The clip-art drawing attention to the National Urban Renewal Mission in the Budget page of the Finance Ministry’s website, is a gleaming skyscraper skyline – a Manhattan sans the TwinTowers. This may just be an innocuous computer graphic, but read in the context of various pronouncements to turn our metro cities world class, by building more flyovers, metro-rails, and mega malls– it can be assumed our political elites obsession with the glittering glamour towns of the West or the Far East. A swanky address to match our new found status as an emerging super power.
Tokenism apart, Urban Development had hardly ever received the serious attention it deserves as the habitat for 30% of our population. Even in Budget 2005 combined allocation for Urban Development is Rs.10124 Crores or just about 4.8% of the total budget. From this, deduct budget support of Rs 507 Crores for Delhi Metro, Rs 469 Crores for maintenance of Government properties and Rs 6745 non-plan fund to be raised for housing – the balance works out to a meagre Rs.92 per city dweller, annually that is.
For urban renewal, while building of flyovers and metro rails are vital, the more immediate task of delivering the basic services – water supply, drainage and sewerage – is off the radar. The floods ravage the streets of Bombay, people walk over ten hours to home, babies die in stranded cars. After a days closer Sensex resumes with record high. Fighting spirit of the people or as Charles Correa said in The New Landscape, ‘apathy of a frog in simmering water – getting accustomed to a slow death?’
Indian cities are amongst the worst in the world in terms of urban quality of life. Water consumption in some neighbourhoods hover around 27 litres or just about one bucket a day against minimum standard 140 litres. Bangalore looses 37% water in the distribution process from the pumping station to the consumer’s tap. According to the MCD, 7000 community toilets are required in Delhi alone. Today there are just 294 – for the rest –well, the streets are there.
High losses, and lack of accountability have become synonymous with the municipal administration. Infrastructure planning, management and delivery are largely ad-hoc, and by multiple agencies – with varying schedule, budget and competence level.
Urban infrastructure, over the years, had been, have come to symbolise as a social good – taken for granted, but seldom paid for. So, now we have a situation where the service providers are suffering huge financial losses and the consumers are left with abysmally poor service. Tariff rationalisation, cost recovery and an efficient pricing regime are vital for the financial health of the municipalities, but of course politically unpopular. There is no meaningful political debate at the local level suggesting policy alternatives or attempt to educate people.
The 74th Constitutional Amendment the municipalities are recognised as the third tier of our federal system and perform the major part of the citizen – government interface. To the man on the street, the municipal administration is the face of the government – a face mired with inefficiency and petty corruption. In slum areas in particular, a charade is being enacted at tiring regularity – the officials threaten eviction or service cut. Local leaders rush in as messiah of the poor to stop the process. Later in the day the Babu and the Neta split the spoils over a drink, as the poor slum dweller toils extra hours to foot the bill. The situation remains as it is.
It is fashionable nowadays to compare China with India. Shanghai is the latest role model for Mumbai. Just few months back, the chief minister of Maharashtra, Vilasrao Deshmukh, went gung-ho on a slum demolition spree to free up space, that left over 200,000 people homeless, in a spate of few weeks, for glitzy new projects – only to be reigned in by a nervous central leadership worried over the electoral implications. Will he or any other leader, show half of that enthusiasm to set the basics straight – so we may have garbage free neighbourhoods, adequate water, roads without pot holes? The minimum standards, which people of Shanghai or Kuala Lumpur take for granted. Our policy makers need to realise, that cities are much more than a sum total of skyscrapers and flyovers. The cities are about communities, traditions, street life and ultimately about people. Our urban development strategy needs to prioritise the grass root level issues considering social realities, before undertaking grandiose schemes. Otherwise the Indian elephant will stand on a very shaky foundation, compared to the Chinese dragon.
