Tag: urban development

Without an Overhaul, Smart Cities Won’t Fulfil Urban Needs

Analysing the status of the Smart Cities Mission and what it needs to consider going ahead.

This is the second article of a four-part series on India’s urban schemes. Read part one here.

The Smart Cities Mission (SCM) was launched on June 25, 2015. The objective of the SCM is to “promote cities with core infrastructure which offer a decent quality of life to its citizens, a clean and sustainable environment and have the potential to apply “smart solutions””. The Mission has adopted a two-pronged strategy: area-based development, wherein certain areas are taken up for development, and pan-city solutions, wherein cities implement at least one or more smart solutions in areas of priority for the entire city.

At the time of announcement, all the projects were expected be completed within a span of five years (by 2020). Given the delay in the selection process, the SCM was extended by three years till 2023.

City selection and governance process

Through a competitive process, 100 cities were selected across three years to be the flag-bearers of the SCM. The process of selection followed a challenge (competition) process consisting of two stages. In the first stage, the intra-state competition was conducted by the state governments based on four broad criteria:

  1. existing service levels,
  2. institutional systems/capacities,
  3. self-financing, and
  4. past track record and reforms.

In the second stage, among the shortlisted cities, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) selected 100 cities. The selection process continued till 2018. The number of cities selected under the SCM over various years are represented in Table 1.

Among the total cities selected, maximum were from Tamil Nadu (11) followed by Uttar Pradesh (10), Maharashtra (8), Madhya Pradesh (7), Karnataka (7) and Gujarat (6). These six states constitute almost 50% of the total number of smart cities. The state-wise distribution of smart cities is given in Graph 1.

At the city level, the SCM is being implemented and monitored by a special purpose vehicle (SPV), a limited company incorporated under the Companies’ Act, 2013, in which the state/union territory government and the urban local body (ULB) are the promoters having 50:50 equity shareholding. As of January 3, 2019, all 100 smart cities have formed SPVs, 97 of which have procured project management consultants and all have constituted city-level advisory fora. 

Scheme funds sanctioned, released and utilised

The Central government promised to contribute Rs 48,000 crore over five years – an average of Rs 100 crore per city per year. A total of 5,151 projects worth Rs 2,05,018 crore have been proposed by cities in their smart city proposals. The excess amount will be funded through convergence of resources from Central/state governments and ULBs, as well as externally funded schemes/projects. The scheme also envisages to fund its projects through public-private partnerships.

Till December 2018, Rs 14,680 crore was released by the Central government, which is 31% of the total contribution of the Central government promised under the scheme. The total expenditure incurred by all states and UTs is Rs 3,552 crore, which is 24% of the funds released by the Central government. The details of the funds utilised out of the funds sanctioned (state-wise) are given in Graph 2.

Issues brought to light by the parliamentary standing committee

Citing the low budgetary expenditures in the first three years of the implementation of the scheme, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Urban Development in its 22nd report stated that it is “perplexed about the actual progress made so far under the Mission at ground level” as the budgetary expenditure is too low. The underutilisation of funds is also evident from the fact that on comparing expenditure incurred to the funds sanctioned, out of the 35 states/UTs, 26 states have utilised less than 20% of the funds released (see Graph 2).

In addition to highlighting the low budgetary expenditure under the SCM, the committee’s reports also brought forth various issues like the ground reality of work done under the SCM being different than what is claimed by the government, the shortage of planners with ULBs for executing the work and lack of coordination between the implementing agencies.

On the issue of reported false claims of work done under the SCM, the committee mentioned that even in its previous reports, it had questioned the state of affairs with regard to work done. In response, the ministry provided details of monitoring mechanisms available under mission guidelines at the national, state and district level.

Also read: Despite Violations, Delhi’s Redevelopment Projects March On

The committee mentioned that it is “surprised to find that in spite of available mechanisms, the complaints about poor work under the Mission are still pouring in before the Committee”. Therefore, it recommended that “all those cases questioning the claim of work done under Smart Cities emanating from local MPs be probed expeditiously and the guilty be brought to book”.

On the issue of shortage of town planners, the committee feels that the 5,500 town planners who are working under the SCM with ULBs are too few, and suggested that it is the duty of the state governments to create an ecosystem to ensure the success of the Mission.

Regarding the lack of coordination between implementing agencies, the committee observed numerous instances of one agency undoing the work done by another agency. Therefore, the committee strongly felt that a lack of coordination between implementing agencies is a major reason why the intended benefits of SCM are still not visible to the public.

It is important to note that the standing committee appreciated the efforts of the ministry in initiating the process of finalising a liveability index through state governments/ULBs for the purpose of assessing which city is better for living among 116 cities (whose population is more than 10 lakh and which comes under the SCM or are capital cities of states/UTs) by way of undertaking a country-wide exercise called Sarvekshans of 2016, 2017 and 2018.

The committee recommended that this drive be undertaken expeditiously, which will open up choices to the common man to move on to different cities, depending upon their suitability. The assessment is based on four verticals – physical development, social development, economic development and environmental development. There are 15 different sections in each vertical. The ministry is assessing 79 parameters under these verticals with a target to set a benchmark to compare the development achieved in each city. The ministry aims to assess ways to improve liveability of people in the cities through surveys.

Mission aloof from ground realities

As most projects under the SCM are either in the developmental stage or early implementation stage, it is imperative for the political party elected at the Centre in 2019 to re-consider these projects in context of the following questions:

Does the SCM consider popular concerns, or is it focused on only promoting the interests of a few?

With its emphasis on high-end infrastructure and technology-driven surveillance, the SCM fails to address a primary concern of the country – the critical need for access to housing and basic amenities (like electricity, water, schools and public hospitals) for millions in the country. The repeated emphasis on high-end infrastructure and superlative quality of life hints that the SCM may be just a garb to promote the interests of a few.

Who will be able to afford to live in these cities?

Increased cost of development will invite high cost of living as well. So, who are we really building cities for under the SCM?

Engineers walk past a cooling system plant under construction inside Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT) at Gandhinagar, in the western Indian state of Gujarat, April 10, 2015. Credit: Reuters/Amit Dave

Is area-based development promoting more inequalities?

The high investment on area-based development means that majority funds will be spent on developing small parcels of land in cities. It is important to note the areas mapped for development under the smart cities’ proposals. For example, the selected area in Delhi under the mission is New Delhi Municipal Corporation, which is already one of the most developed areas, and the projects developed in these areas are likely to cater to the needs of a select class.

As another example, consider the public bicycle sharing project being implemented by many cities such as Pune, Delhi, Bhopal, Coimbatore etc. The instructions for hiring a bicycle on the company’s website are only in English and the payment systems only accept online modes of payment.

When infrastructural development is not accompanied by inclusive programmes, it might lead to visible forms of spatial inequalities that further pushes the urban poor to the margins (both spatially and financially), and smart cities seem a recipe for such a disaster.

Also read: How Feasible Are Visions of Congress and BJP for India’s Urbanisation?

Are SCM implementations being driven by those unfamiliar to the city’s needs?

Another issue is that the concept of smart cities is solely characterised by expertise and technical knowledge, which in turn is shrinking the space for grassroots participation and local knowledge. In the absence of community participation, project proposals are being prepared and evaluated by consultants who are far-removed from local realities and needs. The articulate of the vision for the city seems to be driven by techno-managerial utopias and is blind to the issue of millions who barely survive in the city.

Shouldn’t the SCM funding mechanism be re-evaluated?

The SCM has been highly critiqued for its proposed funding mechanism. The Mission envisages an overall funding formula of 40:40:20 between the Centre, states and ULBs. In India, many municipal corporations lack resources to undertake projects of this magnitude.

The scenario is worse than that of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM), which had asked local bodies to fund just 10% of a particular project. Seeing that municipal corporations were not able to fulfil that requirement, expecting them to raise 20% under the SCM is unrealistic, according to a former deputy mayor of Shimla.

It is likely, therefore, that ULBs struggling to meet investment required will hugely rely on private investments, and this might create pressure on the government to create avenues for private companies to earn assured return on investments.

Isn’t the SCM causing a conflict between the SPVs and ULBs?

In addition, the creation of SPVs undermine the role of ULBs as the latter’s major functions are being undertaken by the SPVs, which are private limited companies created for a specific purpose (and are liable to be influenced by private interests). SPVs could also be possibly dissolved at any time without due resolution of complaints or accountability of potential malpractices.

Urban schemes like smart cities which involve huge financial investment and influence the development of urban areas should focus more on social rationalities rather than market rationalities. There is a high risk that these schemes will be influenced by corporate giants who will make their own strategic selections, undermining the real needs of the millions who build and inhabit these cities.

Shaguna Kanwar works with Youth for Unity and Voluntary Action (YUVA) as a Project Coordinator – National Programmes. Among other things, she works on data analyses of parliamentary sessions and advocacy with MPs on issues of urban poverty and informal labour. YUVA has conducted an in-depth analysis of the questions raised in the Indian parliament on urban issues in 2018 and you can read the complete report here.

How the PM’s Affordable Housing Scheme Went From Promising to Dysfunctional

The Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana was once a promising decentralised scheme expected to solve India’s ‘housing shortage’, but since a majority of the urban slum households did not own land, they were automatically excluded from availing its benefits.

This is the first article of a four-part series on India’s urban schemes.

At the launch of the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (Urban) [PMAY(U)] in June 2015, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that a house is not just four walls and a physical structure but is also a means for social transformation as it provides aspirations for a better life.

He added that by 2022, when the nation celebrates its 75th year of Independence, the government will provide every houseless family with the means to own a house.

Amidst these promises, the PMAY(U) was launched as a unique scheme to solve India’s ‘housing shortage’ by offering four different housing options (verticals) for those belonging to the economically weaker section (EWS) and low-income groups (LIG). The scheme guidelines were amended in 2017 to include the middle-income group (MIG) as well.

The four verticals include:

  1. In-Situ Slum Redevelopment (ISSR) which means rehabilitation of slums by building houses through private participation for the eligible slum dwellers on the land under the slums.
  2. Affordable Housing in Partnership (AHP) with the extension of central assistance of INR 1,50,000 for affordable housing projects done by states, either through its agencies or in partnership with the private sector for the EWS.
  3. Beneficiary-led Individual House Construction/Enhancement (BLC) with the extension of direct central assistance of INR 1,50,000 to families belonging to EWS categories to either construct a new house or enhance the existing house on their own.
  4. Credit-Linked Subsidy (CLS), the provision of loans ranging from INR 6–12 lakh at lower rates of interest, to weaker and mid-income sections for the construction of new homes or renovation of existing homes.

Status so far: houses sanctioned and completed

In 2012, the Technical Group on Urban Housing Shortage (TG-12), constituted by the erstwhile ministry of housing and urban poverty alleviation (MoHUPA) stated that there was a shortage of 1.88 crore housing units over the period 2012–2017. Of these, the EWS alone accounts for 1.06 crore units or 56% of the total shortage.

The LIGs require 74.1 lakh housing units or 39.4% whereas middle and above income groups have a deficit of 8.2 lakhs or 4.4% of the total. The gap is mostly in the affordable sector, i.e., EWS and LIG segments.

Also read: How Feasible Are Visions of Congress and BJP for India’s Urbanisation?

The PMAY (U) initially set up a target of constructing 2 crore houses by 2022, which was later reduced to 1 crore (according to the demand survey conducted in different states). However, only 65 lakh houses had been sanctioned by the MoHUA by December 2018. The sanctioning of these 65 lakh houses is a recent development. Between 2015 and 2017, 32 lakh houses were sanctioned.

Of the total houses sanctioned, construction work had started in 54% (35,92,656) houses till December 2018. The construction of 12.5 lakh houses had been completed. Approximately 3.5 lakh houses were completed each year between 2014 and 2017. A sharp rise was seen between 2017 and 2019, adding almost 70% more houses.

The year-wise details of houses constructed are depicted in Graph 1. This includes the subsumed projects of the erstwhile housing scheme under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) implemented by the UPA government.

The data indicates, therefore, that four years into implementation there has been only a 12% completion rate against the target of building one crore houses, and 6% against the original target of two crore houses.

Houses sanctioned across verticals and states

Of the four verticals of the mission, the maximum number of houses (55%) were sanctioned under the BLC component (see Graph 2), which can be availed by fulfilling terms and conditions, including presenting proof of ownership of land and the means to bear the full cost of construction after availing government subsidy. Maximum houses have been sanctioned in Uttar Pradesh (17%) followed by Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh (12% each) (see Table 1).

The AHP vertical has the second highest number of houses sanctioned (33%). The sale of these houses will eventually depend on the price of the housing unit and the buying capacity of the buyers. Till December 2018, the highest number of houses have been sanctioned in Andhra Pradesh, followed by Maharashtra, Gujarat and Karnataka. These four states account for 60% of the houses sanctioned under this component.

Table 1 Houses sanctioned under each component of PMAY(U), state-wise

The percentage share of the other two components, ISSR and CLS, is significantly low—these two components combined make only 12% share of the total houses sanctioned.

Under the ISSR vertical, state governments are considering only notified slums to be redeveloped. According to the Census of India, out of the total slums households, 36.1% are notified. Till December 2018, only 4,52,137 houses have been sanctioned under the ISSR component, out of which 49% of houses are sanctioned in Maharashtra alone, making its share the largest among all states.

Other states where a significant number of houses have been sanctioned under this component, include Gujarat, Karnataka and Rajasthan (see Table 1). Under CLS, certificate of ownership of land in addition to the creditworthiness of the beneficiary in the eyes of the lending bank is a prerequisite.

Also read: What the Last Five Years of Urban Policies Reveal About Our Cities

The total share of this component remains the lowest among the four components. CLSS could attract only 5% of the total demand of houses sanctioned. Gujarat, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh were among the top performing states under this component. These four states together account for 70% of the total demand under this component (see Table 1).

Scheme funds sanctioned and released

A total of Rs 100,271.38 crore has been sanctioned under the scheme, although only 33% was released over the last four years. Of the amount released, 62% was reported to be utilised by the states. In comparison to the total amount sanctioned, the utilisation rate is only 21%. Graph 3 shows the annual comparison between central assistance sanctioned and released.

An opportunity lost?

This is not the first time that a housing project is being implemented by the central government. Similar attempts were made by past governments as well. From Indira Awas Yojana (IAY) launched in 1990 to Rajiv Awas Yojana (RAY) in 2009 and a host of different housing schemes in between this period, attempts were made by successive governments to improve basic services, provide tenure security, upgrade existing infrastructure and create new housing units with a vision of creating a ‘Slum Free India’.

Although similar in vision, the PMAY(U) adopted a much more decentralised system in financing the construction and development of housing. This generated a hope that the PMAY(U) would overcome the challenges of previous schemes and would introduce new ways of providing ‘affordable houses’.

However, data depicts that PMAY(U) has performed sluggishly across the four years of implementation. It has failed to take practical challenges into account. As a YUVA and IHF report ‘Housing Needs of the Urban Poor in Nagpur‘ discovered, ‘there is a glaring gap between people’s aspirations, their capabilities and state imagination of housing provision’. Therefore, there is a mismatch between the people’s needs and what the housing mission has to offer.

The other issue is that in spite of the availability of flexible and low-interest housing loans, people are not coming forward for housing projects due to the high costs of land, particularly in urban areas. In addition, as ownership of land is a prerequisite for availing two of the four options (BLC and CLSS), a majority of the urban slum households that do not own land are automatically excluded from availing the benefits under the scheme. According to the report, in Nagpur only 8.8% of the surveyed households had property tax receipts, thereby making access to upgradation under the PMAY an impossibility.

Moreover, the report revealed that ‘to access certain verticals (BLC and CLSS) of the PMAY it is essential to possess a host of identity documents. While the Aadhaar card is a document which almost all individuals possess, there is a variance in the possession of other required documents to access housing.’

Also read: India’s Unplanned Urbanisation Is Far from ‘Smart’

Another major drawback of the scheme, especially the AHP component, is that in the bigger metros, it appears that affordable housing projects can only be built on the outskirts of the city, far away from people’s workplaces. If location is not taken into account, there will be very few takers for these houses as some of the biggest factors influencing people’s decision to purchase a home are based on travel time to workplace and affordability.

For example, in dense metropolises such as Mumbai and Delhi, where real estate is notoriously expensive, affordable housing projects under the scheme seem to be restricted to suburbs and satellite towns far from the city. Can PMAY(U) then really serve as a solution for metro cities?

An under construction slum relocation site for Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana at Bhuri Tekri in Indore. Credit: Special Arrangement

Although affordable housing has been given infrastructure status (easing of governmental norms to promote the growth of infrastructural sector) in the National Budget of 2017, which gives housing developers additional benefits to boost their interest in these projects, the delivery of house construction has not moved at a fast pace as expected from these reforms. For a common man, the timely delivery of the house still remains a distant dream.

Recommendations for the way forward

As the election season proceeds and tall claims of providing Housing for All by 2022 are again inserted in party manifestos, it is imperative that political parties learn from their previous experiences and look beyond just creating new infrastructure under the garb of housing, and people drive advocacy measures for inclusive habitats with a knowledge-based approach.

A civil society memorandum submitted to MoHUA in 2018 highlighted suggestions for making the Mission effective for ‘all’. Some of the major points are presented below:

Upgrade existing slums as a financially viable model 

The upgrading  of existing slums by providing them with basic amenities and improving physical and social infrastructure such as roads, sewage and drainage systems, parks, waste disposal and management, hospitals, schools, etc. is critical as it would be the most economically viable option to improve the living conditions of over one crore households living in slums. This will also avoid their displacement to far-off locations.

Encourage and promote the provision of land tenure rights among state governments 

State governments should promote the provision of land tenure rights. In Nagpur, select cities in Odisha, Guwahati and Vishakhapatnam, the state government has provided or is in the process of providing land tenure rights or pattas to individuals living in slums.

The ownership of land in these areas has led to higher human development indices and better quality of life for the poor (Durand-Lasserve & Selod, 2007). People who are safe from eviction, with a sense of long-term stability – whether they own the land or not – are much more likely to invest in their housing or community.

Therefore, different types of tenure should be explored so that the beneficiaries can take advantage of the BLC and CLSS verticals as well, since these require the ownership of land. Most importantly tenure rights should preferably be given in the name of the women in the family to promote women’s empowerment.

Also Read: Does Data Tell Us the Truth About Urban Informal Settlements?

Enhance people’s participation and implementation of the 74th Amendment Act 

People’s participation in making an informed choice is pivotal, and under components such as ISSR it should be extended to ascertaining the design and size of the house as well. The participation of communities should be promoted by strengthening the implementation of the 74th Constitutional Amendment Act.

Explore alternative options such as social rental housing 

Although the emphasis was on the construction of houses under PMAY(U), other potential housing solutions such as rental housing have not been included. In today’s times, with high rates of migration to urban areas for work, the concept of large-scale rental housing equipped with basic amenities can come to the rescue. Additionally, this also suits the income volatility and high-risk profile of low-income households working in the informal sector.

Strengthen BLC by upgrading the overall settlement 

Households across the country are demanding support for self-construction and overall upgradation of the settlement. A fifth vertical for in-situ upgradation should be detailed outlining BLC with upgradation and provision of basic services such as water supply, sanitation, sewage, various social amenities etc. Along with this, BLC should be allowed for individual households. Currently, the scheme guidelines prohibit individual applications for BLC.

A man rides his cycle rickshaw past newly-constructed residential buildings on the outskirts of Kolkata December 29, 2010. Credit: Reuters/Rupak De Chowdhuri

A man rides his cycle rickshaw past newly-constructed residential buildings on the outskirts of Kolkata December 29, 2010. Credit: Reuters/Rupak De Chowdhuri

Build greater synchronisation between MoHUA and other central ministries 

Many urban development schemes such as Swachh Bharat Mission and Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) are not being implemented in majority slums as they are non-notified or untenable, although the primary goal of these schemes is to provide basic services and improve living conditions in slums. Therefore, urban schemes should work in synergy with each other.

Also read: When it Comes to Urban Planning, India Suffers From a Poverty of Imagination

Similarly, as there are multiple land-owing agencies in the country, true and complete convergence will be realised when there is a coordination between state governments and central authorities – railways, defence, forests and ports – to use their resources and reach the Housing For All goal together

Monitor qualitative aspects of new housing construction, not just the number of units constructed 

The current data available on the scheme is limited to the number of constructed and under-construction projects in different states. The government must ensure the monitoring of qualitative indicators of housing such as material quality assessment, adequacy, accessibility, etc. In addition, there is a need for real-time data on location, vertical, targeted population and funding, which will enable transparency and accountability. It will also ensure cooperation and participation from the wider civil society.

Develop a shift in perspective 

Lastly, the government’s perspective of seeing ‘land locked under slums’ as an unused asset that needs to be ‘monetised’ needs to shift towards ‘land availability to provide housing’, else the real beneficiaries will be builders who buy land at concessional prices under the scheme and use a major chunk of the land to build houses for middle and high-income groups and make gigantic profits under the garb of these schemes.

It is imperative that we find more viable and creative solutions that address specific local needs to reduce the scale of the housing crisis in the country, strengthen monitoring mechanisms and encourage the participation of citizens in decisions considering their housing.

Shaguna Kanwar works with Youth for Unity and Voluntary Action (YUVA) as a Project Coordinator – National Programmes. Among other things, she works on data analyses of parliamentary sessions and advocacy with MPs on issues of urban poverty and informal labour.

YUVA has conducted an in-depth analysis of the questions raised in the Indian parliament during the Budget Session 2018 and you can read the complete report here. The article highlights the current state of each scheme in brief.

Does Data Tell Us the Truth About Urban Informal Settlements?

Outdated and technology-driven data often excludes crucial information necessary to understand communities and their local political economies.

The recently released National Urban Innovation Stack (NUIS) attempts to address the issues of urban governance through the use of a technology-enabled stack. Urban informality interacts with the process of data gathering and is deeply enmeshed in local political economies.

The most critical problem is the absence of good data on informal urban settlements that have a direct impact on the implementation of NUIS. This absence can be attributed to several factors. First, informal settlements are dynamic, and any information collected on them needs constant updating.

Our current, most detailed insights are derived from the 2011 census, which is outdated. More recently, GIS research, such as what is used in this paper and several others, can be a critical input to identify the locations and extent of informal settlements, though this knowledge cannot tell us who lives there or shed light on the socio-political relationships within.

Second, the migratory nature of informal settlements is hard to capture. Rapid urbanisation in the last two decades has meant a corresponding growth in these settlements. The residents, seeking work, inhabit informal settlements both seasonally and permanently.

Third, there are several types of informal settlements, some of which are not recognised by the government, and the residents in them, do not have access to security in tenure. It is difficult to prove residence in these settlements, making it difficult to secure the documents that are required for bureaucratic legitimacy. This has an impact on the implementation of urban redevelopment policies, especially those which require proof of duration of residence (eg JNNURM).

Also Read: Where are India’s Citizens in the National Urban Innovation Stack?

Fourth, the incentives for the government to collect data on informal settlements are limited and the data couldpoint to their poor service delivery. Sustaining the issue of informal settlements allows politicians to use the promise of housing, and mediated access to utilities to seek and earn votes. Local politicians insert themselves to mediate access to utilities and services. They are also relevant in ensuring continued occupation of land and negotiating, in turn, with police and senior politicians to prevent eviction. This political entrenchment is deep and our work in one informal settlement in Bangalore shows that almost all residents vote for the party suggested by the intermediary.

Further, data-driven innovations such as NUIS rely on the regular and reliable supply of data from residents and assume similar abilities to build rich databases. Residents of informal settlements are invariably economically and informationally marginalised and may not have access to smartphones, or awareness about the ways in which data can be generated and therefore, try to reduce the visibility of issues that impact them.

For instance, the Delhi government launched the Swacch Dilli app, so that residents can register complaints against littering or garbage and municipal issues to the government by clicking a photograph of the problem. Given the inequality of technology access and awareness, it is possible that issues from informal settlements are not registered, thus skewing the data to show that there are no such problems in the informal settlements. 

As a result of these factors at play, the data collected on these settlements is potentially problematic. First, the idea that the data records are even, unmediated and transparent, may not be true. Second, there is an issue of who can secure bureaucratic legitimacy in the city. While biometric identities can play a significant role in moving the debate forward on this, other aspects of identity, such as duration of residence etc. cannot be proven because these systems are still new.

Also Read: Reflecting on India’s Urban Transformation

In order to proceed with building systems that depend on complicated data, it is critical to start with how technology systems intersect with local political economies. It is tempting to seek silver bullet solutions, but the answer is in the hard work of going out to communities, mapping exclusions, and building systems that account for this.

This process is also critical to building capacities in people, civil society and the government to understand, navigate and adapt their needs by controlling the data that inhabits these technologies. This kind of knowledge can help build resilient systems that understand and respond to socio-political conditions.

Sarayu Natarajan is the founder, and Astha Kapoor is the co-founder of Aapti Institute, a strategic research institute on technology and society, based in Bengaluru. Find Sarayu at @iissarayu and Astha at @KapoorAstha.

Reflecting on India’s Urban Transformation

‘Urban Parallax’ sheds scholarly light on the world of urban policy.

Sometime towards the closing decades of the last century, the urban crept in upon us. The city had not entirely been invisible before – merely lurking in the shadows of the nation which imagined villages as ethically more desirable spaces of habitation. Dr Ambedkar’s writings were a possible exception, though even in these, critiques of village life and caste structure are more discernible than musings on forms of the urban.

It is only more recently that the city has begun to emerge fully, as an object of enquiry – experienced through novels and films, analysed by academics and shaped by policy. This is also the promise of Urban Parallax, a wonderful collection of essays that sheds scholarly light on the world of urban policy – evaluating policy discourse through parallel reflections on the trajectories of India’s urban transformation.

Edited by Amita Bhide and Himanshu Burte
Urban Parallax
Yoda Press, 2018

Much of urban policy that has emerged in recent decades is driven by the twin ideas of cities as the locus of economic growth and of India as a rapidly urbanising country – the appropriate trajectory of which must be guided by policy. Not surprisingly, therefore, that Urban Parallax also opens with essays by some of India’s leading urban economists offering differing perspectives on these issues.

For Abhay Pethe, Vaidehi Tandel and Sahil Gandhi, India is possibly already urban to the extent of 50% or more, rather than the official 31%. Om Prakash Mathur, on the other hand, notes a duality – of unprecedented growth in the scale of urbanisation, the speed of which nevertheless remains slow.  All the authors are persuaded, though, that the greater extent of such growth is geographical – through the mutation of rural settlements into census towns – rather than through the migration of people from villages to cities.

As Partha Mukhopadhyay puts it: what seems to have happened is the morphing of places rather than the moving of people. Pethe et. al. suggest better policy design and capacity building in response. Malini Krishnankutty suggests greater integration of economic policy and spatial planning, while Mukhopadhyay pushes the envelope further, adding a normative dimension to the capacity question – “Is the question just about whether cities are engines? Should it also not be about the journey we want the engine to take us on?”

This is a strain of thought that informs several other essays.

Gautam Bhan draws upon Caldeira’s writings on Brazil to underline the auto-constructed nature of Indian cities and the different shades of legality that inhere in them. He suggests that ‘housing’, especially for the poorest, is a not one-off ownership of a material artefact, but is instead realised over generations, through the pulls and pressures of wages, rents and personal circumstances. Thus, the appropriateness of a housing policy cannot lie in its own assumptions and effectiveness but is to be evaluated by the extent to which these ground realities form the ‘common-sense’ of policy discourse.

Darshini Mahadevia offers a four-fold division of Indian cities – of the very rich, the upper middle class, the lower middle class and the urban poor – to raise doubts about whether the emphasis on ‘smartness’ and world-class amenities that feature prominently in contemporary urban policies can equally serve all.

Also read: Addressing the Silence Around Delhi’s Sound Pollution

Anant Maringanti addresses the question more obliquely, drawing our attention to how different localities in Hyderabad are variously inserted in global economic circuits, especially those related to the IT industry, which has implications for the extent to which a uniform, standardised urban package can provide an effective response. These lines of arguments would not be entirely unfamiliar to those who follow the urban literature closely.

However, fresh insights are on offer too, as several authors relate these differently situated urban spaces to the ‘local’ of policy domain through a granular description of the political. Himanshu Burte offers a conceptual argument about how the relationship between past and the present may be drawn, both within policy and in our understandings of urban processes. Lalitha Kamath draws attention to the ‘tribal’ governance culture of Mizoram that leads to the municipal council acquiring a hybrid and distinctive character in Aizawl, while Bhide counters the ‘Delhi-centred’ narrative of policy through a close reading of the slum policies initiated in Bombay through municipal and state-level agencies.

The point is not simply to understand the local as the place where central policy measures are translated to a greater or lesser degree of effectiveness but, as Bhide writes, to imagine the local itself as space where policy options may be conceived.

On all these counts – the significance of local policy spaces; the need to understand policy in conjunction with urban processes; developing sensitivity to the unevenness of the urban and in asking normative questions about the direction in which policy ought to guide Indian urbanism – the book has much to recommend for itself.

Also read: The Delhi Development Authority Demonstrates How to Kill a Forest

However, there remain two critical aspects to be addressed by future scholarship. The first is the role of other institutions in shaping urban outcomes. To state the most obvious – the increasing role of the judiciary in shaping urban discourse and policy options, which goes unaddressed in this collection. The second is the question of scale. The editors and several authors display their sensitivity to this question, but for the most part, conflate the urban with the city or the metropolitan, with the exception of an essay by M. Vijayabaskar and Radha Varadarajan on peri-urban spaces.

If one considers that cities draw upon water, food and energy from much wider geographies, while expelling waste to other spaces – on landfills, into rivers and seas – it is imperative to consider the urban even at sites that are not necessarily cities. Given global warming and climate change, a rethink of the urban from an environmental perspective is critical, even as we continue to engage with it as from the perspective of society and economy.

Awadhendra Sharan trained as a historian at Delhi University and subsequently at the University of Chicago. His current research is focused on economies and cultures of waste and pollution in colonial India.  In addition, he has initiated a new research project on Urban Infrastructure in India.

The National Urban Policy Is a Great Opportunity for Course-Correction

The chaotic and haphazard way India is moving raises several questions about our ability to manage the complexities involved in urban transformation. 

The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs has recently formed a committee to draft India’s National Urban Policy. The move is in accordance with the requirements of the New Urban Agenda of UN Habitat, signed by 193 countries in Quito in October 2016.

This policy initiative is coming up a quarter of a century after two landmark events: the economic liberalisation of 1991; and political decentralisation of 1992, defining new institutional arrangements of urban governance through the 74th Constitution Amendment Act. Framing of the National Urban Policy thus offers a unique opportunity to reflect on how urbanisation had been unfolding in the post-liberalisation era, recalibrate the bearings and steer our urban transformation in a more efficient direction.

Time is running out.

Over the next 12 years, 18 Bangalores or 180 Bhubaneswars need to be built, to accommodate 145 million additional city dwellers between 2018 and 2030. And by 2050, the urban population would increase by 416 million – 50 million more than the population of the US and Canada combined.

With 14 Indian cities being ranked amongst the world’s 20 most polluted by a WHO report, ‘a business as usual approach’ towards urban management could be catastrophic.

That need not be. Urbanisation could potentially generate millions of jobs for the growing youth population. There are strong correlations between urbanisation and economic growth. Productivity increases when rural farmers become urban factory workers, as has happened most spectacularly in China.

Between 1978 and 2018, China’s urbanisation rate jumped up from 18% to 58%. In the process, over 500 million people were lifted out of poverty and the country attained middle-income status. India’s present level of urbanisation (34%) is far lower than China (58%) or even Indonesia (55%). Naturally, there is huge scope for growth.

But the chaotic and haphazard way India is moving raises several questions about our ability to manage the complexities involved in urban transformation.

Shadow urbanisation

In public perception, rapid urbanisation is associated with large-scale migration of the rural masses to the cities. But the Indian reality is rather different, and migration accounted for just about 20% of urban growth over the past two census decades. Much growth is happening in the shadows, through in situ processes, and without any significant movement of people.

Between 2001 and 2011, the number of ‘census towns’, had jumped from 1,362 to 3,894 and account for 32% decadal urbanisation rate. These are essentially big villages, which had crossed the Census criteria to define what is ‘urban’ in terms of population size, density and occupational structure of the people – but are yet to be reclassified by the state governments.

The denial of ‘urban’ status deprives a large segment of our population of basic civic services, and absence of civic regulations encourages chaotic construction. Burdwan (Bengal), Krishna (Andhra Pradesh) and Ludhiana (Punjab) – districts famous for their high crop yields – have been urbanising faster than the national average since 2001, through haphazard conversion of agricultural land.

Rural-urban disconnect

Connections between agriculture, livelihood and urbanisation are seldom discussed in the policy circles, and our developmental policies are neatly pigeonholed into rural-urban binaries.

It is important to recognise spatial structures and settlement hierarchies, which link rural and urban areas through flows of people, products, money and knowledge.

Mandi towns, such as Sri Ganganagar (flour and mustard oil mills) or Machlipatnam (fishing), are the nodal points of the rural economy. These are the places which provide market access to the farmers for their agricultural produce, where tractors are sold and serviced, where cooperative banks, credit societies, colleges and clinics are located.

Strengthening supply-chain linkages between these mandi towns, their rural hinterlands and bigger market towns can stimulate growth at the grassroots and ought to be part of any local economic strategy Integrated Development of Small and Medium Towns (IDSMT) – India’s first major urban initiative launched during the socialist seventies attempted just that – albeit with a minuscule budget.

The 74th amendment envisaged establishment of District Planning Committees, to coordinate urban and rural plans. Many states had constituted such committees, but barring Kerala, integrated planning had remained a non-starter.

Urbanisation beyond urban boundaries

Outer peripheries of big cities are growing faster than inner cities. Areas once considered distant suburbs, such as Whitefields and Electronic City of Bangalore, and Gurgaon and Noida in the NCR, have now become hotspots of the globalised economy.

A fragmented landscape is emerging at the outer edge of the cities – where the lives of the globally mobile software elites, locally rooted farmers and the uprooted construction labourers daily intersect. Intelligent business parks, smart residential condominiums and luxury hotels are sprouting up on fields which produced crops till just the other day. Speculative real estate investment is rapidly expanding its concrete footprint, engulfing peri-urban lands and lakes.

Bangalore’s municipal limits had expanded ten-fold: from 69 square km in 1949 to 716 square km in 2007. Jurisdiction of the Bangalore Metropolitan Region Development Authority now covers 8,000 square km – more than five times the size of the Delhi state and twice that of Goa.

Delhi NCR – already amongst the largest urban agglomerations of the world – is still expanding along two axes: one towards Jaipur and the other towards Chandigarh. The growth pole around the megacity of Mumbai is also expanding, the southeastern spine towards Pune, and a northern spine towards Surat. Down south, growth spillovers of Bangalore and Chennai are expected to be connected in a decade’s time – to form a continuous urban corridor.

A view of Udaipur. Credit: Pixabay

A view of Udaipur. Credit: Pixabay

A quarter-century of market-led economic growth had profoundly changed the economic geography of India. Growth is being concentrated around certain urban clusters and corridors, stretching not just municipal limits, but state boundaries as well. A McKinsey study had projected that by 49 urban clusters, with metro-cities at their core, would account for 77% of India’s incremental GDP between 2012 and 2025.

Balanced regional development cannot happen without strong state-led planning. Meanwhile, the competitive advantages of the mega-urban regions are hard to ignore in the global age. For firms and businesses, mega-urban regions offer agglomeration advantages in terms of economies of scale, supply-chain logistics, market access, skilled labour supply and knowledge transfer.

The Pearl River Delta Metropolitan Region, spread over 39,000 square km and comprising Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Macau and Guangzhou urban systems, had been pivotal to China’s growth story. Similarly, the Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto conurbation was central to the post-war rise of Japan.

But to leverage the competitive advantages of such hyper cities, the issues of seamless mobility, forward planning and coordinated decision making are crucial at a regional scale.

Need for Centre-state coordination

Two takeaways emerge from the issues discussed above in the context of the National Urban Policy.

First, planning should be done at a regional scale and not constrained by administrative boundaries to effectively address bigger issues, such as rural-urban linkages or mobility in mega agglomerations. Apart from strengthening existing institutional mechanisms for regional planning such as District Planning Committee and Metropolitan Planning Committees, we also need to have state and national level spatial planning framework.

Second, state governments need to be taken on board. Urban development is a state subject under the constitution. The role of the Central government is primarily direction-setting. Therefore, for effective implementation of the urbanisation roadmap, the Centre should take the lead to sensitise states and encourage them to frame their own urban policies. The state policies – informed by their specific demographic and economic contexts – could then be plugged into the overarching national framework.

Sadly, however, at the present juncture, there is not much evidence of Centre-state collaboration on taking forward the development agenda.

So, the question remains, are we going to seize the opportunity or let our urban future drift?

Tathagata Chatterji is professor of urban management and governance at Xavier University Bhubaneswar. Souvanic Roy is professor of urban planning at IIEST Shibpur. Views expressed are personal.

Emerging Infectious Diseases in India: the Scourge Could Boost Urban Development

These infectious diseases do not recognise administrative frontiers, much less social ones. They may finally have a positive impact on urban development and encourage the development of more inclusive cities.

Human societies have seen a significant decrease in mortality from infectious diseases over the past century. However, we must still struggle with ongoing pathologies we once thought were under control (cholera, tuberculosis, plague, etc.) as well as the new ones that have emerged over the last 30 years (HIV/AIDS, Ebola, dengue, West Nile virus, H1N1, etc). The vast scale of the global epidemics provoked by these viruses forces us to look more closely at the territories where they emerge.

In India, there has been an accelerated spread of dengue and chikungunya, both transmitted by the Aedes mosquito, which is particularly well adapted to urbanised areas. For example, the annual number of new dengue cases is estimated at more than 30 million, while the number of chikungunya cases is believed to have increased by 390% over the last three years. Recent estimates indicate that India is the country with the highest prevalence of these two diseases.

Cities, and disease, on the rise

The rise of these infectious diseases is often described in terms of biological processes, but they cannot be reduced to just this dimension. A range of factors play a role, in particular increasing urbanisation and human mobility. The trains connecting Mumbai to its periphery move more than seven million travellers a day, and New Delhi’s metro system caters to 2.5 million daily commuters.

The growing attention paid to the epidemiology of these viruses can hence be clearly seen as a direct result of the urban transition taking place in India over the last 30 years.

Collaborative studies conducted by the CNRS, the Institut Pasteur and the National Institute of Malaria Research show that nearly 40% of the population of New Delhi have been infected by the dengue virus at least once in their lifetime. In addition, we were able to highlight an epidemiology of the virus. Because all parts of the city are now hyper-connected, emerging diseases such as dengue affect both privileged and more deprived areas, be they in the centre or peripheral or rural zones.

The social and spatial ubiquity of the disease demands a reevaluation of the geographical models that we use to understand public health problems, as no one knows how, or even where, to counter these diseases that affect not just countries such as India, but the entire planet.

Density of dengue cases recorded in New Delhi in 2008, 2009 and 2010 (Telle et al., 2016). Credit: Olivier Telle, Author provided

While urban development is the matrix for emerging infectious diseases, one also expects these territories to be resilient to these new viruses, with better communication, sanitation and health care, among other attributes. But they do not seem to have been able to adapt: not only do the pathogens continue to spread, but they also emerge and spread more quickly.

How to tackle an invisible disease

The problem of managing these diseases arises along with the practices that have led to this lack of resilience. What we mainly find is an inequality in disease management, particularly in large cities and the zones between them.

In New Delhi, more than 35 hospitals record the number of patients suffering from dengue or chikungunya. Based on the data compiled, New Delhi is officially the most affected city in India due to higher numbers of hospitals that register the diseases. Because of the careful record-keeping, the numbers are seven times higher than in Mumbai or Chennai, which – officially at least – are little affected.

New Delhi’s monitoring network functions most efficiently at the city’s core, and thus infectious diseases are far better managed there than in peripheral municipalities, which are nonetheless an integral part of the metropolitan fabric. Despite the fact that 40% of the urban population lives in towns with fewer than 100,000 inhabitants, small- and medium-size towns are excluded from this monitoring system.

Dr. Santanu Sen, CDC Global, interviewing inhabitants of Jharkhand in 2013. The population of this region, in central eastern India, is mainly tribal and malaria epidemics are frequent there. Credit: Santanu Sen, CC BY-SA

Territories and infectious diseases are thus caught in a sort of “local globalisation” that requires us to question the concepts of borders, mobility and a spread of the specific urban model.

This process works against an effective management of epidemics: the more widespread diseases become, the more fragmented their management, and the greater their dependence on national, regional and urban health policies.

Adaptability and a reduction of inequalities

At present, the question of the management of infectious diseases is relatively absent in health/urban studies, all the more so when they are approached from a municipal perspective.

While local municipalities are at the forefront of efforts to contain the spread of infectious diseases, they are largely ignored by scientists and international organisations when it comes to adopting effective solutions.

While the emergence of these new diseases is the result of complex phenomena – including the rise in local and international mobility, accelerating climate change and the emergence of new viruses – the resilience of the territories lies precisely in their ability to maintain a measure of spatial and social equity.

Indeed, dispersed management efforts inexorably lead to these viruses spreading locally, regionally and internationally, even in what should be less-vulnerable spaces. The main challenge for India, and all the countries that face these risks, is thus to make the diseases that are currently invisible more visible where they exist. At the international level, the only way to do this is through sustainable cooperation.

Innovating with the cities

The other challenge is scientific. After having studied all the factors that affect the disease – from a pluridisciplinary perspective, necessarily – methods to contain them need to be developed that take into account the complexity of the cities. In particular, it is impossible to act everywhere in megalopolises.

In India, an emerging project associating virologists, entomologists, geographers and political scientists, supported by the CNRS, the Centre for Policy Research and NIMR proposes a twofold action plan.

  • First, suggest and develop innovative methods to control mosquitoes that can be implemented by municipalities.
  • Second, using big data, analyse the mobility patterns of millions of citizens and comparing them with the spread of viruses, and thus identify the spaces that need to be monitored. By closely targeting such systems, they may well have an impact beyond the local level. Nonetheless, containment only seems viable in the short term.

To control these diseases in a more sustainable manner, the health of the inhabitants has to become a key factor of urban development. This involves reforming the management of diseases, and hence of urban centres, developing more equitable urban infrastructures, and most of all, developing inclusive cities. In short, investments are required. However, if the task is important, new approaches and new programmes – for example, smart cities or sustainable towns – may be a means of better containing these epidemics.

The ConversationIt is essential to ensure that these programmes do not remain concentrated in the most privileged areas, as they will have only a limited impact. These epidemics are a scourge, but also an opportunity: in a context where these infectious diseases do not recognise administrative frontiers, much less social ones, they may finally have a positive impact on urban development and encourage the development of more inclusive cities.

Olivier Telle, is research scientist at CSH, Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS)

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Despite Available Funds, 581 Million in These Nine States Have to Endure India’s Worst Healthcare

Lack of infrastructure and human resources along with inadequate spending have led to abysmal health indicators.

Lack of infrastructure and human resources along with inadequate spending have led to abysmal health indicators.

Nine of India’s poorest states account for 62% of maternal deaths. Credit: Reuters/Mukesh Gupta

Nine of India’s poorest states account for 62% of maternal deaths. Credit: Reuters/Mukesh Gupta

Nine of India’s poorest states – home to 581 million or 48% of India’s population – account for 70% of the country’s infant deaths, 75% of under-five deaths and 62% of maternal deaths, but do not spend even the money they have set aside for healthcare, according to an IndiaSpend analysis of 2017 Reserve Bank of India data on state budgets.

The data also reveal:

  • The maternal mortality ratio (MMR) – deaths of mothers per 100,000 births – in these states is 32% higher (244) than the national average (167).
  • Thirty eight percent and 40% children in these states are underweight (low weight-for-age) and stunted (low height-for-age), respectively, higher than the national average of 36% and 38%, respectively, according to 2015-16 national health data, the latest available.
  • Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan – with 372 million people, more than the combined populations of US, Australia, Sweden and Greece – together contribute to about 58% of all child deaths in India.

The nine poorest large states – in official jargon called “high-focus”, a term that implies they need special attention – spent an average of 4.7% of their social-sector expenditure on public healthcare and family welfare annually, marginally less than the national average of 4.8%. Social-sector expenditure includes water supply and sanitation, housing and urban development.

India’s average spending on health, as a proportion of gross domestic product, is already the lowest among BRICS nations, as IndiaSpend reported on May 8, 2017.

The “high-focus” states are Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh and Assam.

“In 2005, it was observed by [the] government of India that some states were performing poorly in various indicators,” Avani Kapur, a senior researcher at Accountability Initiative, an advocacy told IndiaSpend. “So, these states were clubbed together as high-focus states and additional resources were given to improve those indicators.”

Poorest states spent less money than their budgets allowed

Of the nine poorest states, Rajasthan spent the highest (5.6%) and Bihar the lowest (3.8%) proportion of aggregate expenditure on public healthcare and family welfare, according to the RBI data on 2014-15 actual spending, lower than the budgeted 4.1% for Bihar and 6.6% for Rajasthan.

Seven of the nine “high-focus” states report such underspending.

“High focus states allocate large amounts to social sector to improve their indicators but in reality they spend only a small amount, compared to what is allotted,” Kapur said. “Hence, it is necessary to consider actual accounts in order to know the proper outcomes.”

So, while some “high-focus” states spent less money than set aside by their budgets, other states outspent – by proportion as ratio to aggregate expenditure – other larger states on healthcare and family welfare, but that had no relation to their healthcare indicators.

For instance, Rajasthan (68.6 million people) reported an MMR of 244 deaths per 100,000 births in 2011-13, the second lowest in India and worse off than Bangladesh and Nepal, both poorer countries, by per capita income. In contrast, Andhra Pradesh (84.6 million people), another big state, spent 4.1% of total expenditure on public healthcare and family welfare but reported  an MMR of 92, according to government data.

Since 2008, Rajasthan increased its spending by 0.8% and its MMR decreased 23% while Andhra Pradesh’s spending increased by 0.5% and MMR decreased 31%.

Assam, which spends 4.2% of its total expenditure on health and has 31.2 million people, has an MMR of 300 deaths per 100,000 births – comparable to Rwanda and Sudan – while Kerala, which spends 5.3% on 33.4 million, reported an MMR of 61, comparable to Sri Lanka and Poland.

Madhya Pradesh, which reported an infant mortality rate (IMR) – deaths per 1,000 live births – of 51 in 2015-16, spends 4.3% of total expenditure on healthcare – against 5% that was budgeted –and, as IndiaSpend reported on January 21, 2016, is worse off than some of the world’s poorest countries, such as the Gambia and Ethiopia.

Spending more on healthcare did not improve institutional births 

In the nine “high-focus” states we studied, 72.6% of all births were in healthcare institutions, a steady improvement but below the national average of 78.9%, according to the 2015-16 National Family Health Survey (NFHS-4) data, the latest available.

Tamil Nadu with 72.1 million people spends 4.7% of its total budgeted expenditure on public healthcare and family welfare and reports 99% institutional births, while Jharkhand, with 33 million, spends 4% and reports 61.9% institutional births.

Uttar Pradesh (78), Madhya Pradesh (65), Chhattisgarh (64), Bihar (58) and Assam (56) report India’s highest under-five mortality rates – deaths per 1,000 live births – IndiaSpend reported on March 20.

Odisha reported an 118% increase in institutional births over ten years, but the IMR declined by no more than 63% over this period.

The poor health indicators can be attributed to the lack of healthcare infrastructure and human resources in these states.

Not enough doctors and healthcare institutions 

Bihar is 81% short of community health centres (CHCs), which provide secondary healthcare in the form of referrals and specialists to rural areas, and Jharkhand is 66% short of primary healthcare centres, the first point of access to a qualified public-sector doctor in rural areas, according to the RBI report.

There is a 13% shortfall of CHCs in the “high-focus” states, according to India’s Health Management Information System.

Bihar was 93% short of specialists in CHCs, while the comparable figures were 90%, 84% and 84% in Chhattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand, respectively, in March 2016, according to Accountability Initiative budget brief on National Health Mission.

The infrastructure shortage is made worse by the fact that in all the nine states, healthcare programmes are accessed by richer households while many poor households are excluded due to high direct and indirect costs, according to this 2012 study in PLOS-ONE, an online open-access scientific journal.

Such infrastructure shortages exacerbate inadequate spending and deliver low heath achievements. Increased primary healthcare spending reduces child and infant mortality rates, according to this 1999 research paper by the International Monetary Fund.

Promoting community-based education on improved maternal and newborn care, and home-based treatment for newborn infections could enhance child survival in the “high- focus” states “significantly”, said the 2012 PLOS-ONE study.

Ojaswi Rao is an intern with IndiaSpend.

IndiaSpend.com is a data-driven, public-interest journalism non-profit.

Achyut Kanvinde on the Quest for Quality Architecture

In this essay, the well-known architect talked about the challenges facing urban designers in recognising human values and understanding contemporary needs.

In this essay, the well-known architect talked about the challenges facing urban designers in recognising human values and understanding contemporary needs.

Corbusier’s Unite d’Habitation at Marseilles, built in the fifties influenced the younger generation of architects. Credit: YouTube

 

Urban environment in a given situation is the product of continuity in the pattern of human settlement, utilising available resources in a way that it tends to develop structure of form fulfilling human aspiration.

The present time has made advancement with respect to technology in terms of mobility, communication, industrialisation, commerce and marketing on one hand, as well as a progress with regard to recognising values associated with human environment in terms of customs and culture, associated with regions and heritage of faith and values. It goes without saying that a community needs to maintain its possessions meaningfully with purpose. In the present situation, in spite of the progress of technology and changes in the physical pattern, the urge to recognise human values becomes the need of the time and is a challenge before urban designers.

Cities of the Past

Historical examples show that settlements like Shahjahanabad, Jaipur city, Fatehpur Sikri and several others did not exceed a population of forty to fifty thousand as a city of more than that scale was not possible to support with the technology of the time and resources at hand. However, modern technology shows the possibility to establish an urban fabric and form that can support a population of more than ten million and this already exists in our major urban centres. While several progressive nations are utilising knowledge and resources meaningfully; a country like India, in spite of technology and a cultural base, has somehow not been able to make a mark, which can be seen from the functioning of our cities presently. It has been demonstrated time and again that right ideas initiated at the highest level backed by political will and patronage have achieved results. Shah Jahan, Akbar and Jai Singh could demonstrate this by building cities in their time with determination and personal involvement. The same can be said about western examples like that of building the city of Paris by Louis XIV. In present times, there are three countries in the world where there is a positive patronage to architecture and work of art. These are France, Spain and Finland. Mitterrand, former president of France, while organising the bi-centenary event of the industrial revolution in the early seventies, a 20 billion dollar project, went out of his way to personally invite and commission important projects to internationally acclaimed architects, achieving outstanding results.

Contextual Design

In the context of India, the professional role of the architect, planner and urban designer is not primarily recognised amongst political leaders, government administration, as also public in general. Although we see development authorities exist in most of the cities in India, one would realise that their work broadly ends with a road pattern layout and distributing land through auctions thereafter. One would expect to see some important projects worked out in three dimensional urban form as significant statements before land is disposed off. It is time that authorities think of attempting processes backed by ideals that will be rewarding. A picture of urban development in all major cities of the country shows that no efforts have been made to recognise essential values emerging out of the site that could give a deeper meaning of achievement to the development. It was possible in the case of Delhi, in the early sixties, when its population had not touched the two million mark and when the Town Planning Act had just come into force, to think of introduction of a system of open spaces linking the Yamuna river and the ridge, embracing important monuments within the framework of spaces, around which the city design could have been conceived. The Ring Railway, which was proposed during Pandit Nehru’s government around the mid fifties, could have located district centres along the rail loop, with a radiating road system, which would have contributed to easing city traffic. However, such a thing was not envisaged and a great opportunity was lost.

Mumbai, likewise, had the possibility of introducing a system of open spaces in form of fingers, linking the sea front and the land mass in the east-west direction which could have become places of leisure and recreation for people. Instead, the sea face is walled up with land speculation to serve the interest of a selected few. In the case of New Bombay, likewise, with the landmass lower than the high tide sea level, there was the possibility of introduction of a canals and water bodies similar to Amsterdam in Netherlands and Venice in Italy. Instead, these water collection bodies have been kept in the backyard of the development. The story of several other towns and cities associated with rivers, lakes and national assets is no different.

Kanvinde with Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. Credit: Achyut Kanvinde-Akar published by Niyogi Books

Product of Time

Architecture sometimes is misunderstood and particularly so amongst countries having a long history and cultural background. For a country like India, a question often raised is about its traditional approach to architecture. Historically, architectural evolution was the expression of that particular time. Good architecture did not merely emerge by imitating a so-called style of any particular period, but an honest expression of time backed by human need and knowledge. Architecture all along has been a product of time, place and occasion, whether it was a feudal or democratic period. If we are subject to international cooperation like industrial development, marketing or technology, it will have its logical effect on architecture as well. Technology of steel, concrete or glass is a resource available at the present time and the way architects interpret it though their design vocabulary is a product of their personal cultivation and calibre.

Historically, world cultures were isolated in some way and western, eastern and Indian development came about in an independent manner and was expressed in that way. Now, countries are being influenced instantly with information impact. There is no doubt in recognising that modern materials like glass, for example, opens up many options and avenues of expression through design, backed by a visual vocabulary.

One of the most important things that give essence to urbanisation, which professionals have to recognise, are those associated with the public areas. Several examples of temple architecture, mosque and spaces of celebration and their characteristics need understanding. The festival at Pushkar in Rajasthan, the Dassehra festival in several towns in northern regions, Ganesh immersion and congregations that pass through Mumbai city and large congregations of people singing and dancing through streets of Pune, on the way towards Alandi and Pandharpur as well as the congregation around the Golden Temple at Amritsar and several others are events which create a strong impact where they complement the setting and vice versa. These are experiences to observe and such events should be related to urban planning and design. It needs no mention that Eid congregations at Jama Masjid and the Dassehra festivity in Delhi ought to have created notable public spaces. What really gives meaning to urbanisation is something beyond immediate matter of fact needs and that, events mentioned above with building setting and resulting urban form become memorable life forces and values associated with the habitation.

Azad Bhavan. Credit: Achyut Kanvinde-Akar published by Niyogi Books

Public Acceptance

It has been observed in the recent past that a work of architecture is often received with great admiration initially but people lose interest over time and sometimes develop prejudices in course of time. It was sometime in the early fifties when Corbusier designed Unite d’Habitation at Marseilles. It influenced the younger generation of architects. Yamasaki – a well-known US architect, designed a multi-storeyed development known as Pruitt-Igoe to accommodate low income dwellers in St. Louis, US and another complex named Killingworth Tower in London was designed on the pattern of Unite d’Habitation. Based on the subsequent findings of the Social Sciences Department of Washington University, such buildings lack spaces for movement of children and result in juvenile delinquency amongst children and develop prejudice in people. Both the above projects were dynamited sometime in the early seventies. The Habitation project designed by Corbusier at Marseilles, so also the one in West Berlin is presently occupied to one-third of its capacity, though they were popular when they were newly built, when people were willing to pay more than double the amount to possess an apartment.

Similarly, the famous Lake Shore Apartments in Chicago, designed by Mies van der Rohe were received with great celebration when they were new. However, there was resentment of people for its unfriendly design qualities after some 10 years and in case of the Pavilion at Barcelona designed by him in the early thirties, though it had the needed publicity by the media, it was not taken note of by people. However, it became famous after 30 years, in the early sixties and was considered as one of the most important projects of this century.

When I happened to meet Corbusier, sometime during the early fifties, he asked him about the kind of city he was contemplating for Chandigarh. Without answering the question directly he began describing qualities about St. Marks at Venice, with its places like, positioning of the church, Doge’s Palace, Campanile, shopping areas and restaurants etc. and the manner in which it attracts people from morning till late night. St. Marks complex is a development of about a thousand years of work of generations of rulers and their architects, working together in an organised manner. Each generation that came into the picture contributed to the future while complementing the past in a harmonious manner without disturbing the unity of the Complex. Ten years later, when the Chandigarh Complex took form with respect to the Capitol Complex, consisting of the Secretariat, the Assembly, the High Court and also the Business District, it was observed that based on the observation of Social Science Department of Punjab University, the complex seemed to be devoid of people and the town spaces presented ghost like qualities.

This is an excerpt from the book Achyut Kanvinde-Akar, edited by Tanuja and Sanjay Kanvinde, published by Niyogi books.

How Committed is the Government To Urban Development?

The government claims to have improved urban development, with a multiplicity of schemes to address a number of issues. But the numbers tell a different story.

The government claims to have improved urban development, with a multiplicity of schemes to address a number of issues. But the numbers tell a different story.

Efforts to address urban sanitation and health will suffer in light of budget cuts. Credit: Reuters/Files

Efforts to address urban sanitation and health will suffer in light of budget cuts. Credit: Reuters/Files

Given the recent outbreak of diseases in several cities, resources available for urban health and sanitation – which ought to have been a priority – have instead been reduced to a substantial extent.

In the Budget estimates for the previous financial year (2016-17), the allocation for the National Urban Health Mission was Rs 950 crore. This year, it has been reduced to Rs 752 crore. The reduction is actually steeper, considering that a certain increase was needed to just make up for the impact of inflation.

An increase was also required in the urban sanitation budget, but the budget for the urban component of the Swachh Bharat Mission remains the same at Rs 2,300 crore – a decline in real terms. This is shocking, considering that in cities like Delhi a real crisis and a threat of epidemic emerged because sanitation workers were not paid. Furthermore, there is much that needs to be done to improve the terrible sanitation conditions in cities.

Despite government insistence of improvements, actual data on Budget allocations shows the contrary – there has been a decline in the allocation of main health and sanitation projects for urban areas, a decline that appears even higher in real terms after removing the inflationary impact.

In terms of the actual utilisation of funds, clearly, the biggest priority should be the schemes for the weaker sections. In the 2015-16 financial year, while the allocation for the housing ministry was Rs 5,635 crore, the actual expenditure was only Rs 1,761 crore. In other words, less than one-third of what was allocated was actually spent. These numbers reflect a shocking neglect of the needs of the urban poor.

In recent times, the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana has become the most publicised scheme of this ministry. Prioritising housing is good because of the pressing need for housing in urban areas, among weaker sections in particular. However, the actual progress of this scheme has not been encouraging. This scheme was launched on June 25, 2015, with the aim of providing housing for all by 2022.  According to a monitoring report the ministry prepared in early January this year, compared to a target of 13,28,295 houses only 9,435 had been completed while 21,3187 were still under construction. Progress, in terms of completion of houses, after 18 months of the scheme was restricted to just six states. Out of the total number of completed houses (9,435) 3,439 were in Gujarat alone. The share of central assistance approved was Rs 19,633 crore, out of which only Rs 4,464 crore had been released.

Urban infrastructure and related aspects of urban development come under the Ministry of Urban Development. Here, the biggest allocation has been made for various metro and mass rapid transport system projects, which account for Rs 18,000 crore out of the total budget of the ministry, amounting to Rs 34,212 crore. In other words, more than half of the funds of this ministry are being taken up by these projects alone.

While there is certainly a demand for these projects in cities, questions need to be raised about the competing claims presented by other priorities. Citizens should be provided adequate information about the likely expenses of the various projects that address different priorities so that they can have a more balanced view of what they want to select.

The mission for the development of 100 smart cities has been much talked about and publicised. But what about the allocation of an adequate budget? The revised budget in the previous financial year for this ambitious scheme was Rs 4,676 crore, while this year the budget allocation has been reduced to Rs 4,000 crore. This does not appear to be adequate for such an ambitious scheme. It is likely that this scheme may turn into an excessively corporate-driven one with high concessions for corporates. In all probability, this is not going to favour balanced urban planning and ignore the larger interests of common people.

All data references have been drawn from the Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability.

Bharat Dogra is a freelance journalist who has been involved with several social movements and initiatives.

Centre Begins Work To Merge Ministries

Employing Prime Minister Modi’s concept of “minimum government, maximum governance”, plans are being consolidated to merge certain key ministries.

Prime Minister Modi's agenda of "minimum government, maximum governance" comes to the fore as plans for merging ministries begin taking shape. Credit: Flickr

Prime Minister Modi’s agenda of “minimum government, maximum governance” comes to the fore as plans for merging ministries begin taking shape. Credit: Flickr

New Delhi: The Centre has begun work to ‘rightsize’ the government, the Economic Times reported. Employing Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s concept of “minimum government, maximum governance”, plans are being consolidated to merge the ministries of urban development and housing, and urban poverty alleviation. Further, the Department of Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy (AYUSH) may be brought under the health ministry along with pharmaceuticals.

According to a government representative, a concept note is being prepared that will take into account financial implications, as well as decide new names for the merged ministries and departments. The merged urban development and housing ministries may be called the Ministry of Urban Affairs and Housing.

Earlier, a group of secretaries on urban development, health and sanitation, had recommended right-sizing the government. The plan offered, apart from merging of ministries and departments, converging schemes and rightsizing institutions in order to improve planning and implementation of government programmes.

A senior government official said, “Earlier, urban development and housing and urban poverty alleviation were under a single ministry. It is being felt that a separate ministry to deal with programmes for the urban poor is not working well. We need a holistic strategy for urban renewal keeping the poor in the fold.”

A similar argument has been made in favour of bringing pharmaceuticals under the health ministry. At present, the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority is under the ministry of chemicals and fertilisers, and other drug-related issues are handled by the health ministry. AYUSH, however, is a separate department.

The Central Public Works Department, Town and Country Planning Office and Central Public Health and Environmental Engineering Organisation are likely to be merged into the National Institute of Urban Affairs.