Urban Quest | Ahmedabad Needs Rapid Transformation To Emerge As A Global Sporting Capital

The latest July 2025 World Bank–Government of India report reveals that by 2050, 951 million Bharatiyas (54 per cent of the total population) will reside in cities and towns. This number will swell to 1.1 billion by 2070. Urban India is the engine of growth, employment and innovation. Indian cities and towns already account for the world’s third-largest start-up ecosystem; by 2030 they will account for more than 70 per cent of all new employment, and their share of national GDP will be 70 per cent.

This leads to the moot question — are Indian cities and towns future-proofed to meet fast-track urbanisation when more than half of the country’s population will be residing in urban Bharat by 2050, contributing to more than 80 per cent of Bharat’s

GDP?

City Number 1

The future-proofing readiness of the cities to meet the challenges of making Viksit Bharat by 2047 is at the crux of this new series named Urban Quest. As part of the series, every week I analyse one city. The first set of cities taken up for a deep dive, alphabetically, are those which are already megacities (10 million-plus population) or are on the verge of becoming one.

And the city that selects itself automatically in the urban quest is the Manchester of India — Ahmedabad. The city assumes greater salience because of the following:

Host City of the Centenary Commonwealth Games: On 26 November 2025, the General Assembly of the Commonwealth Games held at Glasgow formally anointed Ahmedabad as the host city of the Centenary Commonwealth Games 2030. As the Government of India has already submitted the intent for Ahmedabad to host the Summer Olympics 2036, the Commonwealth Games will be a precursor to showcase future readiness for the Olympics.

Megacity: As per the United Nations, Ahmedabad’s 2025 population has reached 9.3 million, while that of Gandhinagar, its twin city, is 1.62 million. This brings the population of the combined urban area to 10.92 million, making it a megacity five years ahead of projections.

Driver to Make Viksit Bharat by 2047: Traditionally known as the Manchester of India, the city has fast-tracked its growth as a multisector manufacturing and export hub and as a global services centre with the establishment of GIFT City. In 2011, Forbes ranked the city as the third-fastest-growing city of the decade globally. Ahmedabad has not looked back since then.

Massive Infrastructure Push: Though gaps remain, the city is ahead of other Indian metropolises in fast-tracking physical and social infrastructure.

Deep Dive

This edition of Urban Quest offers a comprehensive deep dive into Ahmedabad as it exists today and the promise it holds in contributing significantly to making Bharat a developed nation. As it has already been projected as the global sporting hub of Bharat, the piece also identifies the gaps in the city’s preparedness to make it future-ready and provides a pathway to fill these gaps rapidly.

In a nutshell, the story in this piece is where Ahmedabad stands today and where — and how — it must reach quickly to meet the aspirations of the city, the state and the country by 2030 (when it hosts the Commonwealth Games), 2036 (the year it wishes to host the Olympic Games) and 2047 (when Bharat must become a viksit nation).

The Count

Ahmedabad crossed  1 million population in 1955. It took  two more decades for the city’s population to reach two million in 1975, but thereafter the growth accelerated to four million in 1994, six million in 2009 and eight million in 2020. As per World Population Review, the city’s population jumped to 9.3 million in 2025.

With the population of Gandhinagar, the twin city of Ahmedabad, already at 1.62 million, Ahmedabad has already crossed the threshold of 10 million (10.92 million) to become the latest megacity of the country.

The Footprint

In 1951, the area of Ahmedabad was 90 square kilometres, which expanded to 466 square kilometres in 2011 and is estimated to be 600 square kilometres in 2025. Additionally, the area of the Ahmedabad Metropolitan Region grew from 1,214 square kilometres in 1991 to 1,700 square kilometres by 2011 and is estimated to be 2,100 square kilometres by 2025.

As per the state vision of “Viksit Gujarat, Viksit Bharat”, it has targeted growing its economy to USD 1 trillion by 2030. Ahmedabad must do the heavy lifting for this aspirational growth story of Gujarat. To bring manufacturing, services and export growth in line with this aspiration, the city must fast-track its physical and social infrastructure.

The Powerhouse

Herein lies the question — can the economy of Gujarat reach the USD 1 trillion mark in 2030 from its current Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) of USD 349.14 billion? If not, in which year must it hit the USD 1 trillion mark, and what must be done to reach there?

Make no mistake — Gujarat is already an economic powerhouse of Bharat. With 6 per cent of the country’s landmass and 5 per cent of the population, it already contributes more than 10 per cent to Bharat’s economy.

But with the current USD 349 billion GSDP and an annual growth rate of 8.1 per cent, to become a USD 1 trillion economy by 2030 the state would need to grow at a CAGR of 23.16 per cent. This looks improbable. But the state can hit the USD 1 trillion target by around 2035 if it consistently grows at a CAGR of 13.65 percent.

And to achieve the above aspiration it needs to simultaneously move at many fronts. Here are they-

From Disrupted To Robust Habitat

Talking of habitat, Ahmedabad must tackle three issues — chawls, slums, and the need to create sustainable housing to accommodate its fast-increasing population. Below, I discuss all three.

Firstly, Chawls: Hundreds of chawls remain embedded in Ahmedabad’s housing fabric, reflecting the city’s industrial heritage and contemporary urban challenges. Although these chawls are formal housing structures, they are generally cramped, with poor ventilation, limited sanitation and inadequate infrastructure, reflecting the challenges of ageing housing stock and urban poverty.

The Ahmedabad Development Plan 2041 does incorporate affordable housing and sustainable growth, including the potential upgrading or redevelopment of old chawls to create more liveable settlements. Given that the Commonwealth Games are less than five years away, these need fast-tracking along with slum development, including transit-oriented development along Metro and BRTS corridors.

Secondly, Slums: In 2020, when Trump visited Ahmedabad, slums were cordoned off by constructing walls. By 2030, when the Commonwealth Games are held, Ahmedabad must have world-class liveable habitat for the EWS section, following the global best practices of Hong Kong and Curitiba, Brazil. But what is the extent of the problem? I make an attempt to quantify below:

• 1961 to 1991: Ahmedabad’s slum population increased rapidly due to migration, industrialisation and lack of affordable housing. The percentage of slum households increased from 17.2 per cent in 1961 to 22.8 per cent in 1971 and 25.6 per cent in 1991 — 95,000 out of a total 3.1 million population.
• After 1991: Slum population has declined (though the absolute number remained high or even increased as per alternative estimates). The 2011 Census reported a significant drop in slum population to 4.49 per cent of the total population.
• Current estimates place the slum population between 800,000 and 900,000.

The reasons for the decline in the slum population appear to be:

• Urban redevelopment and upgrading: Significant slum rehabilitation, redevelopment and in-situ upgradation initiatives by the AMC and state government — relocating or regularising older slums and improving infrastructure.
• Stricter definitions: A narrower official definition of recognised slums after 2001 led to many informal settlements being left out of the official count.
• Shifting boundaries: Urban boundary expansion incorporated many former slum areas into regular city neighbourhoods, changing their status in census records.
• Data issues: Non-notified and peri-urban slums often remain undercounted in government statistics, so actual numbers may be higher.

It is time to further strengthen slum improvement measures, including expanding PM-Awas Yojana, other schemes and partnership programmes like Parivartan. If there is one city best placed to drastically improve its slums, it is Ahmedabad.

Third, Robust Habitat: The question of providing proper habitat for the current and future population is much bigger than solving the problems of chawls and slums. It has the following components:

• Providing liveable housing units for those already living in chawls and slums.
• Providing affordable housing for new entrants to the city (migrants) and improving the housing stock for residents of rural areas being reclassified as urban.
• Providing liveable and affordable housing for the fast-growing population of Ahmedabad.

A recent study says Ahmedabad will need an estimated 3.1 million new housing units to accommodate its projected population of 12.4 million people by the year 2050. However, with Ahmedabad emerging as a key growth driver of Viksit Bharat, the above appears to be a conservative number.

Pollution

The world still remembers the air pollution scare on the eve of the Beijing Olympic Games. Though not as serious as Delhi, ambient air pollution in Ahmedabad is a cause for concern. For the last few days, the city’s AQI, as per the CPCB, has hovered between “poor” and “moderate”, with the most dangerous pollutants measured at many times above the mandated WHO level of 5 micrograms.

Ahmedabad’s worsening air pollution is becoming a persistent problem, largely due to fast urbanisation, increasing industrial emissions, growing vehicular pollution and chronic dust from streets and construction activity. A war footing effort is needed to combat it using best practices airshed approach.

Mount Pirana

One more problem that Ahmedabad must resolutely tackle before the Commonwealth Games is flattening Mount Pirana into the “wonder park” it has already decided to create.

Located in Narol, an industrial hub on the outskirts of Ahmedabad, and spread over 84 hectares, Pirana has been the primary solid-waste dumping site since 1982. It contains a massive accumulated mound of 6.9 million tonnes of legacy, unsegregated solid waste, some of it reaching around 75 feet in height.

Pirana presents a major environmental challenge to the city, but it is also a literal litter-bomb for the 4.5 lakh migrant workers employed in nearly 5,000 Narol factories living in its proximity.

Make no mistake — Pirana is the biggest eyesore that Ahmedabad has. It creates severe environmental problems such as toxic fumes and smoke, foul odours, and contamination risks to air, land and groundwater, causing significant health hazards to nearby residents and waste-management workers.

There is no way to hide Pirana, and the only solution lies in remediation on a war footing. Efforts are underway to remediate and convert the Pirana dumpsite into a green “waste-to-wonder” park, incorporating biomining, bioremediation and waste processing to reclaim the land and reduce environmental harm.

The Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation is yet to fully comply with the 2020 National Green Tribunal order mandating 100 per cent clearing of legacy waste at the Pirana landfill within two years, though the AMC has made some progress by processing and clearing over 1.25 million tonnes, freeing up around 40 acres of land by 2024.

The task is monumental, and progress is slower than desired.

Apart from solving the Pirana conundrum, what the city needs is laser-focused attention on expanding and rapidly upgrading infrastructure for waste collection, segregation, transport and disposal, with an emphasis on setting up sanitary landfills, compost plants and waste-to-energy facilities. Ahmedabad needs to quickly adopt the zero-waste goal using the circular-economy principles of reduce, reuse and recycle.

The Vanishing Act

Once upon a time, Ahmedabad was a city of lakes. It is even now, to some extent. The city inherited several natural lakes along with a few man-made ones like Kankaria. In 1960, the then 90-square-kilometre, one-million-plus city was blessed with a blue canopy of 204 lakes.

But that was then.

In 2001, the Gujarat High Court expressed alarm on noting that the city was left with only 130 lakes. The reduction was largely attributed to unbridled urban expansion, encroachment, waste dumping and the lack of proper lake-conservation measures integrated into statutory city development plans.

It was bad enough. But it was just the beginning.

On 5 July 2025, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) Principal Bench, New Delhi, took suo motu cognisance of a report in The Indian Express highlighting the disappearance of 37 water bodies in Ahmedabad out of 174 lakes (the number increased after expansion of city limits), owing to unregulated urban development, encroachment and the eventual disappearance of key water bodies.

The “blue cover” — or water-surface area — in Ahmedabad has dwindled due to multiple reasons: rapid urbanisation, reclassification of lake land for development, physical encroachment, blockage of natural water inflows and the conversion of lakes into residential or commercial plots.

The depletion of water bodies means lower groundwater levels and higher temperatures facing the city. Action is needed on a war footing to undertake comprehensive lake conservation through strengthened legal protection, incorporation of water sensitivity into urban planning, desilting and restoration of natural inflow and outflow channels, protection against encroachments, community participation in lake maintenance and scaling up nature-based solutions such as constructed wetlands. Continuous monitoring and an empowered state-level committee to resolve disputes can help.

Lakes and rivers in Chennai and Bengaluru have vanished permanently. With projects like the Sabarmati Riverfront Development and the Lake Redevelopment and Interlinking of Lakes (LRIL) projects, Ahmedabad has shown it has both the vision and the courage to reclaim its water bodies — and the effort must be fast-tracked despite challenges galore.

Water And Sanitation

On 18 November, Gujarat received from President Droupadi Murmu the award for securing second place in the National Water Awards 2025. It is an achievement for an arid state.

Nonetheless, all is not well with water supply and sanitation, and it is time for the city to raise the heat. Key issues are as follows:

One, Water Problems:

• Intermittent water supply, typically 2–3 hours a day; about 15–25 per cent of the population lacks reliable in-home water connections.
• High unaccounted-for / non-revenue water, estimated at 40–50 per cent, reflecting large water losses due to leakages, theft and inefficiencies.
• Contaminated drinking water in several wards due to ageing pipes, leakages and infiltration of sewage into water lines, leading to health issues.
• Dependence on surface water from the Narmada Canal and the Raska water treatment plant, with groundwater increasingly overexploited but poorly recharged due to urbanisation.
• Ahmedabad is utilising about 152 per cent of its available groundwater, according to the Central Ground Water Board’s Dynamic Groundwater Resources Report 2023. This means groundwater extraction significantly exceeds natural recharge, placing Ahmedabad’s aquifers in the “over-exploited” category with no groundwater available for sustainable future use.
• Data from the Government of India’s Ministry of Jal Shakti shows that Ahmedabad’s groundwater suffers from high levels of salinity, fluoride, iron and lead.
• Pollution of the Sabarmati River downstream due to untreated or partially treated wastewater and industrial discharges.

Sanitation Problems:

• Insufficient sewer-network coverage, especially in slum areas where 25 per cent or more residents still rely on on-site sanitation systems.
• Ahmedabad has 7–8 Sewage Treatment Plants (STPs), but these operate below capacity (treating roughly 774 MLD against sewage generation of about 1,000 MLD or more). Many STPs are outdated or inefficient.
• Industrial effluent treatment plants (CETPs) similarly underperform, with only 48 MLD of treated wastewater reused despite regulations mandating 80 per cent reuse.
• Open drains, sewer overflows and improper sewage disposal contribute to groundwater pollution and poor municipal solid-waste drainage.
• Lack of separation between stormwater and sewage drains exacerbates flooding and sanitation issues during the monsoon.

Treatment Infrastructure vs Requirement:

• Ahmedabad generates approximately 1,000–1,100 MLD of wastewater, but existing STPs have a total capacity of around 700–800 MLD and often operate below this due to system inefficiencies.
• Current treatment capacity and reuse rates fall significantly short of requirements mandated by environmental and public-health regulations.
• The supply–demand gap in safe water and sanitation is pronounced in under-served slum areas, where connections and services are often shared or inadequate.

Quite clearly, the existing water and sanitation infrastructure is unable to fully meet the needs of the current population and is not future-ready to meet the challenge of a fast-growing city. Ahmedabad needs to rapidly upgrade and expand water-supply networks and STPs, enhance industrial effluent treatment, improve non-revenue water management, implement integrated water governance, and provide targeted support for vulnerable communities to ensure equitable sanitation access.

In Part II of this piece, I delve deeper into other key issues, including those related to urban mobility, to ensure that Ahmedabad becomes future-ready to host more than 74 nations in the Centenary Commonwealth Games in 2030.

The author is a multidisciplinary thought leader with Action Bias, India-based international impact consultant, and keen watcher of changing national and international scenarios. He works as president, advisory services of consulting company BARSYL. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.