Latest news with #Mao-like
New Indian Express
21 hours ago
- Politics
- New Indian Express
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)
New York Times
03-04-2025
- Business
- New York Times
Trump Just Bet the Farm
Donald Trump is not known for doing his homework — he's more of a go-with-my-gut kind of guy. What I find most terrifying about what Trump is doing today is that he seems to be largely relying on his gut to bet that he can radically overturn how America's institutions have operated and the way the nation relates to both its allies and enemies — and get it all right. As in, America will become stronger and more prosperous, while the rest of the world will just adjust. Next question. Well, what are the odds that Trump can get all of these complex issues right — based on trusting his gut — when on the same day that he was announcing his huge tariff increases on imports from the world over, he invited into the Oval Office Laura Loomer, a conspiracy theorist who believes that Sept. 11 was an 'inside' job. She was there, my Times colleagues reported, to lecture Trump about how disloyal key members of the National Security Council staff were. Trump subsequently fired at least six of them. (No wonder so many Chinese asked me in Beijing last week if we were having a Mao-like 'cultural revolution.' More on that later.) Yes, what are the odds that such a president, seemingly ready to act on foreign policy on the advice of a conspiracy theorist, got all this trade theory right? I'd say they're long. What is it that Trump, with his grievance-filled gut, doesn't understand? The time we live in today, though far from perfect or equal, is nevertheless widely viewed by historians as one of the most relatively peaceful and prosperous in history. We are benefiting from this pacific era in large part because of a tightening web of globalization and trade, and also because of the world's domination by a uniquely benign and generous hegemon called the United States of America that is at peace and economically interwoven with its biggest rival, China. In other words, the world has been the way the world has been these past 80 years because America was the way America was: a superpower ready to let other countries take some advantage of it in trade, because previous presidents understood that if the world grew steadily richer and more peaceful, and if the United States just continued to get the same slice of global G.D.P. — about 25 percent — it would still prosper handsomely because the total pie would grow steadily larger. Which is exactly what happened. The world has been the way the world has been because China brought more people out of poverty faster than any other country in history, largely on the back of a giant, relentless export engine that took advantage of the U.S.-engineered global free trade system. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber? Log in. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
