CARRYING CAPACITIES AND STANDARDS AS BASES TOWARDS URBAN INFRASTRUCTURE PLANNING IN INDIA - A CASE OF URBAN WATER-SUPPLY AND SANITATION

Assessment of urban carrying capacities with respect to their basic in frastructure provisions like water supply and sanitation helps to dete rmine the relative potentials of individual urban centres across regio ns for sustainable growth and also provides a framework for rational s ectoral and spatial allocations of resources for infrastructure develo pment. While carrying capacities should be assessed against acceptable norms and standards for provision of the basic services, there is amp le scope for further development of minimum standards for urban water supply and sanitation in India. There has been a multiplicity of recom mendations of standards with wide disparity across them and the ration ale behind these recommendations are not explicit. The paper develops an array of indicator measures through which the natural and man-made resources and assimilative capacities of urban areas with respect to w ater supply, sewerage, drainage and solid waste disposal can be assess ed in quantitative and qualitative terms. Another set of indicators ha ve been developed to assess the financial and managerial capacities of various local institutions in the provision of these utilities. A fra mework for the use of these urban carrying capacity measures in spatia l planning has been suggested. The author suggests further research to test the applicability of these indicator measures through real-life case studies of Indian cities based on available environmental informa tion base. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.