The poor will inherit the earth. Yes, but how?

If the government is redesigning the metros for the rich, then these Shanghais might turn out to be urban disasters

Dunu Roy Delhi

How does a city grow? How should it grow? Is there any way of planning for chaos? Or does chaos itself involve planning? These are questions that have engaged many people over the years. As expected, many answers have been offered and they differ in approach, in methodology, in ways of seeing, and ways of believing.

Everyone has heard of Edwin Lutyens, a trained architect, and his enrapturement with a dominating imperial presence, embodied by the expansive layout of New Delhi, the placing of the Viceregal Palace (now Rashtrapati Bhavan) atop Raisina Hill, and the long sweep of the Central Vista ending at India Gate. These elements commemorated the acts of violence by the empire, the parades that would display the pomp and power of imperial might. At increasing hierachical distance from this centre of power, were located the bungalows and flats of the civil servants and the bureaucrats.

Some may have even heard of the revenge Herbert Baker, another trained architect, extracted on behalf of the civil servants by locating the administrative South and North Blocks in such a manner that they eclipsed the palace, whose black dome could now only be seen from a distance. In this curious manner, the clash of egos of two planners merely reflected the conflict between titular and real power, between social classes.

But few have perhaps heard of Patrick Geddes, the biologist who was a contemporary of Lutyens and Baker, and who was summoned by the prince to replan Indore after plague hit the city in the early part of the 20th century. Geddes asked to be appointed maharaja for a day and, on Diwali, he organised a grand parade, but it was through the alleys and bylanes of the city, sparking off a competition among different neighbourhoods to see who sparkled with the best cleanliness and sanitation.

In a salute to those who actually kept the city clean, Geddes ordained that the parade should be led by the lowly scavengers and sweepers and their bullock carts, and due honour accorded to them. He also persuaded the textile mills to build subsidised canteens for the impoverished workers, on the plea that the crumbs could be safely swept away after food had been eaten, making sure that the rats could not multiply and spread plague. Thus, he looked at the underbelly of empire itself.

It is such social conflicts – and the perspectives born out of them – that we need to recall when we look at urban planning today. Thus, when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh launched the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission a year ago with a massive budget of Rs 126,000 crores for 63 million-plus cities and towns, whom do we look to for inspiration – Lutyens, Baker, or Geddes?

The Mission statement specifies that it has been initiated to promote ‘reform’ and ‘sustainable development’. The mission’s objectives are, therefore, to develop infrastructure, set up management systems for effective maintenance, provide adequate capital investment, plan urban corridors and expansion, redevelop heritage areas, and provide civic services to the urban poor. It is, of course, never clear from the documents how the ‘problem’ of crumbling infrastructure has been analysed to arrive at the normative ‘solution’ of urban renewal (will it not crumble again?) – especially in the context of the urban poor.

The confusion is further compounded when the strategy of the mission is spelt out: rapid preparation of a city development plan (CDP) within six months to cover a 20-25 year horizon; legally binding agreements to be signed between democratically elected state governments, the Union government, and urban local bodies (ULBs) to implement reforms; preparation of detailed project reports by consultants; a definite role for the participation of the supposedly superior private sector in developing infrastructure; direct grants to nominated nodal agencies and not to the elected ULBs; raising additional resources from capital markets by the nodal agency; subsequent transfer of funds from the nodal agencies to ULBs through grants or loans; and creation of a revolving fund for management and maintenance of created assets.

The question is: how will such planning, agreements, funds, and private participation actually ease the pressure on infrastructure? Will it also provide services to the poor. This remains, uncannily, unsaid.

Which is why it is interesting that the mission proposes to separate the infrastructure component from the services to the poor by setting up two sub-missions under different ministries. Thus, the infrastructure component that will address the issues of renewal, water supply and sanitation, solid waste management, drains and sewers, urban transport, parking, heritage conservation, and protection of water bodies, is delegated to the urban development ministry. While the ‘basic services’ (to the poor) component, including integrated development of slums, slum clearance and improvement, provision of civic services, affordable housing, sanitation and waste management, maintenance, and coordination between health, education, and social security is under the ministry of poverty alleviation. How these two ministries will come up with a coordinated and integrated effort is a question that is not even addressed in the document.

Some enlightenment about the real purpose of the mission, however, emerges when one looks at the proposed ‘reforms’ under the project, which will enable ULBs to access funds from the capital markets and promote public-private partnerships.

Two kinds of reforms are proposed — those that are ‘mandatory’, and others that are ‘voluntary’. To remove all doubts, the ‘mandatory’ measures are spelt out at both the level of the ULBs as well as the state governments. The former are supposed to adopt modern double-accounting systems, e-governance, user fees to recover full costs, budgetary allocations by the ULBs to provide affordable basic services for the poor, and reform property taxes. The latter have to conduct elections to the ULBs under the 74th Amendment, repeal the Urban Land Ceiling Act, reform the Rent Control Act, bring down Stamp Duties to 5 per cent, put in place a public disclosure law, and involve ULBs in urban planning and management. Thus, these mandatory reforms are clearly designed to aid in improving the ‘efficiency’ of the money market, not necessarily that of services.

It turns out that there is nothing voluntary about the ‘voluntary’ reforms either – they have to be carried out within the space of seven years earmarked for the mission. They include modifying the rules to make construction and land development easier, simplifying the procedures to convert agricultural land for non-agricultural purposes, implementing property title certificate schemes, providing 20-25 per cent of land for housing the poor against matching grants and aid, computerising land and property registration, and promoting public-private partnerships. At first glance, all these reforms appear to be benevolently designed to improve governance and delivery mechanisms. However, a closer reading shows that, in fact, they are all targeted at benefiting those who own money, land, and property, and making property transactions easier, particularly for the large private builders and developers. Even electronic systems of keeping records and providing access to information favour this class above all others.

This suspicion is further strengthened when one studies the proposed financial structure for the mission. For four million-plus cities the Union government will provide 35 per cent of the capital investment, while the state governments’ share is 15 per cent. For million-plus towns, the shares go up to 50 per cent and 20 per cent respectively. The remaining 30-40 per cent has to be raised from the financial markets. Even of the public capital provided by governments, 25 per cent is earmarked for a revolving fund while 10 per cent is for capacity building and administration.

In other words, the real financial clout will remain within the hands of the big market players and infrastructure companies, and the money will not flow through the elected local bodies but through unaccountable nodal agencies nominated by the government. The entire democratic edifice of the republic is to be undercut by the domination of bureaucrats and technocrats in the administrative and supervisory structures, with specific instructions to give priority to private sector participation.

All these processes are already visible in cities and towns across India. Almost every urban conglomeration now has a ‘development authority’, which supersedes the elected municipality. In tandem with a more-than-willing judiciary, these ‘authorities’ are dispossessing people of land and dreaming up vast ‘beautification’ schemes.

In Mumbai, for instance, 53 lakh square metres of land has been taken from industrial closures and dereserved for commercial exploitation. In Delhi, slum evictions over the last five years have displaced over five lakh people and the land turned over for ‘public purpose’ – such as hotels, malls, parks, flyovers, and office complexes, but does not include public housing for the poor. Bangalore has devised an innovative collusion between bureaucrats, companies, politicians, and ‘citizens’ to push through a mode of e-governance that makes land records available to the corporate and real estate lobby for easy purchase and commercialisation.

In Chennai, 69,000 families have been identified to be living on government land and they are to be relocated so that hotel resorts, commercial and residential complexes, and modern businesses can come up. In Kolkata, Operation Sunshine was launched 10 years ago to evict over 50,000 hawkers from the city’s main streets, and now farmers are being ousted from nearby Singur to make way for a car manufacturing facility.

Hyderabad was distributing land titles and housing loans to the urban poor in 1977 but is now merrily leasing large tracts of land at heavily subsidised prices to business groups, international airports, cinema halls, shopping complexes, hotels, and corporate hospitals. Ahmedabad is not far behind with its ‘slum upgradation’ scheme, but the government there has been innovative in using communal frenzy as a means of evicting large sections of the ‘unwanted’ while taking over their land and property.

Clearly, the historical debate between the imperial Lutyens, the bureaucratic Baker, and the proletarian Geddes has ostensibly been settled by the present leading lights of Indian society in favour of a modern and gay wedding between Lutyens and Baker. Geddes has once again been relegated to the realm of the unseen, unheard, and unspoken. But that will not prevent uncomfortable questions from emerging from the dust of history and demolished homes and workplaces. For whom is the city being developed?

Earlier, urban manufacture created employment; now, with industry closing down, where will the underclasses find work? Will they be even denied all rights as citizens? And will they not be forced to protest when driven to the wall? Is this, eventually, the path to sustainable and reformed cities? Or somewhere, in the darkness of deprivation, is there a breeding ground for a social malaise, far, far more dangerous than plague?

The poor will inherit the earth. Yes, but how?