Download Presentation - Institute for South Asia Studies

The Social Life of Cities
Lalitha Kamath
Tata Institute of Social Sciences
The 21st Century Indian City: Setting the
Agenda for Urbanization in India
Mar 23-25, 2011 Delhi
• Understanding the emerging character of
collective action and its implications for
governance reforms like Community
Participation Law (CPL)
• Current participation efforts seem no longer to
be about broad inclusion or people’s
empowerment. Imperative of ‘fast tracking’
Indian cities into ‘global cities’ have given new
shape and meaning to contemporary practices
of participation located in ‘second generation’ or
institutional reforms
1. How does the state ‘perform’ people’s
participation and public consultations in a
(reform) context where it is increasingly forced
to rely on private capital to build infrastructure?
2. How do new forms of participation/consultation
articulate with existing institutions of people’s
representation? Are these new forms being
appropriated in different ways?
3. Are the new mandates for citizen participation
and public consultation written into the reform
agenda driving a further wedge into already
fractured citizenship that characterises Indian
urban polity?
‘Performing’ citizen participation
• A new kind of public? Participation
– through proxies and intermediaries
– through small, cohesive national networks
– as spectatorship
– Centered in metros or capital cities
• Normalized as part of officially mandated public
consultation requirements
• Participation & consultation deployed instrumentally –
serving the purpose of market reforms in municipal
governance by nurturing their demand side
New meanings of participation
• Notion of participation vested in state-led
PPPs like TNUDF and BATF
– Citizen beneficiary contributions
– “A city run by CEOs”
– Appropriation by local (political) interests
• Formed the basis for national reform
through the JNNURM’s CPL
– Ushering in corporate citizenship?
How do we Govern this
Global City?
The CURE - National Urban Renewal Mission
CURE: Common Urban Reform Elements
•Migration to a Robust Financial Management System in Urban Local
Bodies (ULB)
–Implementation of appropriate accounting systems
•Passage of a Disclosure Law
–State to amend Municipal Act making it mandatory to disclose information by
ULB
•Passage of a Citizen Participation Law
–State to amend Municipal Act to enable citizens to formally participate in
decisions that impact quality of life
•Streamline Institutional Arrangements with ULBs
–On Principal - Agency basis between ULB and service providers
–Accountability platform for civic delivery agencies in the interim
Central to the above are Technology, Process-reengineering and Information
management
CPL: Further fracturing citizenship?
• the context in which it has emerged has created
concerns among groups. But what alternative
process?
• the challenge of numbers; whom to include and
how?
– Documentation/identity for large ‘informal’ populations
(migrants, poor and ‘illegal’ groups)
– Inclusion of registered RWAs, trade/professional
bodies, NGOs
• what powers?
• relations with other tiers
• New formations of middle class activism, notably
RWAs, who have acquired prominence often at
expense of poor groups & elected bodies
– A fragmenting, exclusive rather than cohesive force?
– Considerable heterogeneity; thematic common to both
upper/lower class RWAs is activism over land/property (former
concerned with land use, zoning, regularization, protection of
property values and latter with tenure security, titles, acquisition)
– Cultivation of political ties (‘apolitical’ to ‘politically neutral’ to
actively supporting political parties)
– Confront ambivalence from state agents (seen as self-interested
and limited, vehicles to further individual agendas, under
influence of political parties)
– Some success in local issues but for larger matters forced to
enter sphere of politics (supporting electoral campaigns, fielding
candidates)
Questions
• Can democratization be achieved by creating limited
formal mechanisms for citizens inputs that are
disconnected from local political
structures/interests?
• How far can a formalised system of participation
really encompass the depth of contestation present?
• Can we consider encouraging the informal with the
formal?
• What can we learn from people’s movement
struggles rooted in claims on space, information,
funds and services?
A note of hope…
Participation as social learning
• Communities appropriating state platforms
and avenues for participation – unsettling
notions of “invented” and “invited” spaces
of participation
• Civil society using confrontational
strategies and political society groups
using ‘civilized’ strategies – blurring of
lines between civil society and political
society
Participation in small towns
• Wide variation in awareness and activity of CS groups
across states
– Bigger towns tend to be more active
• In general few active CS groups on urban issues, low
level of information
– Media organizations, TUs/employee unions and religious and
caste based groups more active
– NGOs are few and mostly implement projects
– Citizens groups that are active generally function with
encouragement of locally active political parties
– Feudal structures (parties, families) have strong hold over
decision-making in the town, municipal elected reps implicated in
economies around municipal services & functions