More metro than ever before

More metro than ever before

DH News - G K Karanth

Tier II or III cities / towns are beginning to be two things at the same time. First, they are beginning to mark a complete destination, of ‘arriving’, for a whole generation of migrants and aspirants from around their hinterlands.

Thus, for a whole lot of people in Sindhuvallis, it is via Nanjangud to Mysore; or for those from Airody, it is via a Kundapur or an Udupi to Mangalore. Second, these tier II or III cities are increasingly becoming a mere stop-over for a whole lot of rural first generation migrants before their final ‘journey’ eventually to a metro such as Bangalore or Mumbai. The significant feature of agriculture to industry/service sector-related migration is that whether one lives today in a tier II or I city, the lifestyle orientations are already ‘more-metro than ever before.’

Not only are they deeply embedded in the tier I or II city-economy, they are equally, if not more powerfully, culturally integrated with the metros! Almost every rural child is brought up today with a glamorous-centre-page-glossy dream of abandoning the rural base at the earliest opportunity. To a whole lot of ‘late comers’, tier II cities are more than a transit lounge while their visa aspirations have been one of a Schengen visa! So too, the tier II cities such as Dharwad-Hubli, Mangalore, Mysore, etc, have now begun to extend their relations beyond having satellite docking stations in metros like Bangalore.

No longer are people from North-Karnataka (those from Bijapur, Bellary, Dharwad-Hubli) concentrated in the Rajajinagar area of Bangalore, just as the Mysoreans, Mangaloreans etc, with their concentration in Jayanagar or Basavanagudi. They are there now across Bangalore! The tier II cities too have tended to likewise become a mixed pot of people from different directions around it, just like different mohallas or koppalus had people from specific village belts, a decade ago.

Further, Mysore, Davangere, Hubli-Dharwad, or Mangalore too have now been well on their way to becoming miniature metros for they too can now boast of having their share of ‘multi-ethnic, regional, emerging middle classes’ living in them, thanks to MNCs gaining a foothold there, or local enterprises stretching out to become emerging enterprises; body shopping mindfully or unmindfully, so long as a sleeping town is suddenly woken up!

And of course, they too like to now engage in civic governance, infrastructure, proper services, balanced growth and above all planning for area development.

Town planning

The skills and foresight required for town and city planning is much more diversified than the metro-centred planning process as it has now become a mindset for us! Maharashtra with Mumbai, UP, Haryana and the surrounding states with Delhi, West Bengal with Kolkata have had the rough road.

Tamil Nadu has done well by focusing on Class II cities by letting Madurai, Salem, Erode, Dharmapuri, and now Hosur do well for themselves, alongside Chennai. It is time that Karnataka too paid sufficient attention for planned growth of the mini-cities, than merely playing a rhetoric of development of small towns and cities. This planning has to be ‘realistic’ planning rather than ‘real estate’ planning!