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Comment by PeterisP | Hacker News Reader

And yet, despite all the claims that the author makes about quality of air and life in Delhi, it's steadily growing, adding something like 4 million inhabitants over the last 5 years. As the article quotes "Yet New Delhi was bursting its seams, because newcomers from rural India kept flooding in." - the people are voting with their feet that urbanization with the associated jobs and wealth is more important to them personally than better environment conditions, since they're leaving the latter to gain the former.

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India's great failure in the 20th century has been its inability to nurture urban centers outside a handful of major metros. So everyone floods into Mumbai, Bangalore, and Delhi because there are no jobs anywhere else. Capital cities in other states have nowhere near the quality of jobs on offer in these 3-4 major metros.

I think you forgot Hyderabad and maybe Chennai. I generally agree with you, but I would expand your list a bit.

Bangalore's loss is going to be Hyderabad's gain. Bangalore's traffic and water woes will drive more and more companies to switch to nearby Hyderabad.

Though I do wonder how the downturn in the automobile sector is going to affect Chennai in the long-run

Its not India's great failure. It is India's great achievement. We need to move people rapidly from rural area to urban cities and India is doing an awesome job at it.

Yes, but urban cities. Not "just 3-4 urban cities".

I think urban areas of around 30-40mn are doable. We just need around 30 cities to take most of the population.

I would say they're rather compelled to do so by poverty.

Po-tay-to, po-tah-to. One of the greatest features of urbanization is greater economic opportunities. For the poor, that's means to escape poverty.

I agree that it's unfortunate that people have to make the choice.

No it's not quite that simple. The Indians leaving behind their homes aren't always doing it because they want to enrich their pockets (which BTW is not wrong and something anyone would do). They are often compelled to do it because there is a lack of local resources, like drinking water or electricity. That's one of the points of the main article, maybe you missed it.

What's the difference between enreaching someone's pocket vs moving to have a better quality of life? It is the same thing.

The difference is owning a Lamborghini vs having drinking water. It's easy for you to make such silly assertions because you probably have never experienced that type of scarcity.

Tradition is huge in India. Many people are forced to move to cities and leave behind the lands of their forefathers because life is simply no longer possible in the outskirts due to lack of basic necessities like water or food.

Prosperity vs survival

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