Abstract
Introduction
The Council for Social Development (CSD) organised a seminar on 12–13 February 2013 to discuss ‘Urban Development and Exclusion of the Poor’ with a view to identify factors responsible for exclusionary and inequitable nature of urban growth and suggest measures to transform this process into becoming more migrant friendly, equitable and inclusive especially in terms of caste, religious communities and ethnic groups.
The debate acquires significance in the light of the upcoming launch of the second phase of JNNURM and the Twelfth Five-year Plan besides continuation of RAY. While the seminar focused on the various contours of urban planning—trends in migration, evolution of urban planning and patterns of governance in the pre and post-reform period, changes in the social environment and their influence on the pattern of urban growth and improvement in the condition of the rural poor, scrutiny of major programmes of urban development and poverty alleviation with particular reference to JNNURM and RAY and how far they have achieved their stated objectives and critical issues in poverty alleviation with particular reference to access to land, employment generation and access to urban amenities—certain specific themes emerged from the two-day-long deliberations.
There was a clear indication that the mega city ideology that evolved in the last 100 years in the advanced capitalist countries has now become the dominant ideology governing development in general and urban development in particular. With urban planners, architects and geographers dominating the urban planning discourse without much inputs from sociologists, anthropologists or even economists, the dominant paradigm was focused on how to ‘manage’ the poor, the dissident and the marginalised as opposed to organically thinking about society as a whole. This was the focus reflected on policy measures such as JNNURM and RAY. The challenge, felt participants, was about how to contest the mega city ideology in order to promote a more organic, inclusive and pro-poor model of urban development.
Seminar: Issues Addressed
The seminar started Prof. Amitabh Kundu, Centre for the Study of Regional Development, Jawaharlal Nehru University, delivering his keynote address by examining the macroeconomic growth trends in rural and urban areas and underlining that if there was free mobility, rural/urban lines should have been together. But the revised estimate by Tendulkar Committee shows a very high gap in rural/urban poverty. After the 66th Round of Census, percentage of the poor is not more than 14 per cent in the metros, whereas smaller towns house a much higher population of the poor. The percentage of poor in metro is 12 compared to 30 per cent in small towns. Prof. Kundu suggested a ‘paradigm shift’ in urbanisation in that the metros are exclusionary and in ‘sanitising’ mode while smaller towns house the migrating poor. Prof. Kundu then reflected on what kind of urbanisation is actually desirable, what can be a more inclusive vision for the 12th Plan? According to Prof. Kundu, rapid urbanisation is necessary in the coming decades. This is also essential if the 410 million are to be given employment because agriculture and allied sectors can absorb only 230 million; these sectors cannot take more without depressing productivity and wages. Finally, the question that begs an answer is where this poor, unskilled workforce with low-level of education is going to find employment. Prof. Kundu asserted that the need is for a more balanced urbanisation and promote a large number of small towns and graduation of villages into towns. Besides JNNURM, Prof. Kundu stressed, there is an urgent need for a programme specifically targeted at these 2800 new small and medium towns for urban growth to acquire a non-exclusionary character.
Other participants joined the debate over the question of unemployment especially when manufacturing sector has not grown as much as it should have. The economic survey shows that electricity, construction, gas, water, manufacturing sectors together contributed 23 per cent of the GDP in 1993–94 and it increased only marginally to 25 per cent in 2009–10. Within this group, construction has expanded much more while manufacturing sector, in fact, would have declined. As against this dismal growth in the manufacturing sector, services sector—trade, hotels, transport and communication—increased their share from 19.68 per cent to 24.39 per cent of the GDP. Finance, insurance, real estate, etc., increased their share to the GDP; so did public administration and defence. All these services put together raised their shares from 5.5 per cent to about 55 per cent in the last two decades. So the character of the economy has transformed straight from primary to tertiary sector bypassing the secondary sector. Some of the flaws in the urbanisation process are located in this transformation because to create job opportunities and make urbanisation more poor-friendly, the economic structure should be geared towards job creation for the masses. But because of very poor infrastructure—poor energy, shipping, roads—India did not witness a manufacturing boom. That is why services sector—telecom, IT, etc., increased and manufacturing declined.
In this context, most of the illiterate rural migrants find it difficult to enter the job market. The pointed exclusion of the concern for employment generation in the policy frame of JNNURM has resulted in City Development Plans failing to address this problem by providing for meaningful livelihood programme for the poor. Moreover, the poor view shelter and access to amenities and livelihood as connected issues which have to be addressed holistically. The programme for employment generation for the urban poor does not form a strategically significant component of the City Development Plan.
Participants discussed the various initiatives in terms of the strategy for slum upgradation/prevention—Constitution 74th Amendment Act, urban reform incentive fund, JNNURM and the launch of Rajiv Awas Yojna. One of the major reform agenda in JNNURM is internal earmarking of budgetary support within urban local bodies, budgets for basic services to the poor. There has to be provision of basic services like improved housing, water supply, sanitation, education, health, etc., to urban poor and implementation of decentralisation measures as per the 74th constitutional amendment act. The concept of the Area Sabha in urban areas is to be introduced so that issues can be properly addressed. There are several legislations, especially the public disclosure law that needs to be enacted for ensuring release of quarterly performance information to stakeholders. But very few states have enacted it. Enactment of community participation law is necessary to institutionalise citizen’s participation. At least 20–25 per cent of developed land is to be earmarked in all housing projects (both public and private agencies) for EWS/LIG category with system of cross-subsidisation. That means if there is 100 acre land, minimum 20–25 per cent is to be earmarked for the abovementioned categories by the states. But it is non-implementable although the states have agreed in principle. There is huge shortage of housing for the urban poor. But a majority of the private developers are opposing the earmarking of the land provision. Non-availability of proper statistical database was cited as one of the biggest problems in design and implementation of all these initiatives.
Ms Shweta Damle, Committee for the Right to Housing (CRH) talked about deprivation in urban space and the reality of the exclusion of the urban poor primarily in the context of housing in the light of implementation of JNNURM. She brought to fore the real life experiences of people and contended that the perception of the idea of slums by the Maharashtra government has always been very problematic. Right from post-Independence period, the approach was to ‘clear’ the slums. People were brutally uprooted and left homeless in order to clear city spaces. This process continued till the 1970s when some policies were implemented to provide some amenities especially in Mumbai. This policy intervention did not trickle down to the rest of Maharashtra. These decisions were taken primarily on municipal land not on the central government land with the stated aim of providing housing. But these policies were arbitrary in nature without involving any discussion or participation with the projected beneficiaries. In the 1990s, the market was directly brought in to be the provider of housing to the poor and the government shifted from being a provider to a facilitator for creation of housing for the masses. Initially, the programme was limited to Mumbai, Pune and Thane with the thrust being in Mumbai. The land waste scheme, where for the development of a certain land, a developer was given rights to sell and market some part of the proposed developing area, became extremely unsustainable. A lot of common amenities that were subsidised and sustainable were individualised.
Speaking on ‘Urban Transport and Mobility of Urban Poor’, Prof. Geetam Tiwari of IIT, Delhi presented a statistical analysis to establish that the issue of urban transport has to be located in a larger context and it cannot be understood in isolation. As cities are growing as per the new Census data, the number of people living in slums and informal settlements has steadily increased. There are 53 cities of more than one million in population and the question about responding to their mobility needs has not been properly addressed. In Mumbai, for instance, of the 18.4 million people, anything between 30–60 per cent will be counted as poor. For Delhi, of the 16.3 million people, only 23 per cent are living in planned colonies. The others are—14.8 per cent in JJ clusters, 19.1 per cent in slum-designated areas, 5.3 per cent in unauthorised colonies and 12.7 per cent in JJ resettlement colonies and so on.
A survey by RITES in 2008–09 tried to capture how people in different income groups use different transport systems. People earning below ₹10,000 per month are walking; of those earning ₹10–25,000, fewer people walk and in the category of income earners of ₹25,000 and above, extremely few people walk. High income group is using cars. Actually, the share of metro users is very small because the poor and the rich are not using it. Prof. Tiwari elaborated from another survey plotting informal settlements with activity and mobility. The focus was on JJ clusters where the poorest among the poor reside. In Delhi, the proportion of their population is about 14.8 per cent. Nature of employment is 24 per cent in the formal sector, and here the definition of ‘formal’ is that they have a fixed place of work. About 76 per cent are employed in what is called the ‘informal’ sector. In that, the study of how the unemployed commute revealed that for the majority, walking is the only mode, that is, 87 per cent of them walk, just about 8 per cent use the buses and only 2 per cent use cycles. Among the employed, 49 per cent walk, 23 per cent use the bus and 15 per cent use cycles. There is a gender difference in that among the employed women, 86 per cent walk while among the employed men, about 34 per cent walk.
Anand Bhal, economic advisor, Ministry of Urban Development responded to the critique of the policy emerging in the panel discussion by stressing on regarding investment requirements. The need is for about one trillion dollars, 50 per cent of which has to come from the private sector. So, he said, the argument that there is enough money around does not hold true and maintained that there are enough studies that establish that urban planning requires adequate resources to fulfil its commitments.
Secondly, he said, it is false notion that the cost of recovery in water supply, sewage, etc, excludes the poor. Actually, the poor are much more willing to pay than the middle class. He said a reference had been made to the 12th Plan on user fees and water supply. He said the proposal is that there should be free minimum water available for the poor after which there will be volumetric metering for consumption of water. For inclusive development, he said, the need is to build the capacity of the municipalities. The weakest link in the JNNURM chain is the municipality. He said it is now well recognised that for urban development programmes to succeed, there is a need for capacity building and to make bureaucracy more efficient because ‘red-tapism’ is a big hurdle in implementation of schemes. To conclude, he said, even within the Ministries, capacities should be built in a synchronised way which is hard to achieve because each ministry has its own priorities to maximise synergy.
Recommendations
(a) Iniquitous Urbanisation
The moderate urban demographic growth in India in the last two decades has been far from regionally equitous and hospitable to the poor. This has seriously constrained its potential to absorb migrants pushed out from the rural areas, trying to escape from poverty and improve their socio-economic conditions. In order to realise the objective of inclusive growth and balanced regional development to which the 12th Five-year Plan is committed, the Government should identify features in these interventions responsible for this outcome and take corrective measures before further extension of the programmes
(b) Development of Small and Medium Towns
The process of urbanisation since the colonial times has witnessed phenomenal growth, particularly of large cities, though the migration rate has now slowed down. Small and medium towns of late have shown demographic growth but have stagnated economically for lack of investment, notwithstanding some interventions by the Government directed towards their development. This calls for a determined and focused shift in policy towards rapid growth of small and medium towns, particularly those in the backward regions, encouragement to the emergence of new urban centres and consequent strategic changes in governance.
(c) Conditionalities of Financing
Two significant factors have contributed to the iniquitous urban growth: First, the governance reform relating to decentralisation of urban development and management of civic amenities; and second, the shifting of responsibility for investment in infrastructural projects from Central and State governments to urban local bodies and from reliance on public investment for this purpose to seeking institutional resources and attracting private investment. The conditionalities associated with the latter sources of investment have tended to favour large cities and developed States and regions which alone have been capable of attracting investment in a competitive global environment, and taking up infrastructural improvement through the mobilisation of own resources. Smaller towns, particularly in backward regions, find it difficult to take up infrastructural development and improve supply of basic services. As a result, unlike large cities, they are not in a position to offer better employment opportunities. This tends to worsen aggravate growth between States and different size categories of urban centres. It is, therefore, necessary that the Central and State governments undertake infrastructural development and improvement in basic amenities in smaller and medium towns.
(d) Elite Capture of Participatory Process
Large cities have witnessed the emergence of civil society organisations, largely representing the better off sections of urban population. They have acquired a great deal of clout in urban governance due to their access to decision making process and recourse to judicial intervention in favour of their cause. This class bias should be neutralised by the following measures:
The design of JNNURM should explicitly recognise the contribution of the urban poor including new entrants, to the growth of the city and their legitimate right to have their share of urban space and access to basic amenities. The Ministry of UD should make sanctioning of funds conditional on the implementation of decentralised governance in its entirety and on the formulation of development plans by local units which should form the basis for preparing the City Development Plan. The Ministry of HUPA should encourage the formation of representative organisations of the urban poor and provide facilities to them to take up advocacy for their interests in order to reduce the disproportionate power exercised by middle class residents in the decision making process.
(e) Commercialisation of Land for Resource Generation
The policy of monetisation and commercialisation of urban land pursued by Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) at the behest of financing institutions as a mode of resource mobilisation, such as permitting extra floor area in central part of the city to be traded in the land market, has promoted spatial segmentation of rich and poor population, pushing the latter to the periphery of the city with meagre amenities. This must be effectively countered in order to ensure that in any mode of resource mobilisation by the ULBs, the poor are not pushed out of the central areas and that they get their share of development in the existing space. This model of commercialisation of land for resource generation should in any case be disallowed in the small and medium towns.
(f) Cost Recovery
Market oriented reforms in urban governance have encouraged ULBs to attract private investment and pursue ‘Public Private Partnerships’ for undertaking development projects. Both these modes of financing have stipulations for cost recovery through the realisation of user charges from beneficiaries, in order to ensure economic viability. These stipulations are also incorporated in public sector projects dependent on institutional finance and market borrowings. This requirement has the effect of excluding from urban development process, low income segments of the city (residential areas of the urban poor), because due to the problem of cost recovery private and institutional funds are not available for the development of these areas. In any case, private sector investment in JNNURM has been negligible. This phenomenon accentuates the gap in the availability of basic amenities, between rich and poor localities within the cities and has serious implications for the health and hygiene of the entire city. It is, therefore, recommended that the provision of basic amenities catering to the colonies of the poor should be financed from public funds. The public sector financial institutions should be prevailed upon to relax their conditionalities, to facilitate borrowing by ULBs and permit State governments to provide guarantee for loan repayment. The poor may not be averse to paying modest charges for use of services if they are provided by the government without hassles.
(g) Capacity Building
ULBs excluding those in metropolitan cities do not have in-house capacity to prepare ‘Vision’ document and City Development Plans as required by JNNURM. Metropolitan ULBs which have requisite capacity to prepare such plans have also preferred to get them prepared by national or global research consultancy organisations acceptable to financing agencies in order to facilitate funding by them. Most of the agencies shortlisted by the Ministry have no background in urban planning, are not familiar with the local environment and problems and plans prepared by them lack genuine participation of all stakeholders. There is an urgent need to promote organisations at the State and sub-regional levels familiar with the local social environment to undertake this task for the ULBs in their area. Such a provision may be added to the existing scheme of capacity building for the ULBs.
(h) Conditionality for Release of Central Funds
The reforms in urban governance have reduced municipal budgetary allocations and mandated that infrastructure development and provision of basic services in urban centres should be financed through mobilisation of resources form financial institutions and the private sector. This conditionality favours larger cities which have potential to mobilise such resources and bypasses small and medium towns. Within the large cities, it has resulted in the concentration of development in colonies of the better off sections while excluding the habitations and settlements of the poor. The huge inequalities in resource base, infrastructure, socio-economic status of the population, governance structures and capacities in the two categories of urban settlements, make it virtually impossible to undertake sufficient infrastructure development for the provision of basic services in the small and medium towns and localities of the poor in the cities. As a result, the process of exclusion gets institutionalised and inequalities further aggravated. The government should, therefore, move away from one solution fits all situations and adopt a preferential approach towards the neglected settlements covered by Basic Services for Urban Poor (BSUP) and Urban Infrastructure Development Scheme for Small and Medium Towns (UIDSSMT). The development activities there should be financed entirely with budgetary resources with enhanced outlay, to bring them to a level where they can attract private and institutional finance.