Reality of Any Big City in India

Traffic jams. Delayed flights. Crowded trains. That is the reality of any big city in India. The future could be much worse. The country's cities are expected to grow by an additional 250 million, mostly young people, over the next two decades. Without massive investment and thoughtful planning, chaos will ensue.

Or not. McKinsey, in an unprecedented nearly two-year study of Indian cities, envisions a way for India over the next 20 years to turn that influx of young population into a quadrupling of per-capita income. This growth hinges on adequate investment in cities so they can handle the surge in people and the simultaneous increased demand on services. The urban migration, if properly handled, could generate 70% of net new jobs and produce 70% of India's GDP.

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To meet their needs, McKinsey suggests that India must build--every year for the next 20 years--between 7 billion and 9 billion square feet of real estate (the equivalent of one Chicago) a year; 220 to 250 miles of metros and subways (more than 20 times what it has built in the past decade); and between 12,000 and 15,000 miles of road lanes (nearly equal to all the road lanes constructed in the past decade).

That's a pretty ambitious task, given India's infamous bureaucracy, corruption and a sketchy track record on accomplishing large-scale projects. Ajit Mohan, the lead author on the McKinsey report, says for the first time there's some recognition in India that urban development has to become a priority. It could take one success in a single city to create the momentum for a national push, he says, comparing the current lack of infrastructure investment to the way the IT sector was developed in India. "When Bangalore became successful, other cities started to emulate it," he says.

The major changes will happen, adds Chetan Vaidya, head of the National Institute of Urban Affairs in New Delhi. "We can already see bits and pieces of that falling into place," he says. Source: Yahoo News