Urban Scholars, developmentalists, academicians and researchers are labelling increasing urban poverty as ‘Urbanisation of Poverty’. This new term has been used in international conferences held at different world locations about the growing incidents of urban poverty. In several Asian countries the numbers of the urban poor have risen over the 1990–2014 period.
The main reason of increase in urban poverty is due to the migration of rural poor towards urban areas. Unlike rural poverty, the definition of urban poverty is complex and multidimensional.
According to UN-Habitat, a not-for-profit global organisation supporting the building of a better urban future, Asia has 60 per cent of the world’s total slum population, and many more people live in slum-like conditions.
The welfare of millions of urban poor will depend on how Asia, where many of its cities represent the new global frontier, prepares for the inevitable growth of urbanisation, and how this phenomenon of urbanisation is managed and taken forward.
Now this raises several questions. How can human influx from rural to urban areas be controlled? Will the World, specially Asia, face rampant urbanisation?
If the influx of rural masses towards urban areas will continue in the same way then the situation will worsen and poverty, terrorism, corruption and other related socio-economic issues will surface. Asian countries must prepare themselves for the challenges of urbanisation. They should resolve the issues faced by rural masses at their doorstep so that the influx of rural people towards urban areas subsides. Recent examples of migration towards EU countries and the death of immigrants in open seas of Europe is not a good omen for the world. This must be stopped.
— The reader is a Pakistani development consultant based in Karachi, Pakistan.
