The Dynamics of Urban Economies in India
In the rapidly changing landscape of urban economies in India, nuanced civic engagement, enhanced transparency, accountability, and representation have come to the forefront as significant issues. This piece seeks to investigate the shift in the public administration’s discourse from a traditional solution to a more collaborative one with the aim of creating inclusive and sustainable policy frameworks.
The prospect of nuanced civic engagement in democratic processes plays an important role in spearheading transparency, accountability and representation. It also strengthens the overall socio-political and economic character of contemporary administrative discourse. At a time when we are experiencing a paradigm shift from traditional redressal of grievances to instances of collaborative solution building, considerable emphasis has been laid on the effective streamlining of policy frameworks, thereby making them more inclusive and sustainable.
Inspired by the highly acclaimed 2013 European model of the “Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan, popularly referred to as the SUMP, India implemented regular assessment and prudent monitoring, given the larger context of development and nuanced participatory governance
In line with this idea, the 2nd edition of the aforementioned guidelines, responsibilities are clearly allocated, measurable targets are set with multiple performance indicators. India has embraced the “collective right” to participate in city making. This shift towards collaborative solution-building signifies a departure from traditional top-down approaches to governance towards a more inclusive and participatory model. thereby addressing complex socio-political and economic challenges faced by societies today. By involving a wide range of stakeholders in the policy-making process, the India government has tapped into diverse perspectives, expertise, and resources, leading to more holistic and effective solutions.
Urban Governance and Community Engagement -The Context
Sherry Arnstein’s 1969 ladder of citizen participation envisages an amicable power and responsibility distribution network that counteracts the potential manipulative power of governments. Her seminal work on citizen participation underscores the intrinsic link between meaningful engagement and the redistribution of power within democratic processes. By asserting that genuine participation requires more than just tokenistic inclusion, she challenges the conventional understanding of democracy as mere representation without substantive influence. This analysis serves as a poignant call to reorient the focus of participatory democracy efforts towards empowering citizens with the agency to shape outcomes and impact policies.
Moreover, Arnstein’s insistence on the transformative potential of authentic citizen-led processes as vehicles for social change underscores the imperative for policymakers and practitioners to prioritize mechanisms that truly redistribute power, ensuring that participation translates into tangible influence and equitable distribution of benefits.
This larger context has the potential to affect institutional, legislative and political support and the pursuit of a state wise strategy. Since time immemorial, urban participation in India has been fraught with archaic laws. Indian citizens have received little state funding for structural development, not always stemming from limited budgetary allocations, showing that the government’s decisions were conscious. As per the Participatory Research Authority of India’s Society for Research in India, getting the public involved, requires three stages to be followed –
• Preliminary Engagement- This procedure creates awareness through campaigns and advertisements. Moreover in case of detailed public engagements, options of informal house visits or even formal consultations with specific groups could be explored.
• Secondary Engagement- Largely involving consultations at the administrative level in constituencies known as wards in India, alongside nodal centres or Indian educational institutions providing services and amenities for evaluation and coordination for a specified number of public sector schemes, in addition to stakeholder management at the local level.
• City Development Strategy Workshop or the CDS- Entails updating the people on the ongoing policy endeavours coupled with active inputs from stakeholders and representatives.
Against the backdrop of a rapidly growing national economy, marked by a significant improvement in the delivery of public services in the realm of healthcare, education and power supply
Healthcare- Several new health policies, given the 137 per cent increase in the budget for healthcare, voluntary health insurance schemes such as the National Health Insurance Initiative popularly referred to as the Aayushman Bharat in the Indian context, have provided a boost to the Indian medical framework, coupled with a projected increase of 2.5 per cent in the public health expenditure systems in Indian by 2025.
Education- With the proliferation of both private aided and private unaided educational, alongside governmental institutions as per a British Council Report of 2019, alongside the establishment of proper data management systems for keeping track of intake and dropout rates.
Power supply-The achievement of 100 percent electrification rates in rural and semi urban areas, has left little doubt with regards to growing viability of the power sector. Record capacities are added each year in electricity generation,the transmission system is more robust and tariff petitions and revisions have become more regular, aggregate, technical and commercial losses.
Despite these wide ranging claims, a lot still remains undone. Revamping of labor organizations for infrastructural viability, leverage of cost effective innovations and skill addition mechanisms, under the aegis of Public Private Partnerships and Participatory Budgeting, might have helped in this regard, however decline in external sources of funding in several individual resident administrative units under the aegis of the RWA or the Resident Welfare Associations and autonomous Civil Society Organizations or CSOs have added on the burden of grievances.
Democratization of Participatory Urbanization
Under the Sustainable Urban Management Accords or the SUMA of the Government of Karnataka, 2020, steps were taken towards the introduction of sustainable systems of transport, In the Indian context, the development and implementation of sustainable systems of transport can serve as a significant driver of democratization by addressing key social, economic, and environmental challenges facing the country. Sustainable transport infrastructure, such as improved public transit systems, cycling lanes, walkable sidewalks, and carpooling initiatives, can enhance mobility options for diverse segments of the population, including marginalized communities and low-income individuals. By ensuring affordable and accessible transportation solutions, these systems can reduce inequalities by enabling broader participation in economic activities, education, healthcare access, and social interactions.
Moreover, the shift to sustainable transport models in India can contribute to globally, India faces significant environmental challenges, including pollution and climate change. Through investments in green transportation initiatives, such as electric vehicles, renewable energy-powered transit systems, and sustainable urban planning practices, India can work towards a cleaner and healthier environment for its citizens. This emphasis on environmental stewardship not only benefits present generations but is crucial for ensuring a sustainable future for upcoming ones in line with the achievement of specific goals and action plans by the year 2030.
As per the Directorate of Urban Land Transport Report of 2013, a direct funding of Rupees INR 50 lakhs( $60,000), has been shelled out directly, with an initial timeline of 1 year, with active consonance of technical partners.
The challenge however, pertains to the monetisation of assets and the lack of availability of a platform for holistic treatment of problems in terms of strengthening the growth imperative, thereby streamlining distortions in land markets and widespread ownership of government business.
Putting this flashpoint into context, the Mckinsey Global Institute Report of 2010, projected a four-fold increase in urban economies from 32 million to 147 million, occupying nearly 70% of India’s GDP by 2030, materializing only with a significant reduction in cost of delivering public services and availability of potential savings.
Another important element in urban inclusion revolves around tactical urbanism, through the improvement of public spaces. With the use of low cost and temporary interventions referring to subsidized government health concessions and optimal troubleshooting and technical support, alongside experimental interventions or large scale programmatic and revamped conceptual frameworks as reflected in the twin examples of the areas of Magarpatta in the central Pune, in the state of Maharashtra and Auroville in the state of Puducherry with higher degrees of community intervention and fundamental township changes modelled on the land assembly instance in Rourkela, in the state of Orissa, India coupled with increased managerial implications of facilitation of endogenous models of urbanization and mainstreaming citizen participation.
Furthermore, emerging Tier-1 and Tier 2 townships of Jamnagar, Chandigarh and Bhubaneswar, driven by “economics of agglomeration”, orchestrated by state or private organizations through developmental results and physical improvements in environment, have served not only as context specific experiences of participatory urbanization, but also strategies of deliberative democracy
On a different note, aquatic development projects such as the community based Kaikondrahalli Project of Bangalore housing 37 species of birds and 1000 trees, with active support from international organizations like the MAPAS serve as instances of popular role in the national urban landscape, given that 77 percent of the household population practice social forestry on common lands, with 3.5 million trees being planted by 500 Indian companies alongside 314 Indian households, in 2019.
These traditional Indian models in the wake of globalisation and industrialization, have not only been independent of several socio-cultural limitations, but also serve as corrective mechanical imitations for leveraging urban growth, at a rate of 80-85 per cent with greater internal funding.
Critical evaluation of challenges
Based on the aforementioned premises, it could be said that while a calibrated approach has been put in place to effectively structure community consultation and nuanced public engagement, the policy process has had to grapple with the implementation issues, pertaining to the same.
With the lack of common popular consensus with regards to community development projects, alongside a lack of combination of subsidy and incentives for greater participation of personnel, given the increased incidence of public disengagement, with an average of less than 50 percent of the populace, inclusive of lower rates of female participation at less than 20 percent, alongside identification of strategic locations like Auroville, Magarpatta, Bhubaneswar a lot that remains undone, could be covered up in a shorter span of time, with adequate structural mechanisms adjunct to the traditional ways of designing and developing townships, alongside collaborative mechanisms that facilitate planned development as seen in Auroville and Magarpatta.
Inclusive development and community consultation through empowerment, awareness and collective training programmes could only lead to productive outcomes, with the right balance of active governance and higher incidences of civic engagement in potential sectoral development.
Bibliography
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- Developing Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans – Guidelines for MobiliseYourCity geographies. https://www.mobiliseyourcity.net/sites/default/files/2023-03/SUMP%20Guidelines_final%20%281%29.pdf
- Ghia and Rambhad . Implementation of of equity and access in Indian healthcare: current scenario and way forward. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10044314/
- Wickham, Barbara. The school education system in India. https://www.britishcouncil.in/sites/default/files/school_education_system_in_india_report_2019_final_web.pdf
- Hajer and Wagenaar (2009) – Deliberative Policy Analysis: Understanding Governance in the Network Society. https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/unf_research/51/
- Mahadevia, Bhatia and Bhatt- Decentralized governance or passing the buck: the case of resident welfare associations at resettlement sites, Ahmedabad, India. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956247815613688
6. Arnstein, Sherry. (1969) – A ladder of citizen participation. Journal of the American Planning Association, 35(4), 216–224.
Photo by Dominique Müller on Unsplash
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