'Over-saturated cities like Bengaluru...': Montek Singh Ahluwalia says India should do this to tackle urban population growth

Former Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission of India and economist Montek Singh Ahluwalia has one remedy for the country's over-saturated metros like Bengaluru -- split large states so that new cities can emerge. "This will give an impetus to urbanization," he said. 

According to him, if India is going to grow at 8 per cent, then the urban population is going to grow more rapidly than cities' infrastructure. "I'm not suggesting what you should do in Karnataka, but it's my general view. We should seriously consider cutting down many of the largest states into two or three," said Ahluwalia.

He said picking up some tier-2 towns and developing them into "near-metros" is the solution for over-saturated cities like Bengaluru, for instance. He said even though there "ought to be spilling over into other cities", this does not happen organically. "The only known cases in India where this happens is when a new state is carved out and a capital has to be created," he added.

Although he agreed that Bengaluru enjoys a lot of advantages, Ahluwalia added that making a city liveable is not just the result of getting a lot of companies to invest.

He was addressing a session on 'Resilient Pathways: Charting India's Economic Growth Amid Global Challenges' at Invest Karnataka 2025, being held here till February 14.

"There's a whole lot of urban management that has to be done. The first thing that should be done is that the Bengaluru city government should be made hugely more efficient. Now, unfortunately, in our country, city governments don't have much power, and that's true of all states," said Ahluwalia, apparently about city civic bodies.

"Gandhiji said India lives in its villages, and many people still regard that as a sort of romantic vision. But I don't think he said India will continue to do so 100 years later," Ahluwalia added.

Ahluwalia recalled former UP Chief Minister and BSP leader Mayawati had suggested splitting her state into three. "Had this been done, there would have been a political willingness instantly to create three new good cities," he added.

He also pointed out that people have said this could be done in many other states. "In Maharashtra, for example, there are people who said the Vidarbha region should be made a separate state with Nagpur as its capital," he added.

While stating that tough decisions such as this are not politically easy, he said change happens only with interesting reforms. "Don't go back to 1991 for inspiration, because those were no brainer reforms, really. The world was speaking one language then," he added.

"We started the reforms after Eastern Europe had abolished communism. There was only one thing to do which was integrating with the global market," he explained further.