Why bigger may not be better for Indian cities
This is true not just in India, but in other countries, too—such as the growth machines in the US and local governments in China, whose officials are often disciplined for corruption. It is understandable, therefore, if state politicians balk at handing these decisions and rents over to local representatives. By contrast, smaller cities with limited rents may stand a chance of being better governed.
The GBA model is perhaps an acknowledgment of this tension with representation. It removes local politicians from decision-making and promises better coordination across civic functions. Should this be a model for the future? What if we had a trade-off, with chief ministers controlling the capital city, as in Bengaluru, but implementing the Constitution's 74th amendment—also known as the Nagarpalika Act—in letter and spirit in the other cities of the state?
Could this create an open, constructively competitive ecosystem across secondary cities, resulting in a sustainable and vibrant process of urbanisation, as hoped for by the prime minister? Eventually, those in the capital cities may also demand a voice, emboldened by an encirclement of the state capital—not Mao-like from the countryside, but by smaller cities.
Not only is urban governance not representative, it is often also performative. Like anti-smog guns, they have limited effectiveness but look modern and give the appearance of action. Delhi has shifted this expenditure to the private sector, but public money, too, is often spent on ineffective infrastructure that has popular support because of its performative aspect. Consider the metro rails in many cities. While in some they are both necessary and effective, they do little to solve the transportation problem in others. But residents feel proud to live in a city with a metro rail, unaware that for that cost they could have mitigated their transport woes with an effective bus system.
Finally, the identity crisis. Is the urban local body an artificial administrative construct and should one instead consider the 'metropolitan area' or 'economic region' determined by commuting, spread of contiguous night lights, or just fiat? How can such regions be governed? Indeed, for cities like Delhi, Bengaluru and Chennai, such a region will spill across even state boundaries and trigger a series of other questions.
Are investments such as the Namo Bharat regional rapid transit system, which takes less time to reach Meerut from Delhi than it does to reach parts of Gurugram by road, to be seen as guideposts? Is the preferred expansion of Delhi to be along this corridor? If so, should one shift defence operations to Jewar instead, and develop Hindon as a civilian airport? Where will the existing private investments along the Gurugram-Jaipur route fit into such a plan?
No such questions are raised. Urbanisation has been reduced to an assorted collection of schemes and projects, scattered pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that no one is interested in putting together. Maybe, each individual answer has become so lucrative that it's too troublesome to even remember there was a question.
Partha Mukhopadhyay | Senior Fellow, Centre for Policy Research, and former member, Technical Advisory Committee, Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs
(Views are personal)
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