public transport who face abnormally long waiting periods, uncertainty in travel time and difficult conditions of travel. And make no mistake, all types of restless road users are unsuspecting victims of road rage and rash accidents.
Four, despite some movement in the desired direction in the past two decades, most Indian cities remain bereft of good quality affordable, safe and secured public transport- road-based or rail-based. Even in cities which have a semblance of urban transport, there is a critical shortage of first-mile and last-mile connectivity. And intermodal integration is no one’s baby.
Five, patronage of public transport is going down fast. Unsurprisingly then, the patronage of high-capacity public transit (buses, MRT etc) and environmentally sustainable non-motorised transport (NMT) is on a decline. Contrarily, the use of low-capacity and unsustainable modes, i.e., personal cars and two-wheelers is on a fast upswing.
Above being the case, where is India headed to?
It is a fast-forward journey to living hell — exacerbated road congestion, alarming slowdown of journey speed, increasing pollution and drastic deterioration of road safety. It cannot get worse than this with the resultant all-round degradation in the quality of city life, city efficiency and its economic potential.
Having defined the problem, we must provide the pathway to sustainable urban mobility both for India today and India@2047. It is time for immediate course correction. But how we have reached here? It all began with the wasted decade.
THE WASTED DECADES
It is time to step back a little in the history of neglect of cities and towns of India. For the uninitiated, a hundred years ago, Mahatma Gandhi famously said – “India lives in its villages.” Unsurprisingly then, the Constitution of India as framed and adopted on January 26, 1950, did not foresee urban mobility as a problem area and urban mobility got subsumed in the definition of intercity rail and road services in the constitution. And initial many decades after independence turned into wasted decades, in which the conundrum of urban mobility deteriorated fast, but the policymakers and the executioners looked askance on the other side.
It was also a period when the country traversed the ruinous path of the containment and neglect of cities resulting in haphazard urbanisation, unlivable cities and severe urban mobility gridlock, in an era when the country surrendered meekly to unbridled motorisation.
For the last two decades, the country tentatively has warmed up to the gigantic task of getting out of the urban mobility conundrum. And the good news is that India is on the right path, what it has achieved so far is noteworthy, but the task is so humungous that the country needs to peddle fast in a focused integrated manner. And the time is short.
I will return to it a little later.
TENTATIVE STEPS
After more than three decades of independence, the sixth five-year plan (1980-1985) was the first to note the complexity, seriousness and worsening nature of the urban transport problem and provided tentative policy direction. Nonetheless, it was business as usual till the end of the eighth five-year plan (1992-1997).
To get the context right, the total financing allocation to urban transport for fifty years after independence was minuscule.
Eighth five-year plan had three lofty programs and one misstep. The lofty programs were setting up a unified coordination body, consortium approach to financing and setting up separate financial institutions to tackle urban transport problems. The misstep was the muddled thinking of giving a distinct role to the Ministry of Railways in planning and providing metro rail even though in 1986, the subject of urban transport policy and planning including metro rail was transferred to the Ministry of Urban Development.
THE INSTITUTIONAL ORPHAN
For much of the 75 years since independence, urban mobility has been an institutional orphan. It took six decades for the country to get the National Urban Transport Policy (2006) and seven decades for the National Metro Rail Policy (2017). Also, it took five decades for getting the metro dream right with Delhi Metro and nearly six decades to try to unsuccessfully provide sustainable bus transport to cities.
But stepping back, the first tentative green shoots emerged during the ninth five-year plan (1997-2002). The Plan called upon the Central, state and city governments to fight together the fast-worsening urban transport problem.
NO OPTION OTHER THAN HEAVY INVESTMENT
The ninth plan also acknowledged the obvious. There was no alternative to the heavy investment in rail-based mass transit in bigger cities. It also accepted that private sector financing was not a way forward for the same and prescribed creation of dedicated levies on both users and non-users to finance metro rail apart from introducing the idea of setting up of National Urban Transport Fund. However, the intent floundered at the execution hurdle. Nothing happened. Nothing changed.
THE MISSED BUS
The JNNURM scheme launched on December 3, 2005, was the first sincere effort of the Central government to give a leg up to bus-based urban transport in more than 50 cities. Alas! Its gain was short-lived. And we missed the bus of bus-based urban mobility.
The tenth five-year plan (2002-2007) prescribed metro rail as a mobility solution in cities with three million plus population. It also talked of setting up the National Urban Transport Development Fund (NUTDF) with seed money of Rs 3,000 crore with an equal amount to be raised through tax/cess. Nothing happened again. Nothing changed.
But there were two positive changes- firstly, the completion in 2005 of 65 km of Phase I of the Delhi metro within time and originally estimated cost of Rs 10675 crore and secondly, the government coming up with the National Urban Transport Policy in 2006.
However, the National Urban Transport Policy created more problems than it solved due to its myopic vision that the problem of urban transport, including that of the metro rail, was the responsibility of the state government.
TOWARDS SOLUTION
The period of the eleventh five-year plan (2007-2012) and the beginning of the twelfth five-year plan (2012) coincided with a massive infusion of bus-based urban in cities and towns (2005) arrival of the National Urban Development Policy (2006), successful completion of 65 Km Phase I of Delhi Metro (2005) within the estimated cost and before time and tentative arrival of BRTS network in few cities.
The period of the eleventh five-year plan also witnessed the completion of 123 km of Phase II of Delhi Metro in record time and it gave a leg up to the sanction of Phase I of Bengaluru and Chennai on the same lines as DMRC as a 50:50 partnership between the Central and the state government.
More about the growth of metro rail a bit later.
The eleventh five-year plan (2007-2012) was also the first to accept urbanisation is a natural outcome of the development process. And that the nation must get ready to meet the challenge to provide and upgrade urban transport infrastructure. The Plan focused on an integrated view of urban transport policy and program. However, the development in urban mobility since 2014 has accelerated at a brisk phase.
URBAN MOBILITY SINCE INDEPENDENCE
It is time now to let go of Mahatma’s erstwhile romanticised dictum- “real Indian lives in its villages.” Today, the real India lives in cities, and urban India is the country’s real growth engine. Talking of urban transport infra in 1947-2023, I repeat, India was ahead of Asian peers (and way ahead of China) in 1947.
Now is the time to trace what happened thereafter, how we stumbled and why time starts now to reimagine the urban mobility problem and turbo-charge with symbiotic growth of various urban transport modes so that the country is future-ready to handle the challenge of the mobility problem urban population of 67.5 crore in 2035 and 81.4 crore in 2050.
The time for the above to happen is running out fast, and to paraphrase what Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said in her last year’s budget speech: “Urban planning cannot continue with a business-as-usual approach. It needs to steer a paradigm change.”
MOTORISATION TAKES CHOKEHOLD
The history of urban transport in independent India is heavily tilted towards personalised automobiles.
- India with the sale of 4.25 million new vehicles in 2022 dethroned Japan with the sale of 4.2 million vehicles to become the world’s third biggest automotive market after China (26.27 million vehicles) and the US (15.4 million vehicles sold). Also, India is the second-largest manufacturer of two-wheelers in the world. It stands next only to Japan and China in terms of the number of two-wheelers produced and domestic sales respectively.
- The first car in India ran in 1897, 25 years ahead of the first bus in Calcutta. Nonetheless, initially, the pace of motorisation was slow and till the 1930s, cars were only imported and ran in cities in small numbers.
- It took time for the car manufacturing business to be set up and come of age in the country. And for long, in License Permit Raj, India had just three car-producing companies (Hindustan Motors, Premier and Standard manufacturing cars) and one utility vehicles producing company (Mahindra and Mahindra).
- Indian two-wheeler industry had a modest beginning in the early 50s when Automobile Products of India (API) started manufacturing scooters. Until 1958, API and Enfield were sole producers though, in 1948, Bajaj Auto began trading in imported Vespa scooters and three-wheelers. In 1960, Bajaj Auto set up its own factory to manufacture scooters in technical collaboration with Piaggio of Italy.
- As per the Statista database, in FY1951, India started with a small base of 0.3 million automobiles and the vehicular population crossed a million only in FY1971 when it reached 1.9 million. Thereafter, the growth increased at a faster pace growing three times to 5.4 million in the decade FY71-81 and four times thereafter to 21.4 million in FY81-91. After the end of license permit raj from 1991 onwards, the vehicular growth saw an exponential increase to 55 million in FY01, 115 million in FY09, 210 million in FY15 and nearly 295 million in FY19. Even as per a statement given in the Parliament by the Union Minister of Roads and Highways on August 4, 2022, the country had over 21 crore registered two-wheelers and more than 7 crore four-wheelers and above in the country.
- Collating the data from the Society of Indian Automobile Association (SIAM), before Covid, the Indian passenger vehicle (PV) industry had reached a high volume of 3.4 million units in FY19. But in the aftermath of Covid, it dropped to 2.8 million in FY20 and 2.7 million in FY21. However, with the pent-up demand back, the total volumes were up to 3.1 million units in FY22. In FY23, it is likely to hit 3.7-3.8 million units driven by the SUV boom whose growth was 38 percent in FY21 and 40 percent in FY22. Two-wheeler segments comprise approximately 80 percent of total PV sales.
- There is also an uptick in commercial vehicle sales from 5.7 lakh units in FY21 to 7.1 lakh units in FY22 with the sale of medium and heavy commercial vehicles increasing from 1.6 lakh to 2.4 lakh units and that of light commercial vehicles from 4 lakh units to 4.8 lakh units. Sales of three-wheelers in FY22 too increased from 2.2 lakh to 2.6 lakh.
- India, with 60 vehicles per 1000 population, has one of the lowest motorisation rates in the world (though India has catapulted to global third behind China and America regarding annual sales of vehicles), but is set to take off in a similar trajectory as China and the US.
The chokehold of motorisation is largely the crippling killer of pollution in Indian cities and towns. Also, rapid-fire motorisation is filling in the vacuum provided by the absence of poor growth of solutions for public mobility. The situation is so worrisome, what do we do to fast-track the provisioning of sustainable sources of urban mobility? I begin with two real mass movers – urban rail and metro rail. I will describe their journey and provide the pathways they must take.
URBAN RAIL -SUBURBAN RAIL
One, as already described in part I of the piece, India was the first mover and the torch bearer of rail-based urban transport (also known as suburban trains or local trains) in Asia. The first three Indian cities to get local trains were Mumbai, Calcutta and Madras, almost parallel to the arrival of passenger rail transport in England and continental Europe.
Two, by the time of independence in 1947, India already boasted of 1500 km network of rail-based urban (peri-urban, suburban, local) transport network. And stayed way ahead of its peers.
Three, while the suburban services in three metropolises (Mumbai, Calcutta, and Chennai) cities have become more robust with time (both provisioning of infrastructure and patronage), their success has not been repeated by other cities even though the suburban rail services run in Hyderabad, Delhi, Pune, Lucknow, and few other cities. The latest city to get approval for the construction of the state-of-the-art urban rail is Bengaluru.
Four, there are dozens of city clusters in the country, where Indian Railways suburban/local DMU/EMU services play defining role in daily carrying commuters from 50-100 km distances to the bigger cities. Also, due to the paucity of local trains, a large number of commuters daily enter sleeper/unreserved coaches of the mail express trains.
Unsurprisingly then, out of 24 million passengers being carried out daily on Indian Railways, the number of urban/suburban commuters (local passengers) is more than that of long-distance passengers.
Five, a case in point is the number of commuters travelling daily merely in local/suburban trains in three cities – Mumbai (7.5-8 million), Kolkata (3.5-4 million) and Chennai (2.5-3 million). The number of urban commuters in these three cities themselves lies somewhere between 13.5 to 15 million against 24 million, the number of total daily passengers carried by Indian Railways.
Six, Indian Railways already provide an extraordinary service to provide faster urban mobility in the country. Its contribution in terms of daily commuters is more than two times that of the urban buses in India and close to four times the total daily commuters travelling on all the metro rail systems in the country.
Seven, the above salutary contribution of the Indian Railways to the urban transport of the country is largely unsung. I believe it is possible to make the role of IR more meaningful with regard to the development of local trains in urban clusters, including on dedicated tracks wherever needed. My caveat is the losses on account of IR carrying local passengers should be shared by the Central and state governments and not the IR system.
Eight, I also believe that the following two steps can go a long way to improve services, improve the speed, and increase the patronage and comfort of commuters — increasing the average speed of local trains to 50 kmph (with the path created by increasing average speed of mail express trains to 100 kmph) and secondly, by running eight coach Vande Bharat-type trains.
METRO RAIL
India could have got its first metro rail service hundred years back in the form of an East-West line in Calcutta with a water tunnel below Hooghly to connect Calcutta and Howrah. But the Metro Rail idea was dropped ostensibly on cost considerations but also majorly due to the change of fortune of Calcutta which lost out to Delhi as the capital of British India.
Thereafter, India’s tribulations to have a Metro Rail in Calcutta were pregnant with confusion and chaos with the city taking nearly 23 years to construct the 17 km of North-South Line with the first 3.4 km of Kolkata Metro with five stations between Esplanade and Bhowanipur opened in 1984 itself taking more than a decade.
Kolkata Metro was completed at the cost of 12 times the original estimated cost and derailed India’s dream to have the metro rail. Then came DMRC, which completed the first section of 8 km of line 1 in four years. The bigger news was the completion of 65 km of Phase 1 within cost and ahead of target progressively by 2005 and 123 km of Phase 2 thereafter in less than four years in time for the Commonwealth Games.
With Calcutta (Kolkata), India was lost to Metro Rail. With Delhi, the metro dream was reborn.
I trace below the global history of the metro rail revolution and put the Indian development in the context and provide the pathway of where we must head from where we stand-
One, the Metro Rail history begins in 1863 with the opening of the world’s first underground Metropolitan Railway line, from Paddington to Farringdon Street. More than 30,000 passengers tried out Tube on opening day and London Times hailed it as “the great engineering triumph of the day.”
Over the next three decades, more sections were added to London- district line between Westminster and South Kensington (1868), East London Railway, between Wapping and New Cross (1869), the Inner Circle line, connecting the Metropolitan and District line (1884) and Central London Railway, between Shepherd’s Bush and Bank (1900). In 1905, the District and Circle lines switch from steam power to electricity.
Two, in the 40-year period between 1863 and 1903, the development of metro rail outside London was excruciatingly slow. Only three small networks were opened in Budapest, Glasgow, and Chicago before 1900. Next to arrive were Paris Metro (1900), Boston (1901), Berlin (1902), New York (1904), Athens (1904) and Philadelphia (1907). Paris was the first to use the term ‘metro’, as abbreviated from its operating company’s name, ‘Compagnie du chemin de fer métropolitain de Paris’.
Three, after the initial slow takeoff, the first metro rail revolution spread in Europe and America fast. Japan was the first country to construct Metro Rail in Asia Tokyo Metro line between Ueno and Asakusa (approximately 2.2km). More than 100 years after the arrival of the first Metro Rail in London, neither China nor India, the two most populous countries of the world, had an operational metro rail or one in planning.
Four, today more than 220 metro rail systems are operational in the world comprising 25000 km. Despite the fact that the first metro line opened in Beijing as late as 1971, China today accounts for the largest metro rail network all the way, whether in terms of length (9500 km) or number of systems (46) or number of lines (270), or number of stations (5230).
Five, India’s beginning of metro rail construction was humble but the growth thereafter has been stellar. Till 2002, all it had was the 16 km long Calcutta North-South Line constructed in 23 years at 12 times the original cost. Then came the DMRC which soared the dream of Metro Rail and ushered in the era of metro rail revolution in the country.
Six, in the last two decades, India has built metro rail at a speed faster than any other country in the world other than China. And the speed of construction has grown manifold since 2014.
Seven, in 2014, the total metro network in the country was 248 km in four cities. In 2021, India replaced Russia (721 km) as the country with the largest metro system and in 2022 it crossed over Japan (792 Km) as the fourth largest metro rail system.
Eight, presently with 859 km of operational route length in more than 20 cities, India is positioned fourth globally, behind South Korea (883 km), the USA (1375 km) and China (9500 km). With additional 1000 km under construction or advanced planning, India is destined to cross South Korea in the coming months and the USA in the coming years.
POSTSCRIPT
It has been an amazing story of coming from behind and forging ahead for India. Prime Minister Modi promised a few years back that 50 Indian cities will have metro rail by 2030. The country is resolutely moving in that direction. Now his government has upped the ante — metro rail in 100 cities by 2047, 100 years of independence.
So far so good.
The question I have is — have we been moving in the right direction? Has the pendulum swung too far in favour of metro rail? What is the role of other systems of urban mobility including urban bus and BRTS? And how do we traverse the path of sustainability while solving our urban mobility issues?
Well, that is the subject matter of Part III.
To be continued.
Part III will provide a pathway to why, how, and where urban mobility should be headed by 2047 when the country celebrates 100 years of Independence.
Akhileshwar Sahay is a Multidisciplinary Thought Leader and India based International Impact Consultant. He works as President Advisory Services of consulting company BARSYL. Views are personal.
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