TomTom’s Traffic Index for 2021 ranked 404 cities across 58 countries, and noted that India’s congestion level in 2021 was 23% lower than pre-Covid times, falling 31% during peak hours.
A TomTom executive told Times of India that peak hours shifted in almost 40% of the cities globally, mainly due to the adoption of work from home and virtual meetings.
Delhi, Mumbai and many other Indian cities are fast turning into a polluted, concrete jungle (with concrete occupying over 60-70% area) in the name of urban development.
Concrete structures have slowly taken over the lush green fields of the fertile farmlands.
While Mumbai, notorious for its traffic, along with Bengaluru, placed a miserable 5th globally, the latter did marginally better at 10th, Delhi followed at 11th and fellow Maaharshtrian hub Pune at 21st.
As India’s cities undergo rapid urbanization, the metro cities are symptomatic of the entire urban ecosystem in India , as trees and green cover makes way for roads, markets, malls and condominiums built on usurped land owing to the ‘developer-politico’ nexus in India’s major cities.
The idea behind developing cities was to turn them into center of productivity, innovation, and creativity, however, this unprecedented urbanization has affected HDI indices. India ranks 131 out of 189 countries on the Human Development Index 2020.
As a global economy and arising Asian power, India is just ahead of smaller economies like neighbouring Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh.
Along with global warming, water scarcity, land degradation, food insecurity, and income inequality leading to mass migration to urban cities, India faces the Catch-22 of modernizing its economy while being cognizant of environmental concerns.
Take a look at how Indian cities in the list compare with their global peers.
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