Dr. Devendra
K. Kothari
Population
and Development Analyst
Forum for
Population Action
To boost economy as well as human development, Modi government must invest resources in urbanization where they are really needed.
“The
Prime Minister Modi said revamping urban governance should be at the core of
the vision of the Ministry of Urban Development while chairing a high-level
meeting on urban development issues,” a statement released by PMO.
In spite of
constitutional amendments to empower urban local bodies, India's cities
continue to reel under poor basic services, poor planning and lack of funds.
Most of these are the spinoff or by-product of the poor governance. How can we
revamp the urban governance system?
Answer is: It is time to think
local. While there are
multiple reasons for India’s urban woes, one of the underlying problems is the
absence of powerful and politically accountable leadership in the city. Our
cities have a weak and fragmented institutional architecture in which multiple
agencies with different bosses pull the strings of city administration.
Understandably, the most touted urban governance reform is that of having a
directly elected Mayor/Chairman. Recent reports indicate that
Prime Minister is keen on this reform and has asked the Urban Development
Ministry to consider ways of introducing it. [1]
It is almost 25 years since the 74th constitutional amendment
mandated setting up of municipalities as institutions of self-government. But
the spirit underpinning the amendment has been ignored by states even as they
ask for decentralization and more powers from the Centre. Now rethinking is
urgently needed. It is because
projections indicate that urban population will increase by another 200 million
in the next 15 years, change cannot be postponed.
Nandan Nilekini, co-founder of
and former CEO of Infosys, is absolutely
right in making a case for empowering the mayors and chairpersons of cities to deliver
services and for effective crisis management.“Indian cities have been passive and
subordinate to the state governments. The bulk of city taxes are collected by
the state and central governments and administration is dominated by state-run
agencies. The power of city administrations has been deliberately hollowed out
since independence, as state governments superseded city authority and co-opted
its power”. [2]
In
other words, states have been reluctant to cede powers of taxation and control
over their cities. The possibility of competition from the grass roots has made
state political parties wary of an 'hour glass' effect, of being squeezed in
the middle between a strong Centre and powerful cities. And no state chief
minister wants to let go of the money and patronage that comes from controlling
urban land, argues Nilekini.
Urban
governance reforms must be based on the principle of accountability. It is time
to narrow accountability to a single office such as an elected mayor, as
successful cities across the world do. For responsive urban
governance, we need a powerful political executive in the city with more
autonomy, whether directly or indirectly elected. The mayor should be the
executive head of a city, equipped with sufficient legal powers and financial
resources to get things done. Congress leader Shashi Tharoor introduced a
private member’s bill to get balkanised urban governance system to function as
a coherent body with appropriate legislative backing. But this should be done
by states without any prompting, as noted by the TOI editorial.[3]
For local bodies to be able to function
better, funds, functions and functionaries have to be devolved to them,
municipal cadres have to be restructured and strengthened and the role of city
officials needs to be redefined
clarifying their accountability to the elected system. The immediate ingredients of a revamped urban governance system could be:[4]
- Empowering the mayors/chairpersons, making them accountable to the people;
- Enabling the city bodies to raise more resources;
- Meaningful devolution;
- Strengthened capacities of local bodies so that they can perform better in line with the aspirations and requirements of today’s urban dwellers; and
- Evolving mechanisms whereby the citizen is in a position to actively and effectively participate in the urban governance process.
The foregoing discussion strongly argues that without local governments that answer directly to its civic citizens, it will be difficult to manage urban issues. India’s urban nightmare can be ended with legislative changes and capacity building. In this respect, vesting the executive powers of the Municipal Corporation and/municipality with the Mayor/Chairman would be a very positive move. Do we have the political will required to undertake this critical task?
Discussion and conclusion:
In their recent paper, Massimiliano Calì and Carlow Menon,
examined the extent to which the growth in urban areas reduced poverty in
surrounding rural areas in India. [5] Using a large sample of Indian districts,
they find that urbanization has a substantial and systematic poverty-reducing
effect in the rural areas.
The focus on urbanization,
therefore, is particularly relevant, as it is the country with the largest
number of poor especially in rural areas. There is an urgent need to increase
the pace of migration from rural areas, since over 58 per cent of the rural
households or around 50 percent of total labour force in India depends on
agriculture as their principal means of livelihood. However, as per estimates
by the Central Statistics Office (CSO), GOI, the share of agriculture and
allied sectors (agriculture, livestock, forestry and fishery) was 15.3 per cent
of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) during 2015–16 at 2011–12 prices. It means
per capita GDP or productivity of labour force engaged in agriculture is very
low. Since non-agricultural sectors will drive most of India’s future growth,
three is an urgent need to shift access labour force from agriculture to
non-agriculture activities. As such, India has to invest heavily in
manufacturing and service sectors, which encouraged farmers/rural people to
move to more productive jobs. So far, India has encouraged rural people to stay
home by subsidizing rural incomes through programs like: NAREGA (National
Rural Employment Guarantee Act), Food Security Bill, etc.
India and China are both
urbanizing rapidly, but China has embraced and shaped the process, while India
is still waking up to its urban realities and opportunities, as per a study by
the McKinsey Global Institute. [6]
According to the findings, in 1950, India was a more urban nation than China
(17 percent of the population lived in cities, compared with China’s 13
percent). But from 1950 to 2015, China urbanized far more rapidly than India,
to an urbanization rate of 55.6 percent, compared with 32.7 percent in India;
and, this pattern to continue, with China forecast to add 400 million to its
urban population, which will account for 64 percent of the total population by
2025, and India to add 215 million to its cities, whose populations will
account for 38 percent of the total in 2025.
McKinsey’s Richard Dobbs
and Shirish Sankhe noted that “India has underinvested in its cities;
China has invested ahead of demand and given its cities the freedom to raise
substantial investment resources by monetizing land assets and retaining a 25
percent share of value-added taxes. While India spends $17 per capita on
capital investments in urban infrastructure annually, China spends $116. India has
devolved little real power and accountability to its cities, but China’s major
cities enjoys the same status as provinces and has powerful political
appointees as mayors. While India’s urban-planning system has failed to address
competing demands for space, China has a mature urban-planning regime
(emphasizing the systematic development of run-down areas) consistent with
long-range plans for land use, housing, and transportation”. [7]
We hope that this paper will help
the government in informed decision making and help formulate a stratified
urban policy. It is expected to help policy makers in taking forward the newly
launched Missions, namely, Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana, Smart Cities Mission,
Swatch Bharat Mission and Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban
Transformation in a bid towards building a vibrant and inclusive urban India.
We hope that this contributes to a better understanding and appreciation of the
vital importance of medium and small sized towns in the national economy, and
helps to increase their role in making relevant local contributions to the
solution of shared developmental challenges.
In
short, to mitigate the strains that will develop as cities expand, and to
maximize the potential economic opportunity that well-managed cities can offer,
India urgently needs a fresh, proactive approach to addressing the challenges
of urbanization India. So India must develop policies to expedite the process
of urbanization
[2] Nandan Nilekani. 2008. It's Time To
Think Local
athttp://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/edit-page/TOP-ARTICLE-Its-Time-To-Think-Local/articleshow/3829429.cms?
[3] Refer TOI editorial: Cut cities free: India’s
urban nightmare can be ended with legislative changes and capacity building at:
http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/toi-editorials/cut-cities-free-indias-urban-nightmare-can-be-ended-with-legislative-changes-and-capacity-building/
[4] Refer article: Rethinking Urban Governance by M.
Ramachandran at:
http://inclusion.skoch.in/story/67/rethinking-urban-governance-367.html
[5] Refer: Cali, Massimiliano; Menon, Carlo.
2013. Does
Urbanization Affect Rural Poverty? Evidence from Indian Districts.
Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank. © World Bank.
https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/21003 License: CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
IGO.
[6] For details, see: India's
urban awakening: Building inclusive cities,
sustaining economic growth, A Report - McKinsey Global Institute -
2010.
[7] Richard Dobbs and. Shirish Sankhe. 2010. Comparing urbanization in
China and India, the McKinsey Global
Institute. A version of this article appeared in the Financial Times on
May 18, 2010. Also see at:
