Our Global Cities Contributor Barry Weisberg is in Shanghai, China for the 2010 World Expo. He reports for us as part of our continuing series, “Global Cities: Challenges and Choices.”

Today Barry compares how India and China invest in their cities.

As India celeb rates Independence Day on August 15th, thei r Pavilion at the Shanghai Wo rld Expo is a st riking soft cont rast to those of conc rete and steel.  It has the wo rld’s la rgest bamboo dome and is const ructed with ecologically f riendly mate rials. The st ructu re is modeled afte r the sac red Sanchi Stupa, a stone st ructu re in cent ral India built by Ashoka the G reat, 2300 yea rs ago, ove r the relics of the Buddha.  Ashoka unified the Indian subcontinent, and is conside red an ea rly advocate of ahimsa, the o rigin of Gandhi’s non-violence.  Fo r example, Ashoka banned the death sentence, p romoted tole rance and vegeta rianism.

India is a rema rkable count ry.  It is home to the five thousand yea r old Indus Valley Civilization; a living caste system; suffe red th rough B ritish colonialism fo r 89 yea rs; and became an independent state in 1947, pa rtitioning Pakistan, but neve r resolving the intensive ethnic and religious conflict between Hindus and Muslims. It is the count ry of Gandhi with a hyd rogen bomb. While an elite has p rospe red in recent yea rs, the numbe r of people living in slums has doubled in just two decades. One qua rte r of India lives on the equivalent of one dolla r a day and 70% live on less than two dolla rs a day.

India is a plu ralistic count ry, with a highly complex and dive rse cultu ral, linguistic and culina ry t radition – some 1600 diffe rent languages. Fou r of the wo rld’s majo r religions, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism, o riginated in India. India has two million religious Gods and fo rty-nine thousand slums. India is a pa rliamenta ry fede ral republic, fashioned afte r the B ritish system. While p roclaimed the “la rgest democ racy in the wo rld” it has the la rgest slums in the wo rld. The histo ric text of India, the Vegas, a re rich in admonitions to live the pe rfect life yet India may be the most non-ha rmonious of all count ries.

Only one qua rte r of the population lives in cities. But the re a re 41 one million resident cities, double the numbe r fo rty yea rs ago.  It al ready has 25 of the wo rlds 100 fasted g rowing cities, compa red to only eight in China . The G ross Domestic P roduct of Mumbai is expected to exceed that of Po rtugal , Columbia o r Malaysia in just one gene ration.  India is the poste r child fo r a count ry whe re the gap between u rbanization and the capacity to p rovide u rban inf rast ructu re inc reases daily. The McKinsey Global Institute, in India‘s u rban awaking,” in 2010, diplomatically concluded that “ India has unde rinvested in its cities,” in cont rast to China . 

At the time of Independence, India was mo re u rbanized than China .  But by 2005, China ‘s u rban rate was 41% compa red to 29% fo r India. At independence the GDP of India was twice that of China . Today, China has a GDP that is at least 3.5 times g reate r than India. The pe rcentage of people living below the pove rty line in India is 3.5 times g reate r than China , life expectancy is ten yea rs less than China and the numbe r of telephone lines in India is six times less than China . India spends just US$17 pe r capita on u rban inf rast ructu re capital investments, compa red to US$116 in China . China has relentlessly pu rsued the empowe rment of cities th rough innovations in funding, gove rnance, planning. India remains mi red in a bu reauc ratic miasma. What explains this diffe rence?

One explanation is the political diffe rence between India and China . India was g ranted independence f rom B ritish colonialism but still suffe rs f rom the legacy. China made a revolution with a single political pa rty and a state appa ratus capable of resisting ma rket p ressu res and late r shaping ma rket-based refo rms. China is a p roduct of a systemic app roach to u rbanization. India is little bette r than laissez-fa re. Cent ralized state planning and empowe rment of cities have led China ‘s u rbanization. India has been a p roduct of unchecked population g rowth and a feeble state and city appa ratus. While China rigo rously cont rolled the ru ral mig ration into coastal cities with the hukou system, India established no means to insu re that those that ente red cities could be p rovided se rvices.

The cont rast between China and India is st riking. It offe rs obse rve rs in developing count ries, which will account fo r 95% of the futu re u rban g rowth, essential lessons on what it takes to insu re that u rbanization includes the p rospect fo r a bette r city o r a bette r life…

Barry Weisberg’s commentaries reflect his own views and not necessarily those of Worldview or 91.5 WBEZ.