While rural populations suffer from an increasingly degrading natural resource base, in urban areas, populations face environmental challenges of a different kind.
There is mounting evidence that increasing pressures on urban environments is taking its toll on the quality of life of urban population. Although economic deprivation may be less acute in urban areas than in the rural, the deleterious effects of non-economic factors may indeed be more pervasive.
Urban population growth is much higher than the rate of population growth, and already about 29 per cent of India’s population lives in urban areas, frequently in deplorable conditions .