The changing contours of Delhi

The changing contours of Delhi

Subject: Geography

Section: Places in news

Context:

• India’s capital city Delhi is en route to becoming the world’s most populous urban agglomeration overtaking Tokyo by 2028.
• India’s median age of 28.2 years is nearly 10 years younger than China’s median age of 39.

The layout of Delhi-NCR:

• An urban agglomeration is a continuous urban spread constituting a. town and its adjoining outgrowths (OGs), or two or more physically. contiguous towns together with or without outgrowths of such towns.
  • The urban agglomeration of Delhi-NCR extends to several State and city jurisdictions, including Faridabad, Ghaziabad, Gurugram, and Noida.
  • The expansion of this agglomeration is due to various reasons including Delhi being the national capital, metro rail networks extending from core to periphery and other investments made by the contiguous states.

Establishments and employment in agricultural and non-agricultural activities in Delhi NCR in 2013–14

Economic geography of Delhi-NCR:

• Delhi-NCR has the highest concentration of jobs and people in the country, and generated a GDP of $370 billion in 2015.
• The region’s per capita income has tripled, and consumption levels have risen, and the peripheries attract investment from their respective State governments.
  • Example: Gurugram and Gautam Buddha Nagar are the districts with the highest per capita income in Haryana and U.P. respectively.
• Its challenges include:
  • Increasing land and infrastructure costs,
  • Growing income inequality,
  • Poor air quality,
  • Land and water pollution,
  • The lack of natural resources, and
  • Institutional coordination barriers.
• According to a report ‘Morphology of Delhi National Capital Region’s Economic Geography and its Implications for Planning’, the core of Delhi-NCR has decentralised but this has not been accompanied by a shift to a high-wage, knowledge-based economy in the core area.
  • Informal work persists,
  • unemployment rates have increased, and
  • women’s participation in the workforce remains low.
• Traditional sectors such as trade, textiles and leather still dominate, but despite increasing their employment share, their share to the region’s GDP has declined.
• The employment-intensive growth in the secondary, tertiary sectors has been low.
• Decentralisation policies, which were emphasised as far back as Delhi’s first master plan in 1962, coupled with land-use and building control restrictions, pollution control norms, and inefficient land acquisition and disposal policies, have contributed to the fragmented development driven by speculation beyond the boundaries of Delhi.

The CAGR of employment across Delhi NCR’s three subregions from 1990 to 2013-14

Lessons for the Global South:

• An economic geography approach provides an interdisciplinary understanding of where and why economic activity occurs, its associated impact on people and that no two places are alike.
• It can inform planning processes at the regional and local levels, guide investment decisions, factor in environmental impacts, and facilitate the inclusion of marginalised groups in the economy.
  Thus, it can help ensure well-planned, and inclusive economic growth, and support a higher quality of life while also valuing planetary resources.

Draft Regional Plan 2041:

• Recently, the National Capital Region Planning Board (NCRPB) has recently approved the ‘Draft Regional Plan 2041’.
• Currently, the NCR consists of 24 districts in Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Rajasthan and entire Delhi, spread across an area of 55,083 square kilometres.