Urban Sustainability in North-East India: A Study through the lens of NER-SDG index

Abstract

Urbanisation is an inevitable outcome of modernisation and economic development. As world civilisation progresses, all nations have experienced concentration of urban population. In 1800 A.D., only 3 percent of the world’s population lived in cities, but this figure reached to 14% and 47% in 1900 and 2000 respectively (United Nations Population Division, 2001). The report published in 2022 further reveals that the world’s urbanisation level has reached 57%, developed (79.7%), developing (52.3%) and LDCs (35.8) which is estimated to be 60 % worldwide in 2030 (World Urbanisation Prospects, United Nations Population Division, 2022).The trend of urbanisation in India as reflected in the latest census (2011) shows that the level of urbanisation has increased from 27.7% in 2001 to 31.1% in 2011. Major components of urban population growth in Indian cities are natural increment in population and urban agglomeration or outgrowths (Bhagat, 2018). Urban sustainability is adversely affected due to large scale land use land cover conversions to built up and residential areas and demand-supply gap in the provisioning of civic urban amenities (Kumar, 2009; Bera, 2020). It has a far-reaching effect on India’s efforts on reaching Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030.