Articles by Amitabh Kundu

Access of Poor to Water Supply and Sanitation Amitabh Kundu Environmental degradation poses problems for urban populations both at the macro as well as micro levels. The macro problems, that affect the entire population in a city, are of late receiving attention from academics and policy-makers. It has generally been held that the poor are not interested in resolving macro level problems of the environment While this is certainly not true, it is a fact that micro level problems, such as access to water and sanitation are more immediate and specific problems for the urban poor This paper attempts to examine the nature and magnitude of disparity in the access to water supply and sanitation of people in different levels of consumption expenditure in urban areas.

Amitabh Kundu Shelter for the Poor in India edited by Michael Dewit and Hans Schenk; Manohar, New Delhi, 1989; pp 147, Rs 135.
FOR several reasons this is a useful and an interesting addition to the current literature. Useful because it is not a mere collection of seminar papers, written under pressure to meet a deadline, the likes of which we have seen in plenty in recent years. In the present volume, each paper, contributed, all except one, by young Dutch scholars, is a chapter on a specific theme and the eight papers together present a comprehensive view of the major issues in the subject. Interesting because it makes a departure from the market-oriented thinking, which by now has become the dominant viewpoint in the field, and makes a critical appraisal of the latter using empirical data.

With regard to utilisation of TB beds in the GTB Hospital it has not significantly changed in the last one decade (Table 3).
It is clear from table 3 that the number of patients using each bed of the GTB Hospital and the average stay of the patient in the hospital has not shown any radical change since 1975.

Urban Planning at Crossroads Amitabh Kundu AFTER three decades of planned development in a mixed economy, a new understanding seems to have dawned on the Indian planning scene. Planners and policy-makers at the highest levels have suddenly come to realise the difficulties of "substituting the decisions of thousands of people as they live, work and play in a city by the decisions of any omini- cient planning authority". One of the Task Forces set up by the Planning Commission has admitted: "We simply do not know enough to do it efficiently". The simmering discontent and dissatisfaction regarding the efficacy of planned resource allocation in various sectors of the economy, specially urban development, has suddenly burst out in the open. The government machinery with its accum- mulated experience of the past thirty years is now ready to concede the supriority of market forces in providing the right kinds of checks and incentives for the economic system and is willing to impose "limits to its own planning efforts".