ABSTRACT
India's urban ecosystems are finding themselves under rapidly increasing stress. This chapter highlights several of the environmental challenges, illustrating the critical risks they might engender if India were to continue with its current urbanization path characterized by a lack of proper planning and timely policy implementation. I especially focus on India's smaller cities, where the utter neglect of urbanization and pollution-related imperatives has assumed alarming proportions. The first section of this chapter presents an overview of India's urbanization experience and the felt need to pose this as a human security risk; the second section highlights the challenges of water, air and waste management in smaller towns and cities; the third section offers reforms and policy prescriptions that might help to stem the crisis. To illustrate the glaring divergence, I will draw heavily upon the experiences of Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh as a case study of some of the most egregious challenges facing Indian mid-size cities today.
