Rescuing Urban Planning from the Devil of the State and the Deep Sea of the Market

 

Entering the 75^th year of independence and expecting the future to be urban, the dismal state of our cities requires a critical review of urban planning. The reference to the dismal state of the cities is not to the cities that are dug-up due to ongoing infrastructure projects, but to the everyday dystopias that the city dwellers negotiate. Urban planning was expected to lead us to liveable cities. There are high hopes on urban planning to be able to meet the global agendas of healthy cities (realized as important during the COVID-19 pandemic), the inclusive cities of the New Urban Agenda and climate change resilient and low-carbon cities meeting the Paris agreement commitments. There is an increasing sense that the urban planning as envisaged and practiced will not be able to achieve not just these agendas but also the aspirations and needs of the current and future urban residents. Urban planning contents as well as practiced has to change for a successful urban future.

We are currently in a surrealist urban development situation. In the 73^rd year of national independence, the Delhi Master Plan was unilaterally changed by the central government to include the imperialist Central Vista project. Much has been written about this project in this paper as well and hence not repeated. But, the timing of or the chronology of the gazette notification to change the land use from recreational to government has to be noted; it was issued on March 20, 2020, two days before the one day lockdown of March 22, 2020 and four days before the unplanned nationwide stringent lockdown. This change in the Delhi Master Plan was made while it was being revised. The draft Master Plan of Delhi – 2041 is now available and a commentary on it is available (for example here).

Essentially, the Central Vista project has been inserted in Delhi without going through the plan process. In fact, this project has been presented to the draft Master Plan of Delhi (MPD) – 2041 as a fait accompali. The paradox is clear, the Master Plan of Delhi did not decide what happens to the central part of the Lutyen’s Delhi but an extraneous decision forces the Master Plan to include it! To understand this paradox it would be necessary to look at what urban planning and its tool called the Master Plan was expected to do.

This one tool of urban planning, the Master Plan, alternatively called the Development Plan in some states, is not the only one. This is a statutory tool that has a backing of Town and Country Planning laws, such as Delhi Development Authority Act, the Gujarat Town Planning and Urban Development Act, and so on. The other non-statutory plans also exist, for example, the City Development Plan (CDP) prepared for the Jawaharlal Nehru Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM), Comprehensive Mobility Plan (CMP) for transport project funding, Smart City Mission Plans and Housing for All Plan of Action for the PMAY-Urban. Lets come back to the purpose and contents of the Master/ Development Plans. There are plethora of plans and whether they talk to each other is a matter of investigation. However, the plans other than the Master Plan are made to implement projects, which is discussed later causing fragmentation of planning effort itself.

Early Planning Efforts

The Master Plans (term henceforth used to represent all the city level spatial plans) during the British colonial rule were for extractive purposes. In a book City Planning in India[1], the authors write that British were predominantly interested in revenues from land and hence paid attention to land survey data and planning. The plans also ensured to maintain segregation by statutorily maintaining British enclaves through plans. A new segregation can be seen in the contemporary cities through planning process, but of another form, the legal city occupied by the citizens holding valid identity proofs and the ‘illegal’ or the ‘informal’ city wherein some hold and some do not hold the valid identity proofs. Urban plans were used as a tool to sanitise the non-elite areas of the city; the working class neighbourhoods were evicted these under the pretext of not meeting the planning standards.

In independent India, the first effort at urban planning was to build industrial cities to meet the aspiration of ‘industries as temples of modern India’. The urban planning was seen as a technocratic activity, which continues till date and its education is regulated by the AICTE. Urban Planning became the domain of the technocrats, the engineers, architects and the bureaucrats. New towns were build using such a planning activity. The land in the new towns was owned by the government entity, were mainly on greenfield sites, and hence the planned proposals could be implemented.

The planning challenge was for the existing towns and cities where the living conditions were deteriorating.  Refugee influx in some of these created congestion, infrastructure and housing deficits, and a sense of deteriorating quality of life. Public health became the concern in urban planning during the decade of the 1950s and 1960s. The Ministry of Health, Government of India, dealt with town planning. Under its aegis the first Master Plan of Delhi was prepared with a focus on health. In a Town and Country Planning (TCPO) document of 1962 the Ministry of Health stated: “The improvement of our villages, towns and cities will provide this healthy environment to the rural and urban people alike”. The first Basic Development Plan (BDP) for Calcutta (now Kolkata) prepared for 1966-86 period has origin in public health concern, prepared in wake of cholera epidemic of 1958. The early efforts at town planning was urban health. For example the setting up of the Urban Improvement Trust in Bombay was a response to the plague epidemic. The idea of Improvement Trusts spread across in India. The Improvement Trusts then became Development Authorities in many cities; for example, the Delhi Improvement Trust, set up in 1936 became the Delhi Development Authority.

Comprehensive Planning - A Statist Effort

Soon after the first Master Plan of Delhi, the approach to Master Plan comes from what was called ‘comprehensive planning’, alternatively also called ‘rational planning’. The rationality was defined by the state, located in the large ‘welfare’ framework. The urban planning as a discipline has roots in the ‘social-democratic’ polity of the immediate post-world war period. Urban planning’s rationality was delivery of public goods through allocating land spaces for public goods and redistributing land to reduce inequalities. Land reforms in India, that is, land to the tiller in the rural areas and land to the houseless in the urban areas comes from the same framework. The comprehensiveness came from the idea that all urban activities would require land and other resources allocation and hence all aspects of urban development have to be looked in their entirety. Hence the Master Plan documents have existing situation analysis about all aspects of the city. For example, the MPD 2041 has seven baseline study reports. The purpose of plans is to then project the activities that would come up in the future, make land allocations for the same, envision as to where these activities would and should come up, and provide necessary infrastructure for the same. Some plans also have provisions related to financing the plans. This aspect requires another discussion however.

The key to successful implementation of a Master Plan is availability of land.  The broad vision of MPD-62 (the first Master Plan of Delhi) was realised with a large scale acquisition and development of land to ensure the development of infrastructure and services as per the plan proposals. This vision also envisaged that the public sector would lead the process of development of the city with very little private participation in housing and infrastructure service. In essence, the land was to be publicly held and then allocated for various purposes as defined in the Plan. If any use that came up other than what was defined in the plan then it became an illegal use. All the land uses had to be regulated and hence controlled. But, the real world, even in Delhi, did not confirm to the requirements of the Master Plans and hence the large unauthorised colonies in Delhi.

In cities where the land was under private ownership, these plans did not work at all. The cities struggled to acquire lands for the public purposes. None whatsoever were able to acquire lands for the public purposes at a scale required and hence most Master Plans failed to perform.

Only in a limited cities, for example of that in Gujarat, wherein a mechanism called Town Planning Scheme (TPS) or now what is being popularised as ‘land pooling mechanism’ used widely in the MPD-2041, lands could be acquired for public purposes. The principle is that a part of the private land is appropriated at the time of giving approval of development or redevelopment of a parcel of land. The appropriated land is then used for public purposes. The experience of the TPS is glass half full and half empty.

The Master Plan being a statutory document, came to be also appropriated by the state. Thus, this capture of the Delhi Master Plan to change the land use of the central area of Lutyen’s Delhi for the construction of Central Vista project. In authoritarian regimes this powerful instrument of land allocation can then be used for the purposes that the power consider to be ‘rational’.

The Market Capture of Planning

While, the rulers prefer a statist approach, for the rest of the city residents, urban planning has shifted to what is called ‘Market-based approach’. When the state moved from being a welfare or redistributive state to one promoting economic growth, the Master Plans too shifted to this goal stating that land uses would be allocated as per the bids that the uses can make on the land. The general argument has been that excessive state intervention and land regulations have led to inefficient ‘bureaucratic’ decision-making that stifled private enterprise, competitiveness and efficiency. It has also been argued that the historic cities had evolved through the role of market in a successful way, and the land market imperfections were corrected through some tools of taxation, such as the betterment charges.

instruments have been introduced through the Development Control Regulations (DCRs) in the Master Plan documents for market-based land use allocation. These are using the Floor Space Index (FSI)/ Floor Area Ratios (FARs) and Transfer of Development Rights (TDRs) as instruments for allocation of uses. For example, in locations that have high demand, more FSI/ FAR can be allowed. But, these can be allowed in such a way that the local government can charge premium for higher than the base FSI/ FAR. MPD-2041, Mumbai Development Plan – 2034, and Master Plans of many cities have used this mechanism. These DCRs essentially leverage high land prices for not just land use allocation but also raising financial resources for infrastructure provision through charging premium FSI/ FAR and selling appropriated lands. Special zones for certain high FSI/ FAR potential can be identified; these could be around transit/ transport lines, also called Transit Oriented Zones (TODs), special development zones and so on. But, the increase in land prices also push out the low-income groups from the land and housing markets. Hence, the so called ‘affordable housing’ in many cities are priced at Rs. 20 lakhs and above and not just workable for those households with monthly incomes of Rs. 20,000 to Rs. 25,000. The affordable housing then are in the urban periphery. In essence, the market mechanism pushes out the low-income households to urban periphery creating a new form of ghettoization and marginalisation.

This is also a phase wherein the urban development is pursued through projects. Funding is for projects whereas planning is a hotchpotch of statist and market instruments. The decisions often appear as matters of interest to some, for example the Central Vista project is of personal interest. Large projects such as the Metro rail projects receiving massive central government funding, are of commercial interests. The projects are decided through other plans as already mentioned; for example CMP for transport. Ironically, we may not find the metro projects in the city’s CMP or Master Plans. Thus, the decision making on projects is fragmented, often appearing as influenced by special interest groups, while overall Master Plan, statist or market-based appears to be not working.

Stuck between the two extremes

The question in planning is not about whether the state or the market would deliver the urban development agendas. Between the devil of the statist planning that was captured by the elites and made the common residents client of the politicians and now the deep sea of the market that has no place for the low-income populations or even non-market land uses, the cities are doomed. Paradoxically, the state wants the power to allocate spaces for its purpose but wants the residents to be supplied their spaces through the market. The cities have to be rescued from both these co-existing extremes. The state is ruthless when it wants spaces for itself, evicting informal developments if required. The state has also been ruthless to clear out prime lands for large real estate projects. Hence, there is very little difference remaining now between the state and the market.

A new vocabulary of planning therefore need to be found. Some planning scholars such as John Friedmann, have talked about ‘radical planning’, that is building cities piece by piece and bottom-up and the urban planners providing that opportunity to work with the people/ communities. But, this radical planning need to be indigenized in Indian context keeping in mind the social fissures and fragments among the population. Probably, and hopefully, the local radical planning could be a mechanism to bring fractured society together.

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[1]     Kumar, A. K; S. Vidyarthi and P. Prakash (2021). City Planning in India, 1947-2017. London and New York: Routledge for Taylor and Francis Group.

The Fallacy of Affordable Rental Housing Package

As a part of the second tranche of ₹20 lakh crore economic stimulus package taking care of severe criticism of the central government’s sensitivity to the migrant labour fleeing the cities, a rental housing policy for the migrant workers was announced on May 14, 2020. The rental policy, much in line with the subsequent two economic stimulus packages (on agriculture and infrastructure) is medium to long term.

The rental housing package, it has been made to appear, is a government response to the heart-wrenching stories and visuals of the migrants fleeing large cities, traveling by foot, cycle or any means carrying all their belongings and their families. The stories pointed that the workers living in their factory premises or on construction sites, in many instances, were forced out of their living quarters, by their employers on closure of work. In situation of individuals renting houses were asked by their landlords to either pay rent or vacate, inspite of sermons from the Prime Minister in his first address to the nation of landlords to give moratorium on taking rent. Left with no choice the migrants living in such rental housing decided to go back to their native places.  While both situations have occurred, those not in housing distress too seem to have left for the panic created by the Covid 19 and a natural desire to be with the family in such a pandemic. Being locked down in a small house or one room house, which is what workers live, migrant or not, with limited availability of food, and no work, too left the migrant workers with no choice but wanting to go back home.

The package

There are two components of this package. One is converting the government funded housing in cities into ‘affordable rental housing complexes’ under PPP model and would be included under the existing Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) scheme. Second is central government incentivizing manufacturing units, industries and institutions to develop affordable housing complexes on their private lands for their employees, to be given on rental basis. The government funded vacant housing would be given out as ‘concessionaire’ to the private firms, so that these could be rented out to migrants on concessional rates. This means that such private firms may not have liability of returning any profit to the government, while recovering the costs of managing the units through rents collected.

The package, in simple language states that the housing built with government funds, namely that under the PMAY and presumably the former Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission’s (JNNURM’s) Basic Services for the Urban Poor (BSUP), lying vacant will be allowed to be converted into rental units in PPP mode. This new use of the PMAY and BSUP units means that the reference is to the lower end and not the lowest end of the rental housing market. While the details are awaited, for those elated by the new announcement may have certain questions, which are being flagged below.

Whose Affordability is Being Considered?

Two phrases require to be addressed ‘government housing complexes lying vacant’ and ‘affordable housing’. The phrase government housing complex has already been explained. Phrase ‘affordable housing’ is illusionary. The entire PMAY, with exception of the In-Situ Slum Redevelopment (ISSR) component is illusionary as it is based on the concept of ‘affordable housing’. The question that has been rightly asked for the PMAY and hence for even this new ‘Affordable Rental Housing’ is; affordable for whom? Those who can spend Rs. 1,000 per month on rent (i.e. households whose income is about Rs. 5000 to Rs. 6000 per month) or Rs. 10,000 per month on rent (i.e. households whose income is about Rs. 50,000 per month), assuming that households spend 20% of their monthly income on rent. 

It is true that those at the lowest end of the urban labour market, the unskilled labour, indeed face great challenge with regards to affordable housing. There are three types of such migrants, one who cannot even rent due to extremely precarious employment conditions and irregular and low incomes and hence tend to squat. Second are those who cannot afford ownership housing and hence tend to rent, often living in shared rental accommodation. Shared accommodation is largely by single male migrants, but, we have found even families sharing a single room unit. In Mumbai, in her heydays of textile mills, the same bed-space in a room was shared by two workers, the one working in the night shift using that space in the day and vice versa. In Surat, we have seen a 100 sq ft room shared by two families, who put partition in-between for their privacy. With the increase in real estate prices, the rents keep going up, pushing the workers at the low end to share rental accommodation. 

Single male migrants sharing a rental accommodation also means that they then have to postpone or abandon the plan of bringing their respective families to the city and permanently living as temporary migrant in the city. They then do not get their permanent address changed to the city address, holding on to the address identity of their native place. In times of disasters and pandemics, then they are unable to prove their urban residency and hence be deprived of any relief measures if any. Most of such shared renting is in private formal or informal housing, wherein the owners are petty landlords, or sometimes small entrepreneurs whose income is through constructing informal housing and then renting it out. The petty landlords often have no or little income other than rent and hence they too cannot afford to forgo rent as advised by the Prime Minister during such pandemics. The entire incremental housing process in Indian cities, and in many developing country cities is such that individuals build their housing and rent out one room or so to recover the costs through rents earned, while the owner-household itself continue to stay in cramped dwelling. Is this so called new affordable rental housing being created is for those who are living in such rental accommodation? This affordable rental housing is expecting that some of such households would move to the newly designated rental housing.

Bonded Living in Employee Housing?

The third set of migrants/ workers at the low end of the labour market are the ones who live on employee provided accommodation, in the factories, on construction sites and brickkilns, etc, often in conditions similar to bonded labour. As the media reports go, some of them who have been thrown out by the employers when the factories had to be closed due to lockdown were at the mercy of their employers. In this category, there are further two kinds, one who live on their work sites, (factory, construction site, etc) and not paying any rent for the accommodation; there are others whose employees have rented accommodation and put the workers in them (in here workers may pay partial rent). When the employers provide accommodation in any of these forms, because they want stability of labour supply, it is beneficial to the workers. But, then, the workers are also tied to this employer and are forced to work at whatever wage rate the employer pays. Long time back, organiser of the workers in ceramic factory in Ahmedabad was looking for liberating the workers from the low-wage conditions of working. These workers were living in employer-provided housing and felt that they were bonded to the employer through housing. 

The employer provided housing can become an option for those who have bargaining power with their employers or have protection of law from the exploitation by the employers. The workers at the lower end of the labour market, and the migrant labour do not have such bargaining powers, as evident from them fleeing the cities in the Covid 19 pandemic.

In response to a French politician and philosopher proposed converting tenants’ rents into purchase payments on their dwellings, arguing that it would end the exploitative relations between landlords and tenants and transform the property-less poor property owners, Friedrich Engels, in ‘The Housing Question’ that there was no such thing as a housing crisis. Engels who was deeply aware of the housing misery of the working class, as described at great length in his work ‘Conditions of working class in England’ (Engels 1845). Engels argued that the miserable living conditions of the workers was a crisis of capitalism in which housing conditions formed just ‘one of the innumerable smaller, secondary evils’ caused by the exploitation of workers by capital (Engels, 1872). He argued that the misery of tenants was because they were workers and not because they were tenants. Then Engels argued for abolition of capitalism! 

But, even if we do not reach this conclusion, the employer provided housing would lead to ameliorative living and working conditions of the workers, migrant or not, only if the workers have a better bargaining power, which is not so today in the conditions of surplus labour.

Vacant Public Housing?

The third question is: “are there vacant public housing units and if yes then why?” One can think of only two possibilities, if the BSUP housing constructed under the JNNURM or the units constructed under the ongoing PMAY are vacant. As per the last available data, vacant BSUP units were only in Delhi and not in other cities.  Under the PMAY’s four verticals (for details see http://mohua.gov.in/cms/pradhan-mantri-awas-yojana.php) only two the Credit Linked Subsidy Scheme (CLSS) and Affordable Housing in Partnership (AHP) entails houses constructed for those who are eligible for either 3% interest subsidy on housing loan interest rate or a direct subsidy to the builders respectively. In these projects, subsidy is given to only those clients who are eligible based on an income or dwelling-unit size criteria. In such housing schemes, there may be client households who may not have benefitted form the subsidy under PMAY if their incomes are higher than the qualifying ceiling. It is thus not clear as to which vacant public housing is being referred to.

The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) website states that total of 97.48 lakh housing units are either under construction (64.02 lakh) or have been completed (33.46 lakh) since 2014 under the PMAY (file:///D:/Darshini%20Documents/Urban/PMAY/4(27).pdf) as on April 20, 2020. The MoHUA website does not give the breakup, but, in 2017-18, the CLSS and AHP components together formed 40% of the total housing units. This would mean that about 39 lakhs of the total 97.48 lakh housing units under the PMAY could be considered as forming part of the vacant public housing stock. There were 134 lakh households living in slums in urban India as per 2011 population census. Thus, the PMAY has not reached all the slum households and even if half of them would like to move to new housing under the CLSS and AHP components, the supply will fall short of need. In such a situation, why is there vacant public housing? The only answer to that is because the prices of the CLSS and AHP housing components is higher than the affordability of those living in slums. Claiming that there are vacant public housing units, is an admission of the failure of the PMAY!

In Conclusion

The question is that if the ‘Affordable Rental Housing’ is being seen as an economic revival package after the Covid 19 pandemic then there are two questions: (i) whose revival is being talked about and (ii) would it benefit the distressed migrants walking / cycling back to their native places and whose housing rights have been discussed by the NGOs working with the migrant labour, construction labour and seasonal migrants (these are not mutually exclusive categories)? The revival package is for those whose businesses in the real estate construction and management have suffered. Whether the workers will benefit or not will depend on the rents charged under ‘affordable rental scheme’ and what protection the workers get from the government under employee-housing. However, one thing is clear, there is no additional money for rental housing or what government would like to call ‘affordable rental housing’. It is Rs. 1,400 crores allocated in the Union Budget of Financial Year 2020-21.

Urban Planning in Times of Pandemics

Would we learn anything from the ongoing Covid – 19 pandemic with regards to inclusion of migrants in our cities, public health infrastructure and policies and most importantly with regards to planning our cities? Answer to that is NO. I would focus in this piece on urban planning and pandemics, as many have written about the other issues. Also, urban planning as a practice and profession is a baby of various pandemics. This is too early an issue to discuss. But, discussion is required as it is a very important aspect of preventing pandemics. An article in Wire discussed about how population density in Dharavi slum is 50 times that of Wuhan and hence the question is in such conditions of our cities, which is largely an outcome of our very poor urban planning practice, can even future pandemics be prevented?

When (the cynics would say if) the Covid – 19 virus pandemic would decline in India, a hard look at the model of urbanisation and urban planning would become necessary. The possibility of the pandemic ending too soon and upcoming heat period reducing the possibility of the viruses spreading have been ruled out by many international researches. Thus, if India is aspiring to urbanise fast, believe in the theory that urbanisation is central to economic growth - notwithstanding the fact that the economic growth itself at this moment in India’s history due to many misadventures particularly in last half a decade seems illusionary – the urbanisation and urban planning model of India need to be relooked at.

At the heart of any urbanisation process is migration. Faster the process of migration, faster is the process of urbanisation. Media in the times of the Covid – 19 pandemic has described many aspects of how India has treated her migrants. It is going to take a long time before the migrant workers would come out of the shock induced by this pandemic. The macro-economic misadventures of the last half a decade on top of jobless growth setting in during the UPA regime had led to further employment crises, which is largely borne by the migrant workers. Whether India’s urbanisation is going to happen is a serious issue.

But, more serious is how degraded our Indian cities are, barring a few prestigious locales inhabited by the elites.  Monobina Gupta write in Wire on April 1, 2020 (https://thewire.in/rights/coronavirus-lockdown-inequality-poor-smart-cities) as to how much Indian cities have excluded the poor. The stories of urban dystopias have been reported by numerous researches of Indian cities, including from the writings of this author. But, particularly in the last half a decade, these stories have fallen on deaf ears. In the earlier period (from 2005 to 2014) during the JNNURM times, these stories were heard, but the response was a lip-service, big programmes announced but many of these were designed to be implemented within the ‘neo-liberal’ policy paradigm. For the want of any better term, I have used the term ‘neo-liberal’, given that we were not liberal in political or economic sense nor were we welfarist in particularly urban settings.

Urban Planning History

Charles Dickens descriptions of cities in times of fast pace of urbanisation in the British cities has given us the epithet Dickensian cities. The British cities and then followed by other European cities, moved to improve the living conditions in the cities by putting in underground services such as underground ducts for water supply and drainage. Science and Industry Museum in Manchester City has a section on the expansion of drainage network in the city. Interestingly, they make us walk through these drains (Photo 1). This was what city development was all about, application of technology for public health.

Photo 1: Exhibit of toilets and drains, Museum of Science and Industry, Manchester, UK

Realising the cities to be vulnerable to such public health crises, urban planning as a profession came in, with firstly setting up of, what were aptly called, the Improvement Trusts. Indian cities too set up the Improvement Trusts in the period starting from 1915 when Patrick Geddes visited India.

One reaction to the Dickensian cities was a movement ‘anti-urbanism’, starting with Ebenezer Howard, who came up with Garden Cities concept (Figure 1), envisaging a city with a countryside imprint; residential areas that are green, with each house having a front and a backyard, industries located nearby to which workers went to work, and self-sufficient cities. Fredrick Engels called this rural idiocy. Other such ideas that became popular were of well-known architects, Le Corbusier (Radiant City) (Figure 2) and Frank Lloyd Wright (Broadacre City) (Figure 3), all displaying the confidence of an architect who considered himself as Master of the City, creating a Master Vision and then a Master Plan. This fantasising was very much in tune with the arrogance of Modernism, of ability to control the fate of the humanity. The Master architects thought that the people and cities would behave as they had ordered them to. Much like our current rulers thinking that the people would behave and remain under lockdown; but what we saw was sea of people on streets of Delhi and other cities! The cities and the people did not behave as the architects thought. The Garden city did not happen because it meant diversion of large tracts of land for green purposes when the lands were privately owned and purchasing land parcels for a house with a yard was beyond the affordability of the industrial workers. Garden cities did not happen, the Dickensian cities did. The Dickensian cities were improved by putting in drainage and water supply lines, largely through state funding and not through the plans that were prepared by the architects.

Figure 1: Garden City

Figure 2: Radiant City

Figure 3: Broadacre City

But, at independence, we in India, while continuing with the activities of the Improvement Trusts, by then set up in most large cities, decided to take this Utopian leap, by inviting Le Corbusier and Otto Königsberger to plan Indian cities. Prior to that, Lutyen’s Delhi was planning by the British Colonialists in a grand manner, with wide roads, utopian style houses with yards, and large many green spaces to house the colonial rulers. The Lutyen’s Delhi was very much an imprint of the paradigm of urban planning existing then. But, this Lutyen’s Delhi or Corbusier’s Chandigarh did not get replicated anywhere else in India, although attempts were made. But, there was always another city outside such planned city to accommodate the working class.

The idea of utopian plans changed to Master Planning that came with heavy regulatory framework. These are statutory plans, which each city has made. More often than not, the Indian urban reality is missed out in these plans, creating the dystopian reality, of the poor, the migrants and the invisible. 

The Neo-liberal City Planning
The regulatory framework not having worked, its critics from the right, at global and the national level, started campaigning for ‘market-based planning’ whatever it meant. In simple terms, it meant, allocation of use of a land as per the market principle, that is the best land available to the highest bidder, in our case the commercial uses and high-end residences, and creating a class of speculative real developers and thus speculative capital. 

The poor have been pushed to the ghettos on the periphery (Figure 4 showing peripheralization of low-income housing through Affordable Housing Zone), with the precarious living conditions that the migrants are escaping now from – no security in rental housing, employers throwing them out in case of employee housing in the industries and on construction site, and so on. After all, these workers living in cheek-by-jowl conditions would create ‘hot-spot’ of virus! (Photos 2 & 3, Madanpur Khadar). There will be no way out of the impacts of this and future pandemics if such living conditions of the urban working class, the migrants and the non-migrants, is not going to change. Rightly, the finding of cases in Dharavi is a matter of grave concern. Dharavi, housing somewhere between 700,000 to a million population has estimated population density of 270,000 people per square km. There is no chance if Covid – 19 spreads here. There is no chance for population living here to be not affected but even the city of Mumbai would be spared as Dharavi is also a place of production of many everyday use food items, even healthcare items such as IV fluid bottles and sutures, etc.  The urban planning has to address improving these living conditions, the existing urban dystopias.

Figure 4: Peripheralisation of Affordable Housing

Photo 2: Cramped Living, Madanpur Khadar Resettlement Site, Delhi

Photo 3: Water Shortage, Madanpur Khadar, Delhi

Instead, the urban planning, proceeding on the market-based route for the common people, is continuing to create these dystopias. Ironically, these market-based solutions is not for the rulers. The current ruling king of India, intending to create a cult following, is now wanting to alter the spaces of colonial power. The project to redevelop Central Vista in Delhi has been approved by the Council of Ministers in the times of Covid – 19 outbreak, one day before the Janata curfew imposed on March 22, 2020 that then resulted in 21 day lockdown two days later. It is indeed urban planning amidst a pandemic! This project has proceeded with violating the principles of transparent bidding in a market economy (https://thewire.in/rights/central-vista-redevelopment-seminar). Neo-liberalism has been selling the idea of fair practices of bidding, but, not put in place in the case of Central Vista. So, we have a system of neo-liberalism in urban development for common people with autocratic and non-transparent decision-making by the rulers when it comes to creation of their personal legacy.

Low allocations in Union Budget for Urban Programmes
The Central Vista project has been allocated Rs. 20,000 crores. The allocations in the Budget of 2020-21 for other central government urban development projects is as in Table 1. The total budgetary provision of Rs. 50,000 crores has about Rs. 21,000 crores for capital projects across India for about 500 million people, while Rs. 20,000 crores for personal legacy and to house about 70,000 employees of the central government ((https://thewire.in/rights/central-vista-redevelopment-seminar). Of the Rs. 21,000 crores, about 80% is for metros. Claims on the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) site about investments in these programmes is way higher than these numbers because it is wishful thinking of contributing funds coming from the state governments. A clever ploy of claiming credit while forcing the state government to pay for the programmes, much as the relief package that has come to deal with fallout of Covid – 19.


Table: Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs Budget 2020-21

Item	Rs. crores
Total Budget of MoHUA	50,040
-  Revenue side	28,891
-  Capital side	21,149
All Metro Projects (capital side)	17,482
PMAY (Revenue side)	8,000
Ajeevika Mission	795
AMRUT	7,300
Smart Cities Mission	6,450
Swachh Bharat Mission	2,300
HRIDAY	0

Source: https://www.indiabudget.gov.in/expenditure_budget.php

Thus, it is neo-liberalism for the urban residents including the poor and the migrants creating dystopias and utopian planning for the ruler. Do we think, in such an urban planning and policy regime will help in preventive measures against pandemics in the future? The answer is clear no.

Need Comprehensive Parking Plan for Ahmedabad

A friend asked: “Why Ahmedabad City cannot generate revenues from parking?” This question has arisen because Delhi has just done that. 

Delhi’s parking rules have included parking area management plans at ward level, revenue generation from parking management and use of this revenue for local area improvement or the larger public good. “The most notable is the provision on the utilisation of parking revenue for local development works that include pedestrian safety, non-motorised lanes and development of parking lots.” (Anumita Roychowdhury in https://www.downtoearth.org.in/blog/air/delhi-notifies-first-ever-parking-rules-to-restrain-vehicle-use-cut-air-pollution-66941) The rules do not confine to narrowly deal with only provision of parking and its pricing but also the structural issues of the city, such as providing for ‘complete street concept’, and prioritising pedestrians, cyclists and public transport in the complete streets. It also suggests modal integration, particularly of the public transport with the para-transit through arranging for of pick-up and drop by the latter at public transport stations. Interestingly, hawking zones, resting zones and overnight parking requirements have also been addressed. 

Transport ourselves to Ahmedabad, which too is enforcing parking regulations. But, it does not have a Parking Plan. Only regulations. The Parking Rules are being enforced by the Police Department, which is not a planning and development department but only regulation enforcement department. Parking is not allowed on any arterial roads. These are no tolerance zones for parking. 

Parking lots or spaces have been created wherever possible. The open plots belonging to the AMC have, been for the time-being, converted into parking lots where paid parking has been provided. These lots do not have any paving and are open grounds that have got converted into mucky plots during the monsoons. In summer, these become dusty. 

Paid parking has also been created on road sides, particularly where wide side roads are available. For example, SG Highway has small such parking areas, with capacity from 10-20 four wheelers. Needless to mention that such small paid parking lots are not adequate. They get full quickly and what follows in continuing of parking on the road side in small lanes where ‘no parking’ zone is not provided for. As the strict ‘no parking’ in most parts of the city get implemented, including in front of residential apartments, the available parking facilities are going to be fully occupied. For example, on a weekend (Saturday and Sundays) and during holidays, no parking space is available in two-storey basement parking in Alpha Mall.

Lack of parking on one hand and constant fear of vehicle being towed away, has created a peculiar conundrum; how to travel within the city.

By public transport? Which one? The Bus Rapid Transit System (BRTS)? It is not available everywhere. It has a last-leg connectivity problem, from home to BRTS stop and vice-versa. People have used shared auto-rickshaw for the purpose. Shared auto-rickshaws, that take about 8-10 passengers are not always an option of people during summers, and rainy seasons; not for upper and higher-middle income groups. Or that of Ahmedabad Municipal Transport Services (AMTS), which have more wide-based routes. Metro is under construction and has the most limited route.
To access both, AMTS and BRTS, there is no option but to walk? On broken footpaths, and jumping up and down to and from the footpaths, which are often one foot high. Or walk in mud on the road side where there are no footpaths or even walk on pot-holed roads. At least, on some roads, parking on footpaths is now not permitted. 

The footpaths are being constructed on some roads, I would call them model roads (CG Road for example) and there are plans to do the same on three other arterial roads. But, that’s it. We need a footpath plan, for each ward, to make walking to public transport possible.

Even if footpaths are made, many other important issue has to be addressed. Dealing with the animal life on the roads. Older one grows, important it becomes. Ahmedabad has many dogs on the road. They cannot be now caught and taken away through old methods deployed by the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) due to protection from the Supreme Court. Morning walkers in the city walk with a stick to ward them off. In last few years, monkeys are found in gangs on the city streets. I have personally experienced their presence on the roads when on a morning walk. The delinquent behaviour of motorised vehicle drivers, coming on both sides of the road and driving at high speeds even on pot-holed roads, has made both walking and cycling on Ahmedabad City streets hazardous. Question is are these conditions encouraging to shift from private to public transport, and that too inadequate public transport?

Are these excuses? Blaming everyone and everything for not making a modal shift, from private to public transport? The everyday travel’s unwanted experiences are too many to blame individuals for not making a shift. So, if private vehicles were going to be used, next issue pertains to parking provisions.

Clearly, the ones available are not adequate as discussed. Let me here come to the story of a parking station constructed in Navrangpura area, behind the Navrangpura bus-stand. Navrangpura bus-stand is Charles Correa designed building of early 1960s. Bus-stand building is in utter neglect. Behind it rises a white ugly looking building which is the parking station, for those who are to visit the CG Road, about a km away. Is walking 1 km a big deal? It is when you have to jump up and down the 1 ft wide footpaths, encountering all the hazards mentioned above then it is. But, for the entire stretch of the CG road, this is the only parking lot. And it could also be more than 1 km walk for many. Till recently, on-road parking was available in limited numbers and parallel parking was tolerated so no one used this parking lot. It needs to be seen with the strict enforcement of parking regulations, it gets used. 

Lastly, till the public transport system is well developed, if people are going to use private transport, then there should be a city-wide plan for parking. Plots in the existing developed areas should be identified to construct a parking station from which the city can earn revenues. A few that can be counted on finger-tips, are not adequate. Open plots should not be used for parking. On them, multi-storey parking facilities should be constructed so that value could be realised from the remaining parts, much like we are now approaching slum redevelopment. The multi-storey parking facilities should be priced in a way to raise revenues for the city, to do more footpaths at the least.

The city level Comprehensive Mobility Plans should become low-carbon, with not just public transport plans but also cycling and footpath plans (plans for NMT), plans for e-vehicles (particularly the three-wheelers), parking stations and with a future provision of charging stations or battery swap stations for e-vehicles. We do not have luxury to think piece-meal now.

Climbing the Smart Cities’ Bandwagon

Rahul Gandhi, in a tweet, ‘Promises Direct Election of Mayors To Build "Smart Cities"’, reads the news headlines. The tweet from Rahul Gandhi said that good leaders were needed to build smart cities and hence suggestion that the Mayor, who is directly elected is answerable to the people who elect him/ her. This understanding of Rahul Gandhi is true. Urban policy makers and scholars have long argued, and among them passionate policy maker late Mr. K C Sivaramakrishnan (who was urban development ministry’s secretary at the centre), that there would be responsible urban governance if mayors were directly elected by the city’s residents.

Direct elections have to be accompanied by financial and legislative powers as well. In the current situation, the city governments are extremely poor, and do not have financial wherewithal to make any significant investments without the funds coming from the state or the central governments. Many cities, particularly the small and medium ones, have so poor financial situation that they are barely able to meet salary expenditures of meagre staff (in conditions of under-staffing of the municipal governments). Thus, direct elections of the city mayors have to be accompanied by enabling them with financial powers, to enhance their financial base as well as take decisions about expenditures. Currently, in most municipal bodies, the municipal commissioner, a representative of the state government, and through whom the state level ministers, in many cases the Chief Minister, decide the expenditure priorities at the city level and interfere in the city’s affairs. Cities do not have power to decide on which items expenditures should be made.

Another enabler for the mayor to work is the power to make legislation. For example, the city does not have power to pass its Master Plan, i.e. plans for physical development; the state government approves these plans. Or the city’s government does not have power to decide taxes; the state government decides as to what taxes and at which rates should be levied by the city government! Compare this with cities in China, where the city government decides taxes. At one point in time, Beijing city was levying 31 fees on an average, only 14 of which were legal, on McDonald restaurants over and above normal taxes (Wong 1998). Fiscal decentralisation and powers to the cities to collect taxes is one important aspect of high levels of infrastructure investments in the cities of China.

In India, virtually, city government does not have any powers. In that case, the direct election of Mayors would have limited impacts. A good example of such direct elections was in Simla wherein the Mayor and deputy-Mayor were directly elected in 2012 due to amendment in the state legislation. Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu too have direct elections of mayors. But, this would not mean better municipal governance or ‘smart municipal governance’.

The news item also states that “Ahead of the 2014 national election, the BJP had promised to build 100 smart cities. But while 98 cities have been selected by the government for the flagship project, and Rs. 500 crore allocated for each, critics say progress in the project has been tardy.”[1] Tardy it is; the implementation of ‘smart cities’ programme. According to some estimate, there has been offtake of only 17% of the stated allocations under the smart cities mission (SCM). Some expenditures under what is called a project of the SCM, are from other programmes such as Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT).

An aside on AMRUT. The name of the programme should have been Atal Mission for Urban Rejuvenation and Transformation. But, then it does not give us a neat ‘Indianised’ acronym.

Scholars have argued that ‘smart cities’ would require ‘smart governance’. Which is true. But, direct election of mayors is a first tiny step towards it. Smart governance would require many urban reforms, two of which have been mentioned above.

What is a ‘smart city’? Everything done in a city is called smart. Sabarmati riverfront development is smart; leave aside 10-12 thousand people displaced and lives of many ruined. Research is available on the disruptions in lives of those displaced. Metro projects is also called smart. We do not know the long term financial implications of the metro projects. Whether these will lead to reduction in private vehicular movement in the cities and thus resulting in reduction in air pollution is unknown. In fact, the results are going to be too far away in terms of improving local air quality. If there is any lesson on this issue to be learnt is to follow what Chinese cities have done and how many years after which the results with regards to reduction in emissions from transport could be seen.

Smart city as an idea, comes from envisioning of city using real-time data for city management systems. For example, if the data on sewerage systems is digitsed then its clogging at any point could be monitored and quickly responded to. There could be warning about traffic congestion to decide on time and route of travel. To some extent, google maps is helping in this. The city governments or their transport departments have little role to play. A smart city would have a real data base for levying property taxes. It could warn residents about inundated areas during heavy monsoons. And so on. But, to be able to put in place data-dense city management systems would require city level data. There is very little city level data today in Indian cities. In last few years, whatever data was available online has vanished.

Another idea of ‘smart city’ is environmentally, socially and economically sustainable cities. This idea, coming from the cities of developed countries, to a great extent from the experience of American cities, wherein, the cities have sprawled due to real estate and car-industry driven suburbanisation. Indian cities too are following this pattern of real estate industry driven suburbanisation. A developer/ builder buys land from farmer (s) and creates a large real estate development away from the city. The city is then forced to build roads and provide other trunk infrastructure. Which then leads to increase in land and property prices and the developer/ builder rakes in moolah, with no ingenuity of theirs but manipulation and political connections. The land prices increase so much that cheap lands for the housing of the urban poor have to be found on the city’s periphery. That is where many of the housing under the Prime Minister’s Awas Yojana (PMAY) – Urban, are located in many cities. The poor located in such colonies struggle to commute, access education and health, and other urban amenities, for a long period of time; just because, the sprawl creates speculative profits of the real estate developers/ builders. This is hardly ‘smart city’.

The smart cities in India, are hardly about data-intense urban management or about sustainable cities. Labels such as ‘smart’ are used with almost no content. Thus, everything is ‘smart’ in any programme of the city, as already mentioned above. Thus, picking garbage is called smart. Recycling garbage is smart. Building footpaths is smart and e-payment of property tax is smart. Since everything is smart, the term smart cities has lost its meaning. Term smart has become empty of its meaning. Because even ‘jumla’ is smart. In such a situation, direct election of mayors, although a good move, would yield very little in actually making cities smart. It would have meaning only if the term smart were to mean, equitable and sustainable cities.

References

Wong, Christine (1998): ‘Municipal Finance in China: The Development of Extra-Budgetary Revenues’, paper presented at the International Municipal Finance Forum organised by World Bank, Washington DC, April 15-16.

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[1]  https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/lok-sabha-elections-2019-rahul-gandhi-promises-direct-election-of-mayors-to-build-smart-cities-2016227  (accessed on April 2, 2019).

Facilitating Pakoda Economy

In the February of 2018, the Prime Minister of India said that selling pakodas too constituted as employment, in response to his opponents’ criticism that no employment was being generated during his rule in India. He was alluding to self-employment in the trade sector, in which a sizeable proportion of urban dwellers are engaged in and dependent on for survival. Now that CMIE has estimated 1.1 million employment loss in the year 2018, the pakoda-economy becomes all the more important.

There are two types of self-employed, in particular, those who are engaged in petty trade such as selling various things and services on the streets. Things sold on the streets are items of daily use, even clothes and footwear, fruits and vegetables, and cooked food items (the golgappas, bhel, idli, pakodas and chai). After the chai selling attained great heights, now the pakora selling too has ascended in importance. These cooked food economy is fragile, it has to be cooked every day, and in peak summers, probably multiple times a day.

Some engage in the chai economy or pakoda economy out of choice and many have become big business rising from the footpaths. For example, Shankar Vijay icecreamwala in Ahmedabad, now has an upmarket ice-cream shop called ‘Shankar’s library’. Or Sarath Babu of Chennai, who started his career of selling idlis on the street to graduating from IIMA and has moved up in life.

But, there are many who engage in chai or pakoda economy out of ‘no choice’ or as fall back arrangement when formal employment is lost. Many formal textile mill workers took to the business after their mills closed in Ahmedabad. Or new migrants to the city, not finding any employment, start selling things on the street. That is, they are engaged in street trade. Or as our Prime Minister has called them, mini-entrepreneurs, surviving by their wits on the hostile streets; paying the ‘local leader’ (agewan), who could be a vendor or local government official or policeman, for right to occupy street space; honked upon by the motorists or any motorised vehicle driver; breathing the polluted air as all our cities have crossed the limits of air pollution tolerance and often target of eviction drives by the local authorities and consequently not just losing their wares and incurring financial loss but also losing right to work for many coming days after the eviction drive. Ofcourse, street vending means working on streets without access to toilets and braving the summer heat, which is expected to worsen in the coming times due to climate change and expected increase in average temperatures in the cities.

If the pakoda or chai economy is the way forward for India, and for Indian cities, coming from the highest person of the country, it should be facilitated. Instead, urban planning categorizes it as encroachment and hence illegal, as this commercial activity is on land which is not earmarked as commercial. Street vending is on footpaths and in city’s plan footpath is part of the road and classified as road-land use and not commercial land use. Besides, footpath is for walking and rightly so, and not for commercial activities. According to the ‘The Street Vendors (Protection Of Livelihood And Regulation Of Street Vending) Act, 2014 (http://legislative.gov.in/sites/default/files/A2014-7.pdf) which extends all over India, vending spaces have to be provided in the city’s Master Plan.

The street vendors are evicted by the police because, as per the Motor Vehicles’ Act, street vendors obstruct traffic flow and hence have to be penalised. The Indian Penal Code seeks to prevent obstruction of a public way and if done so the obstruction can be removed. The municipal legislation seeks removal or any permanent or temporary structures on streets and goods hawked or sold in public places. Municipal legislation also require any hawking or vending activity to obtain license from the relevant authority. It is not easy to get a licence and often a liscense is given to a person only if vending is the sole livelihood activity of the family. Note the term family is important here. We know that in low-income households, multiple members of a family have to work to remain above poverty line. How can then vending be the sole livelihood activity of a vendor’s family!

So without facilitation, through providing land for business through the implementation of the Street Vendors (Protection Of Livelihood And Regulation Of Street Vending) Act, 2014, making access to toilets in public places, a protected area for vending and increasing their access to finance, how is the pakoda economy to be an answer to lack of other employment opportunities in urban India.