Today, two-thirds of the households in Adarsh Nagar have a water connection and for the remaining—many of whom are recent migrants—the cost of buying water has gone down significantly from INR 1,000 to INR 300 a month. After two years of concerted efforts to acquire the required identity documents and applying for an authorised electricity connection, now more than 350 households have metered electricity connections. Much of this has been achieved in the last three to four years due to the efforts of grassroots leaders like Munaisa Bi who are members of a citizen action group (CAG).

This story is one of many in the M-East ward of Mumbai where a citizenship approach has been adopted to create sustainable communities. These are communities that are in charge of their own development; that speak up about their needs and concerns; that develop the agency to ask for their basic rights without the support of any external stakeholder, such as a nonprofit; and that participate in decision-making on issues that impact them. The process involves identifying grassroots leaders; educating them about citizens’ rights, entitlements, and duties; and collectivising them into CAGs. The collectives meet regularly, map their community, identify issues that need addressing, prioritise concerns for advocacy and action, and assign roles and responsibilities within the group to work towards the common good. Apnalaya, a nonprofit that works with the urban poor, plays a supportive role by providing knowledge, assistance, and mentorship. The critical task of identifying issues and advocating for them rests with members of the community.

What is the citizenship approach?

Adarsh Nagar is an example of the several urban poor settlements that highlight the stark inequalities that persist in urban India. As per the 2011 census, 41.84 percent of Mumbai’s population lives in slums; works in unorganised sectors; lacks adequate housing, quality education, and healthcare; and has no access to social safety nets. This perpetuates a cycle of poverty, limited opportunities, and marginalisation.

The constantly increasing pressure on the city’s infrastructure further de-prioritises the needs of people living in informal settlements. Welfare policies and programmes of the government often fail to reach those who need them the most due to various logistical and administrative challenges.

Evidence indicates that effective citizen engagement models lead to better governance.

A citizenship approach aims at building active citizens in communities by supporting them to develop their skills and knowledge so that fairer and more resilient societies can be fostered. This approach is based on the belief that citizens themselves are the best assessors of their rights, duties, and entitlements. It plays a critical role in advocating and helping make public institutions more transparent and accountable, and in contributing innovative solutions to complex development challenges. Evidence indicates that effective citizen engagement models lead to better governance and improve the citizen–state relationship. This in turn facilitates the co-creation of inventive and impactful solutions that result in better public service delivery.

Here’s an example of active citizenship at work. A citizen collective in M-East ward’s Shivaji Nagar had applied for an escalator at a railway station, to help the elderly and persons with disability, and to reduce the incidence of railway track-related deaths. When the members discovered that plans for the escalator and lift were already on the cards but had been stalled, they identified the bottleneck and rallied for a work order. They then found that the planned location of these utilities was inconvenient for commuters, and requested a change in location. Their suggestion was accepted by the authorities, and construction work is currently underway.

Making the model work

Over the years, we have learned what it takes to sustainably adopt this approach.

1. Planning an incubation period

Organisations working to develop this model in the community need at least two years to build CAGs and help them prepare so that they can take on community-level initiatives. For citizen-led initiatives to succeed, it is imperative to build trust, cultivate ownership, promote inclusive decision-making, and foster collaboration and cooperation in the community, and all these require an investment of time.

2. Motivating grassroots leaders

Keeping CAG members motivated was challenging, especially in the initial stages, because many of them didn’t believe that they could be catalysts for change. Most are migrants who lack identity documents that connect them with Mumbai. This makes them feel that they do not have the right to ask for services or facilities. Moreover, because they are not treated equally, they also lack a sense of belonging to the city. By showing consistent support and belief in their potential, we gradually witnessed a shift in their mindset.

3. Mentoring higher-order skills

Mentoring collectives on higher-order skills such as assertiveness and negotiation, especially in the context of accessing basic civic amenities, proved to be difficult and resource-intensive.

When the municipality, claiming illegal occupation, doesn’t provide basic services to people living in informal settlements, they need to assert their rights and negotiate with city authorities. All Indian citizens have the right to live and work anywhere in the country, and it is the duty of the welfare state to ensure basic amenities for all its citizens.

But assertiveness and negotiation are behavioural skills that take time to develop. When a community believes it doesn’t have a voice, it becomes even more difficult to help them talk about their side of the story. When they learn to negotiate, they understand how to share their problems, use statistics or data to support their point, refer to the rights guaranteed by the Constitution, and also express an interest in being part of the solution. A single negative interaction with duty bearers is enough to bring down their confidence and stop them from taking further action. Therefore, consistent mentoring on being persistent and persuasive is essential to ensure that they don’t give up even when the response is not encouraging.

Teaching these skills requires creating tailored training programmes, real-life scenario simulations, and continuous reinforcement.

4. Ensuring representation

To truly represent the community, CAGs need to have members from all sections of the community— including persons with disability, LGBTQIA members, women, children, the elderly, and individuals from other minorities. This ensures that a diverse perspective is available, which helps in identifying unique issues and prevents individuals with louder voices to control the collective. Women form 80 percent of our CAGs.

5. Moving from simple to complex civic issues

Taking up simpler issues in the initial days helps the CAGs to build confidence, skills, and motivation. As simple civic issues get resolved sooner, the experience of a successful advocacy action with local governance agencies fosters self-assurance and resilience in the community and gives them a tangible sense of agency. For instance, advocating for lane cleaning, street light installation/repair, or pest control tends to have a quicker positive result. Having experienced this, CAGs can address more complex issues—such as advocating for the establishment of a government secondary school or installing lifts and escalators at the railway station for increased accessibility for persons with disabilities and the elderly—with more conviction.

6. Ensuring the community is the decision-maker

The community should play a central role in decision-making processes. Identifying key issues within the community, prioritising them for advocacy, and determining the advocacy agenda and strategies are all decisions made by the collective. CAG members map out their issues and address them based on the severity of the issue, or the number of people affected, or whether it’s simply easier to solve first. Responsibilities are divided based on availability of time, knowledge of the issue, skills required, and interest/need of volunteers (for example, writing letters or filing online complaints). Civil society organisations serve as guides, aiding these collectives in making well-informed decisions. This collaborative approach fosters a sense of ownership and ensures sustainability.

7. Continuously engaging with the collectives

Maintaining continuous engagement with collectives through monthly mentoring meetings is crucial for building their leadership skills as well as providing opportunities to practice and apply advocacy skills in real-life scenarios. These regular sessions serve as a platform for knowledge exchange, skill enhancement, and mutual learning. By discussing challenges, sharing successes, and offering guidance, the collectives gain valuable insights. Moreover, the practical application of advocacy skills in addressing real community issues during these meetings allow members to refine their techniques and develop effective strategies.

Lessons learned

The journey towards community empowerment, though rewarding, is not without its obstacles. The communities and grassroots leaders we support have encountered numerous challenges, but they soldier on. Their journeys reflect an unwavering commitment to improving their living conditions and securing a better future for themselves and others.

*Name changed to maintain confidentiality.

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Know more

• Listen to this podcast on what makes a city liveable.
• Watch Talk in the Town, a series on urban changemakers who are bridging the gap between citizens and governments.

Do more

• Take this crash course on the fundamental rights and duties of an Indian citizen.

Selvi is one of the many people we interviewed as part of a study we undertook in a Bengaluru neighbourhood to understand the gaps in state-initiated repair cycles, which include providing regular upgradation of grid material, and attending to unanticipated breakdown of water motors and pumps. The neighbourhood comprised diverse socio-economic characteristics (caste, religion, language, and income) and built form (incrementally built self-constructed housing and slum resettlement housing). Over the course of 11 months, between 2021 and 2022, we evaluated the infrastructural grids of water, sewerage, and electricity to understand the everyday practices of provisioning and repair and took interviews of key stakeholders involved in this process, be it local residents or technicians. Data was collected using qualitative methods to analyse the infrastructure provisioning story at the neighbourhood level. Below, we share the findings from our research.

State-initiated repair cycles are absent

Repair, as a practice, plays an integral role in the actual delivery of basic services, over and beyond the laying down of infrastructure in a city, and allows this infrastructure to be continuously improved on. However, as is evident from Selvi’s example, state-initiated repair cycles are missing in action. This means that most of the responsibility of repair shifts to households, especially those in low-income neighbourhoods, where the infrastructure grids are often laid down in a ‘compromised’ manner. There’s incomplete coverage, pipe leakages, and limited household-level connections—all of these highlight the need for regular repairs. Families in these neighbourhoods end up spending a majority of their time and money in repairing the infrastructure arrangements themselves or activating their socio-political networks¹ such as contacting plumbers to manage repair. Inevitably, the burden of unconsolidated repair cycles disproportionately impacts women. This is primarily due to their responsibility for managing household tasks in the absence of available infrastructure services; for example, the unavailability of water impacts their cooking time.

Local knowledge is critical for efficient repair cycles

Repair works can be tricky to predict as they are mostly local in nature. In cities, repair cycles are modulated by the valve men when they ‘anticipate’ a type of risk, such as load shedding of the motor pump so that overloading does not burn the motor. Valve men are neighbourhood repair staff who may or may not be on the state’s official payroll. Often, they get credit notes from the municipal government when they have to spend money on any repairs. They are responsible for maintaining the water supply by turning the valve on and off on the grid. Being an integral part of the community allows them to actively engage in repair work.

Support from state actors and collaborating with local workers can help strengthen and streamline the repair process.

Better service provisioning can occur if the state too can ‘anticipate’ the required repairs for infrastructure grids and allocate resources to work along with the communities’ repair requirements. The state can only do this when they recognise the tacit knowledge of the valve men and other field staff and create knowledge-sharing platforms between them and the state officials to understand what everyday repair requires. For instance, procurement of repair material required for the breakdown of water motors can be pre-planned by taking in inputs from the field staff who are aware of the depreciation that these resources suffer, and thus when they would need replacement or fixing. Pre-planning is essential because the process can be time-consuming as it requires coordination among several stakeholders such as the electrician and the valve men, and the repair person would need to source material to execute the repair. When this kicks in after the breakdown of the motor, and not before, getting the credit note from the bureaucracy to purchase the material in itself takes time—making it a week-long repair, when it does not need to be. Support from state actors and collaborating with local workers can help strengthen and streamline the repair process.  

Budgetary allocation for repair work needs to be revised

Funding for urban infrastructure projects usually occurs either through urban flagship schemes, such as the Smart City Mission, Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM), and Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT), or through state budgets. These budgets primarily target building capital infrastructure such as water pipelines, water treatment plants, rejuvenation of water bodies, rehabilitation of old water supply systems, and setting up of sewage treatment plants (STPs). While municipal budgets do include operation and maintenance (O&M) funds, these are usually underutilised or diverted towards building new infrastructure. An assessment of the budget documents of Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) during our research, for example, indicated that the budgeted estimate for the repair and maintenance of water supply assets has reduced by 11.39 percent over a period of eight years. Further, the actual expenditure stands at 21 percent of the budgeted estimate in 2013–14, 20 percent in 2014–15, and 23 percent in 2015–16. The numbers declined even more during the pandemic, becoming 16 percent in 2019–20 and merely 4 percent in 2020–21. This indicates the difficulty in spending on repair and maintenance activities in the event of a national lockdown.

If the main water infrastructure is disrupted and remains unrepaired, communities will be forced to pay exorbitant rates to private water tankers.

In order to streamline repair cycles, municipal budgets must include the cost of material and incentives for the personnel required to fix the disruptions. Additionally, these budgets must account for off-grid arrangements, which marginalised communities are often forced to depend on in the absence of incremental additions and repairs. For example, in the case of water, if the main infrastructure is disrupted and remains unrepaired, communities will be forced to pay exorbitant rates to private water tankers. While there are several stories from the field on the dependencies on borewells, water ATMs, and water tankers, the budget for these off-grid arrangements is often missing. It is crucial, therefore, for municipal budgets to also account for these as repair expenses and allow allocation for provisioning of water through water tankers and water ATMs and repair of local water purification systems.

Local governing bodies must be involved

Since repairs are often specific to local areas, allocating repair funds centrally and maintaining control becomes challenging. Ward committees are better equipped to foresee repair cycles, comprehend ground-level impacts, and collaborate with repair networks for execution. For example, repair staff and officials often belong to the same neighbourhood, making it easier to coordinate repair works. Hence, involving local governing bodies such as ward committees in decisions regarding repair works is essential. This is evident by what we found in the BBMP budget documents where there was considerable improvement in spending on repair works between 2016 and 2019. Actual expenditure reached 36 percent of the budgeted estimate in 2016–17 and a whopping 56 percent in 2018–19. This is because, during these years, new wards were allocated INR 40 lakh each and old wards INR 15 lakh each for annual maintenance and repair activities. In 2021, BBMP has further allocated INR 60 lakh to each of its ward committees; this is an important first step in fiscal decentralisation.

Instead of thinking of repair as an incidental process, one must look at it as a systemic response that holds together the existing infrastructure in cities. Recognising repair practices and decentralising funds for these practices is one possible way of moving forward. Additionally, everyday repair practices—and not just the big capital expenditure—must be accounted for. And this can only be done by enabling collaboration with the communities regularly impacted and working on the breakdown of infrastructural facilities with local governing bodies.  

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Footnotes:

1. These networks are primarily built around individuals who are part of various community organisations and political parties.

Know more

• Learn about the importance of maintaining a public infrastructure.
• Read about how India can build more liveable cities.

Ali is one of the thousands of platform delivery agents who are subject to the gruelling reality of India’s rising temperatures. For him, heatwave warnings and advisories that recommend avoiding outdoor activities, carrying a hat or an umbrella, and drinking hydrating beverages like lassi or torani (a rice-based drink) are impractical. He needs to rush to complete as many deliveries as possible to be able to put food on the table.

The risks of rising temperatures

India is one of the top five countries in the world with the highest exposure to extreme heat. Additionally, Indian cities frequently experience higher temperatures than their surrounding areas. This is due to a phenomenon known as urban heat island effect, which occurs because infrastructure such as roads and buildings in cities absorb and re-emit more heat than natural surfaces. 

Climate change is only further exacerbating both the intensity and the frequency with which heatwaves are occurring. Recent proclamations by the Indian Meteorological Department warning of ‘above normal temperatures’ and scorching summer months ahead are no longer surprising. February 2023 was the hottest February ever recorded, and in 2022 India recorded 280 heatwave days before July.

To combat rising temperatures, the government has devised several heat action plans (HAPs), which are created by states, districts, or cities. HAPs are meant to guide local authorities in preparing for and responding to the risks of heatwaves by establishing a set of protocols. They outline actions such as sharing information with the public and across various departments like health and agriculture as well as developing and building cooler infrastructure. However, a recent report by the Centre for Policy Research suggests that India’s HAPs, very few of which exist at the city level, are neither designed to manage local, context-specific challenges nor are they able to identify and address unique heat impacts for the most vulnerable communities. This is critical because people do not experience the impacts of heat in the same way. Social factors such as poverty, gender, caste, political power, and agency and access to social networks shape how communities experience urban heat. Ali, for instance, couldn’t find affordable housing in Central Delhi, where most of his orders come from, when he moved to the city. And so he was forced to live in substandard housing, made out of tin sheets without adequate ventilation, at the periphery of the city. Neither his home, which can be up to six degrees hotter than the outdoor temperature, nor his workplace, offer refuge from the heat.

Heatwaves and India’s gig economy

Climate-induced risks like extreme heat are a significant issue for gig workers, a sector that is rapidly growing in India. According to a report by NITI Aayog, India currently boasts a contingent workforce of 7.7 million gig workers, a figure that is projected to rise to 23.5 million by 2029–30. Furthermore, BCG estimates indicate that the number of gig workers within India’s non-farm economy is expected to soar to a staggering 90 million over the long term.

Delivery agents in India do not have the choice to turn down gigs or decide which gigs to take and when.

Delivery agents are particularly vulnerable to rising temperatures as they spend long hours exposed to the heat while cycling or riding motorbikes. Without a company-mandated health insurance policy, risks such as dehydration, heat exhaustion, and even heat stroke are often undiagnosed or untreated and can be fatal. Their vulnerability is further heightened by lack of access to shade, water, and restrooms during the delivery process.

Despite this, delivery agents in India do not have the choice to turn down gigs or decide which gigs to take and when. This is because delivery platform companies provide workers with nominal autonomy—delivery riders have limited ability to choose when to work, which routes to take, or even what to wear. Their freedoms exist under the tight grip of algorithmic management wherein algorithms are used to measure and supervise the worker’s movements, routes, time taken to deliver, as well as the delivery ‘gigs’ offered to them. Platforms use surveillance, supervision, incentive pricing, customer rating, disciplinary action, and various other means to push the delivery agent to work a certain number of hours. Workers are often given a limited time frame to decide whether to accept or reject work, which can affect their ratings and future assignments. This results in precarity of income and working hours for the worker, further aggravating the risk of heat stress as they may be forced to work longer hours and prioritise gigs over their own well-being. Moreover, the lack of access to a fair dispute resolution mechanism to contest or appeal poor ratings or unfair rejection of work compounds the difficulties faced by these workers.

In addition to this, the platform model does not build sufficient social trust between the riders, customers, platform companies, stores, and restaurants. This results in workers like Ali having to extend emotional labour and develop relations with stores and restaurants to access cool and shaded spaces while waiting or ask for a glass of water, given the lack of infrastructure provided by the state.

What needs to change?

It’s clear that platforms need to take responsibility for the well-being of their delivery partners. Recently, Zomato established The Shelter Project with the aim of “building public infrastructure to support the entire gig economy”. As a part of this initiative, two rest points have been built in Gurgaon to provide clean drinking water, access to washrooms, first aid, and phone-charging stations. Whether agents can afford to take a break, given the stringent structures of the platform model, has not yet been addressed. With joblessness pushing more people into the sector, the lack of social safety nets for this new class of workers poses significant challenges. 

Therefore, a more holistic approach must be adopted in order to build heat resilience for gig workers. Listed below are some suggestions:

1. Developing more inclusive HAPs: While the impacts of extreme heat are well established for certain domains of work such as that of construction workers, farmers, brickmakers, and street vendors, the vulnerability of platform-based delivery agents is less understood and they are often left out of the category of ‘vulnerable’ populations. This results in actions that don’t necessarily target the needs of gig workers. However, by declaring delivery gig workers as vulnerable to heat stress, HAPs can include actions that directly address their needs through dialogue and various participatory processes, and create improved heat response mechanisms.

2. Creating and enforcing labour standards and social protections: Governments must build a regulatory environment to facilitate change by employers. Currently, India’s Occupational Safety, Health and Workplace Conditions Code, which mandates companies to create safe working conditions for employees, does not include any provisions around climate change. There are no specified guidelines for how employers should create safe working conditions, especially for outdoor workers such as platform delivery workers even in the case of extreme heat. Incorporating climate risks in these guidelines and enforcing labour standards and social protections could be the first step towards creating a safe and healthy environment for delivery riders.

3. Planning for rising temperatures with a focus on vulnerable communities: Indian planners must consider improving tree canopy and vegetation cover, and address gaps in service provision around water availability as well as public seating and parks to ensure Indian delivery agents have access to cooler spaces. It’s essential that planners acknowledge the uneven geographies of risk in cities and deploy infrastructure for the most vulnerable and where it’s most needed. For example, cities such as Baltimore, Washington DC, and Richmond in the United States have mapped urban heat islands and found that the hottest areas are co-located with some of the cities’ poorest communities. Their HAPs then target actions like tree plantations in these neighbourhoods.

4. Restructuring the platform model: Platforms working with delivery riders must be cognizant of the dangers of long and continuous work during heatwaves. They must provide better working conditions, insurance, and social safety nets to workers. This could include covering wages lost due to heat-related illnesses, more transparency around pricing and ratings, and mechanisms to improve and fast-track dispute resolution. By relaxing the strict control that they hold over their riders and by enabling rider autonomy, platforms can allow delivery agents to make decisions that are safer for their health, including taking breaks and detours to access cool spaces and water. Platforms should also consider integrating vernacular micropractices such as wearing cool or light clothing in their operating procedures. Furthermore, they can offer incentives or additional compensation to delivery agents during extreme weather to help offset additional costs and risks associated with high temperatures.

The impacts of climate change are expected to increase the frequency and intensity of heatwaves, making extreme heat stress a significant public health concern for all workers, particularly those engaged in physically demanding, outdoor jobs. Therefore, it is crucial that platform companies, workers, governments, and regulatory bodies work together to develop and implement policies and interventions for the protection of workers’ health, safety, and rights. Effectively addressing heat stress in the platform economy can possibly serve as a model for broader workplace and public health interventions, especially as the climate emergency brings forth newer challenges.

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Know more

• Read this research that highlights how riders develop a ‘tacit knowledge’ of cooling infrastructure across the city to adapt to heat.
• Read this article to learn why it’s important to reimagine welfare delivery for gig workers.
• Read this article to learn why heat action plans in India must focus on reducing indoor temperatures to help mitigate heat stress.

Bengaluru has not had elections for its city council in over two years. The term of the corporators elected in 2015 ended on September 10, 2020. The state government is governing the city directly and has disproportionate influence over resource allocation and administrative decisions. Without corporators in place, citizens are compelled to take their smallest issues to MLAs. The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) waits on the MLAs for every decision.

Srikanth Viswanathan, chief executive officer at Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy, says, “Urban governance is untenable when citizens cannot communicate with first-mile politicians. They are unable to make suggestions and seek redressal and accountability in what should be a self-correcting mechanism. Further, if there is no state capacity, citizens feel that they are wasting their time as officials aren’t delivering. In Bengaluru right now, there’s a palpable sense of status quo. This essentially means that the quality of life is going southwards because population pressure and aspirational pressure keeps growing.”

Sobia Rafiq, co-founder of Sensing Local, an organisation focused on sustainable urban governance in Bengaluru, says people have turned cynical because of the politically fluid situation. “Active citizens are faced with the apathy of a non-functioning system. When people try repeatedly and the officials don’t move or respond, citizens face burnout.”

In many other states, politicians and bureaucrats have learned that they can’t do it on their own in urban areas and need to invest time and resources for partnerships with non-government sectors, including civil society. “The openness with which governments are willing to engage with business, civil society, and academia is higher now than it was 10 years ago. Urban elections are more hotly contested than before and politicians are treating urban problems with more salience. This is leading to islands of innovation and delivery, for example in Odisha, where we work,” Srikanth says.

In Bengaluru, the pandemic presented a much-needed opportunity to reimagine civic engagement. There was an uptick in citizen participation and partnerships between the municipality and residents for contact tracing, testing, and quarantine centres. The municipality engaged actively with communities, resident welfare associations, intermediaries, and civic leaders for collective conversations. Srikanth says, “Historically, public health crises have led to innovations and improvements in urban governance and planning.” Bengaluru, however, has squandered the opportunity.

For civic engagement in urban governance to be salvaged, three factors are imperative: more platforms, better data and awareness, and robust processes.

Platforms

Sobia and Srikanth believe there is latent civic energy in the city. The number of people taking an interest in the development sector is growing across the country. There is a positive shift in the number of young people with a civic mindset and concern for the environment. Students get involved through projects at their institutions. “Professionals who come into the city for work and have been here for only a couple of years are also picking up issues,” Sobia says. Some people are willing to volunteer for audits or to offer technology, skills, or time. However, there aren’t enough exercises structured around capitalising on these volunteers.

Additionally, the size of groups truly engaging with the system is not very large. “There are usually about 150 or 200 in the city. Retired people and homemakers invested in their localities have time and take an active interest,” Sobia says. At ward committee meetings, where residents of a ward can meet with their elected corporator and other civic officials, only a handful of individuals take on issues based on what is most relevant in their neighbourhood. The BBMP constituted ward committees after a rap from the Karnataka High Court in 2017. However, these are yet to function optimally. A citywide collective, Bengaluru Ward Samiti Balaga, is working on empowering them. “The problem is that the municipality and councillors are themselves disempowered, so they see ward committees as competing with them for mind space and resources in their constituency,” Srikanth says.

For inclusive representation at ward meetings, members of marginalised neighbourhoods also need to voice their needs. “Bengaluru has barely been able to deliver services to its slums,” Sobia says. In Odisha, Janaagraha has helped the government set up slum development authorities (SDA) across 115 cities. These SDAs present their requirements to government and civic officials and even become implementation partners.

Awareness and data

Citizens and collectives need awareness, audits, and data to formulate the priorities of their ward and negotiate them with elected representatives and civic officials. Some issues garner more interest among them than others. Recently, for MyCityMyBudget, a participatory budgeting campaign by BBMP and Janaagraha, residents sought better road infrastructure, street lights, sidewalks for pedestrians, and drain maintenance. Organisations say civic conversations are predominantly around traffic, infrastructure, and urban flooding. Solid waste management has evolved over the years in Bengaluru. “Many people have been actively involved in this sector since 2011 and have carried out successful pilots. In fact, some of them have become experts in the field and even share their learnings with other cities,” Sobia says.

Lack of reliable government data limits or skews decision-making at the ward level.

For citizens to envision the big picture rather than treat platforms only as forums for grievance redressal, they need a larger plan that they can align with. Workshops and centres for civic learning, such as the citizen university run by Sensing Local, can help locals to gain foundational knowledge and understand the bigger issues they can influence. They learn to ask where the budget comes from, which government official runs it, what the governance system is, and who they can go to with questions. Structuring and formalising knowledge on civic citizenship makes the learning curve shorter and equips more citizens with the tools they need to interact with the system.

Citizens and collectives also need hyperlocal data. Lack of reliable government data limits or skews decision-making at the ward level. Technology can enable people to collect information from their neighbourhoods. Individuals can use tools, for instance, to measure air pollution at the hyperlocal level. Digitising collected data and making it public raises the bar on the conversation. When citizens go to a politician or the media with the right ask, backed by evidence, it can translate into action faster. “Budgets hold the key for public change. Participatory budgeting, along with ward-level infrastructure measurement, can drive better resource allocation and higher levels of civic engagement and reduce spatial inequity between neighbourhoods,” Srikanth says.

Processes

There are mechanisms to increase awareness among people and provisions for platforms to encourage civic participation. But lack of political will and administrative competence are resulting in discouraging governance processes. For effective citizenship, the first step needs to be taken not by the citizens but by the government, Srikanth points out. Sobia says that for the successful pilot on solid waste management in the city, the nudge came from the municipality. “When the municipality pushed for a larger agenda, we created micro plans for wards and made them public.” There is also an issue with accountability within the system. “We have zonal commissioners in every zone now, and nodal officers for the ward committees. But no one is monitoring if they turn up for the meetings or are being unresponsive,” Sobia says.

The city has not seen a commensurate increase in budgets and workforce.

Bengaluru is approximately 12 times bigger than the second largest city in Karnataka. This makes it different from the largest cities in most states. BBMP is the fourth largest municipal corporation in India. Moreover, the outer areas of the city grew by 200 percent between 2001 and 2011, and have probably grown at a similar rate since. But the city has not seen a commensurate increase in budgets and workforce. Considering Bengaluru has a disproportionate influence on the state’s economy, this resource allocation is far from ideal. “Traditionally, the budgets focused on Central Bengaluru. As the city and municipal boundaries grew substantially during 2001–11, there was a delay in putting in money and staff into the rapidly growing, newly added municipal areas in the rest of the city. Urban planning and infrastructure pay off after a gap. They have a certain gestation period before they deliver better quality of life, especially against the backdrop of rapid urbanisation and economic growth. Sound urban planning and all-round enforcement of plans are prerequisites. The urban flooding that gets exacerbated by encroached storm-water drains and built-over lake beds are examples of consequences of poor planning and enforcement,” Srikanth says.

Even when there is political will, the lack of adequate staff and commensurate skills and competences creates hurdles to effective implementation. “The government does not have adequate workforce. Good government officials are overworked. There is no state capacity to engage with citizens,” Srikanth says.

Bengaluru, like other cities, has its own unique issues. However, it also suffers from the problems most other Indian cities face. Its governance remains fragmented and accountability for delivery diffused. Fragmented governance has resulted in money getting drip-fed into separate civic agencies and state departments, with no cohesive planning, implementation, or accountability. “You have a transport corporation, a water board, and a development authority for planning and arterial roads. There is of course a separate municipality. But a city is not an accumulation of health, education, water, development, and transport. It should be governed holistically as a place and as a community. It is an independent unit of imagination in our minds and should be an independent unit of governance and economy,” Srikanth says.

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Know more

• Read this paper to learn about the active civil society participation in Mumbai’s governance.
• Read this guide on how citizens can engage with the government.

But when we talk about better infrastructure and better facilities, what do we mean? Who takes the decisions about what infrastructure gets prioritised, and how are these decisions taken? And, finally, what sort of infrastructure do India’s cities really need?

On our podcast On the Contrary by IDR, host Arun Maira spoke with Sheela Patel and Ireena Vittal on what it takes to plan and run a well-functioning city, where Indian cities stand, and what they need. Sheela is the director of SPARC, an Indian nonprofit that works with the urban poor so they can get access to housing and other amenities. Sheela has experience both at the grassroots level as well as at the level of national and global policy. Ireena is one of India’s most respected independent consultants and advisers on emerging markets, agriculture, and urban development.

Below is an edited transcript that provides an overview of the guests’ perspectives on the show.

What makes a city liveable?

Ireena: I think I would put the following six [factors]. The first is jobs. A city is investment meeting talent to create economic and social outcomes. So, jobs, [that is,] number of jobs, quality of jobs [is an important indicator]. [The] second is inclusion. [For instance], a city [should] have place for both sides of Gurgaon divided by the highway, for Dharavi and South Bombay. And we need inclusion not as a cool thing to talk about in nonprofit conferences, but as a recognition that the most valuable contribution to society comes from some of our most ill-paid people, whether they are sweepers, or cleaners, or biomedical waste collectors, or peons, or delivery boys.

[The] third is safety and amity. If you’re a person in India—woman or man—you value safety. Amity [is important] because, unfortunately, the whole world seems to be going through some kind of a manthan (agitation). The fourth one would be provision of basic services, whether it’s water, schools, ICU rooms, maybe now even oxygen, sanitation.

I would add two more. One of them is resilience and green…You see what’s happening even in Bombay—the number of days Bombay comes to a stop now every year because of climate change is astonishing. So we need resilience and green. And finally, culture. [It is good] if we are able to feed our stomachs, but there’s something beyond that. And culture is not Bolshoi Ballet; culture is street plays and music and Ganesh Chaturthi. And if a city doesn’t have culture, it doesn’t have soul. So, to me, these would be the six metrics that I would put for liveability in the Indian context.

Sheela: For me, the real transformation in cities that we are looking for is that, while it is a utopia to think everybody will be equal all the time everywhere, increasingly, human rights, social justice [activists are] saying that at least there should be a minimum safety net for all. And the COVID-19 crisis has shown [that this] does not exist at all, both locally [and] globally, urban and rural. But in urban areas, it is very visible. If cities are safe for women and children, if cities serve the health, education, safety, and potential nurturance for young people, then it’s a good city.

What does it take to plan and run a liveable city?

Ireena: I think the process of making a city happen starts with two or three fundamental constructs. One is that citizens don’t know what they want. I spent a day once with the original city planner of Singapore, and he was talking about the early days of how they reimagined Singapore, and he has such a fascinating story. When they were building their public housing, they had a very interesting set of planners. They [involved] urban planners, engineers, historians, sociologists, psychologists, religious people, so they represented all facets of your life and my life. But they had two choices in the way they were designing those big homes that you see in Singapore. You could [either] have all the doors opening onto the corridor or you could have them step up and step down, so it created a sense of privacy. And one of the things that they did was they would test everything…and you know how Singapore tests—it puts it out in retail spaces, and citizens come and then literally write their comments. And he said [that] every time they tested design choices or any infrastructure prioritisation choices, [they] would get 50–50, because people don’t know. So a voice is different from a vote. It’s about aligning people; it’s not necessarily about outsourcing the decision to somebody.

The second piece, in the process of running a city, is to prioritise. And I think at the heart of prioritisation is two things: the economic plan for the city (what kind of talent, jobs [exist]? What kind of quality of life do you want to deliver?) versus the spatial plan for the city (is this a series of cities where nobody will travel more than 10 minutes from home to work? Or is it a longitudinal city? Or is it a vertical city?). Those are very, very different choices.

And then the last piece is resourcing—resourcing in terms of funds, but also in terms of capacity, both to build [and] to deliver.

Indian cities: What’s missing, and what we can do better

1. Looking at the well-being of all citizens

Sheela: The urban geography is now the dominant geography, and investments that we make in cities have to anticipate not only past deficits but also future challenges. Just take the instance of infrastructure…if you know what poor people need…they need security for the place they live in. They need water sanitation, electricity, [and] transport. And they need good-quality food, and good-quality health systems, they’re all connected. Now you have cities, not only in India, but globally, [that] are not able to make the kind of investments that they need…The economic order of our global economy has pushed more and more people into cities to earn cash incomes, [and] we don’t feel responsible to ensure that they have a minimum wage…And if you look at what happened during the COVID-19 crisis, everybody realised how many migrants there are in our country when [they] saw the images of all those people who were walking back because they had lost their incomes—they didn’t even have money to recharge their phones to tell their family. They couldn’t live in the informal settlements where they rented a bed, which is all they could afford…And we are [still] not acknowledging how much the poor are contributing to [everyone’s] survival.

I believe that the proper benchmarking of what is missing, creating clarity of what communities, whether elite or poor, need to do themselves; what the city needs to do; and what the educational system needs to do today, in colleges of engineering and architecture, and planning…But minimum safety nets [for all] is critical.

Ireena: We were doing some work as part of a nonprofit in Bangalore once, at ward-level budget planning…The interesting part of the story was that we were meeting in Jayanagar once, which is a tony neighbourhood of Bangalore. Somebody decided that it had to be a representative bunch of citizens, and so we invited people [from] all sections of society into somebody’s home. What was astonishing was to see how people behaved and, more importantly, what was on top of their mind. The people who came from the slums, or who were from a lower class, sat on the ground, and the person who was leading the effort and came from a different class sat on top of the sofa. While the people sitting on the sofa, and I’m using it, not in a pejorative way, talked about green, cycling paths and better roads, the people sitting on the ground talked about electricity. They talked about safety in the night, they talked about drainage. And so, to me, what you see depends on where you stand. And I think one piece that’s missing in our whole discourse is understanding multiple constructs that live simultaneously and adjacent to each other. If you want to be successful, I think we just need to bring that mindset that we need to serve many Indians, and they all are legitimate. One is not better than the others.

2. Focusing on the execution and delivery, in addition to the planning

Ireena: I think the other point is, think of the construct of a city…You have to think through what a city needs from a long-term point of view and prioritise—should I build a road, an airport, or a power plant—because you have only this much money. You have to then design [and] resource it. Because none of our cities, maybe with the exception of Bombay, are self-sufficient. Even Bombay is not, given the amount of investment… and resourcing means property tax, collecting for water, collecting for power, raising debt, getting a rating, maintaining books of accounts, which most of our cities don’t know how to do. You’ve got to resource it, you’ve got to build it, you have to deliver it. And then you have to manage it—the politics of it, and the society of it…prioritising, designing, resourcing, building, delivering, aligning, and managing politics and social equity. [And] a lot of our conversations are about what needs to happen. We don’t have enough conversations on who will do it, and how [they] will get it done. And that is the piece, the invisible but critical infrastructure that I think our cities need.

3. Ensuring continuous dialogue between different stakeholders

Sheela: There is a need for a huge transformation in all our collective thinking. And for all of us, whether you’re in finance, you’re in business, or we, as activists, we need to reconcile to the reality that we are sharing space in the city, in this planet; we have to start talking to each other. [For instance,] I have learned to talk to business and to municipalities, not because I think that is so smart and strategic. I was forced by [the] community, by the women who are facing evictions…[They told me], ‘If they demolish our homes, you go and talk to the municipality, you go and talk to whoever it is…to the collector, to the government…and find and negotiate for an alternative where we can coexist.’ So there’s a lot of appetite for negotiations [and] dialogue. [What] we need [is] leadership, to have the guts and the courage, both in private [and] public life to listen to what others are saying…You don’t have to do magical things, you just have to make sure that those dialogues happen long before the destruction happens.

4. Enabling citizens to be actively involved in the planning and operation

Sheela: People also have to change. You can’t change other people and not change yourself. The collective nature by which we deal with crisis came up very strongly during COVID-19, in terms of support, in terms of assistance, but it’s always only in that emergency…If communities are able to identify what they need, and they make that representation, together go to the municipality, and the municipality [then] empowers its local ward officials to take this forward, the local machinery begins to work. When the local machinery begins to work, it allows those who are above that to look at the next level. Can you imagine the crisis of a commissioner who gets a phone call saying ‘my drain is clogged’ or ‘I can’t get vaccination’? If he or she looks at that, then when are they going to look at the city-level problems. So we’ve got to create a hierarchy of problems that have to be solved at each level, and they have to be monitored. What we are doing is we’re not only identifying issues, but [the] community [also] monitors them with the local officials and elected representatives, so you have a hierarchy of decision-making.

Cities have skill sets, capacities, systems—we just need to empower them to start with, then the more detailed challenges will come up.

[However], while the local is very critical, there are also things of scientific disruptions and breakthroughs that are necessary at different levels. So I don’t want to reduce their importance and value. The important thing is that it becomes a circle, that with those breakthroughs, for instance, with solar [energy] you can leapfrog the whole energy shortage. When I went to Berlin, and I heard that there were electricity and solar transfers in every household, I thought, ‘When will it come to India?’ But it’s come to India, and we could easily have it cover all the informal settlements, and that would make 30 percent of Mumbai’s energy coming from alternatives. [However, this] decision communities can’t take; [it] has to be taken at the national and at the state level.

You can listen to the full episode here.

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Know more

• Learn more about the major issues plaguing Indian cities and how urban planning can be reformed.
• Read this report to learn more about the concept of liveability and how it can be introduced to Indian policy frameworks.
• Read this report on the constraints to raising private financing for urban infrastructure in India.

For instance, a study in Vienna in the mid-1990s found that boys tended to take over public play areas like basketball courts, crowding out the girls. By dividing large parks into multiple spaces, and creating more female-friendly spaces with benches that appealed to girls who wanted to hang out with their friends, and creating alternative play areas such as badminton and volleyball courts for the girls, they were able to create public spaces where girls could feel as comfortable as boys. Vienna introduced gender-budgeting since 2006—a study indicates that the city carried out more than 60 initiatives using gender mainstreaming, including street-lighting projects, introducing apartment complexes and social housing designed by and for women, and improving the safety of shortcuts and alleyways by installing mirrors.

An architectural firm in Sweden, which engaged with girls to understand why they did not use their play areas as much as boys, found that they wanted “spaces close to other people but not at the centre of a crowd from where they could see but not necessarily to be seen.”

Sadly, the firm realised that they could not think of a single project where a city space had been designed specifically for young girls to use, in consultation with them. Indeed, women typically constitute only 10% of the senior positions in architecture and urban planning worldwide, a grim statistic that tells us why cities are so ill-designed for women.

The bias runs even deeper.

Public datasets that inform planners, such as open source Google Maps, depict cities through a male-centred gaze—most of the entries come from men. Thus, services important for women—such as hospitals, childcare centres, and domestic violence shelters—are often missing.

Women’s activist groups can play a major role here. GeoChicas, a group created in Mexico in 2016, which has now spread to 22 countries across Latin America and Europe, organises mapping events so that women who face gender-based violence in Latin America can get safe, reliable information on where to go for help. Safetipin, an organisation that began in Delhi, uses crowdsourced data from women to develop maps of unsafe areas in cities like Delhi and Bhopal, working with government and non-governmental partners to create safe public spaces for women to access, even at night.

Such feminist approaches, which seek to co-create action for safe cities with women, are starkly different from the typical Indian city administration response to incidents of violence against women, which tend to focus on ‘smart tech’ initiatives like CCTV cameras—ideas that may make women even less willing to come out onto the streets . Instead, simple changes like better street-lighting, and mixed land use, which allow more street vendors to operate, and are preferred by women, are rarely implemented.

Our research in multiple cities across India focuses on spaces of nature, and how they are accessed by different groups of people—men vs women, privileged vs oppressed caste groups, wealthy vs poor, etc.

In Delhi, while conducting surveys of park visitors, we found that women rarely tend to visit parks alone or even in smaller groups.

Safety, security and better facilities for children to play were issues that women sought, far more than men.

Men visited parks closer to their homes frequently, and often alone: for many of the women we interviewed, a visit to the park was a rare outing, done perhaps once or twice a year, in the company of large family gatherings. Safety, security and better facilities for children to play were issues that women sought, far more than men.

In Hyderabad, we found similar issues shaped womens’ access to parks. In general, women preferred to visit smaller parks, where all parts of the park are visible, feeling more secure there.

In large parks, where some areas were isolated, visits by tourists were high, but such parks were less visited by local women residents because of safety concerns. Women also repeatedly said that they had less time, compared to men, to visit a park every day and take out some time for themselves in the midst of endless domestic duties.

Many of them come with their families. As one woman said, “The place I live in has no parks anywhere near, so we come here at least once in six months to have a family outing and picnic. I think these parks should be everywhere.” Another woman said, “I bring my mother here on [my] free evenings. It reminds me how my mother used to take me to parks back in my childhood.”

Yet women also describe how important it is for them to have a social network of people to meet in the park. Domestic life can be rather isolating, especially in cities.

One woman narrated a story of how she escaped from domestic abuse by relying on friends she had met in a park near her home, who helped her reach a place of safety. Others spoke of how their visits to parks made them feel less lonely, less depressed, and less isolated in the city.

This seems especially true for immigrants to a new city, who struggle to make new friends. One woman said, “I am from Kerala. Hyderabad is not green enough for me. I have grown up in forests—I don’t find much connection here. But this park was a major reason for me to buy an apartment next to it. It helps me to survive Hyderabad.” Another had this to say, “My son brings me here whenever I feel like going out somewhere. I love trees and flowers. My son and everyone else are busy in the family. At times they drop me here on their way to the office. I enjoy being here, and rarely get bored even when alone.”

Class, caste, socio-cultural and economic backgrounds shape how women use public spaces too.

Class, caste, socio-cultural and economic backgrounds shape how women use public spaces too—especially spaces of nature. In Indian cities, which are extremely unequal places, even if we crowdsource data for better public design keeping women in mind, we may end up collecting data from women who speak English, who can use apps, who experience the city in one specific kind of way. This can result in other forms of exclusion. For instance, in Hyderabad, women from high-income families supported the idea of parks with ticket prices, as these fees provided money for the park authorities to provide better security, improved facilities and improved maintenance.

But other women said that once parks started charging for entry, they stopped bringing their children daily. When parks became ‘better maintained’, guards stopped them from collecting grass for their cattle, flowers for worship, and dried twigs as fuel for cooking.

They had to rely on informal ‘arrangements’ with friendly guards, or resort to bribes, to collect material from the parks—something that they had done for years before the park became a formally managed, ‘improved’ urban space. One woman said candidly, “We brought our children to the park as their first outing three years back; now the place is very different. It was lot more free and nicer back then. Now the new rules have changed the flavour of the park.”

In Bengaluru, a lake that used to be part of a local village a few years back, has now been gentrified and transformed into a managed urban space with jogging and walking paths. A long-time resident of the village described her former life at the lake. “We used to work and sing songs, we found happiness in it. We kept walking around the lake. It was believed that the Amma takes bath at the lake at 12 in the night, along with many other goddesses—we felt some kind of vibration there. They used to send the women away from the lake after 6 pm. In my village, women used to do kolata (a folk dance with sticks). It would give happiness to us, ease the burden of work and bring us joy. Everyone would give a little bit of their farm produce and collectively do puja and distribute it to everyone in the village.”

Another woman said wistfully, “When the lake filled up, we used to light diyas, sacrifice a lamb, and cook there. We would eat on the banks of the lake and celebrate. We would do the same if we got a good harvest. Whoever had their own land, would use the lake water for irrigation. We used to eat the greens that grew around the lake as well. It was really beautiful in the past. If my husband came home early from work, both of us would go to the lake together. It was beautiful to see. I have only not seen the lake in the past five years.”

Restored lakes are beautiful green spots in the heart of a crowded urban city. But if they keep out the women who used to use these lakes in the past, then such restoration is incomplete. However, the growth of the city has dissolved some of the restrictions that caste hierarchies placed on women from underprivileged castes.

Women from these castes were not allowed to wash their clothes in the lake, but forced to rely on the wastewater instead. They were not permitted to take their cows to the lake bund; today, no one can restrict their access to any part of the lake. Their agricultural lands, wells, even their goddesses have disappeared from the lake periphery, replaced by concrete, high-rise apartments and roads, accompanied by the stench of sewage and the blaring cacophony of traffic.

The physical, tangible erosion of caste ostracisms with regard to the restored lake is progress on one front, while the loss of their shared social-ecological life around it is a step back.

Restored lakes also have migrant workers, who hail from similar socio-economic backgrounds as many women from these erstwhile village communities, who also live around the lake. The former perform similar jobs, either as domestic workers, or construction labour, and earn similar amounts of money. But migrant workers are especially disenfranchised. They live in temporary shacks, without family support, and are moved from place to place by their contractor.

When one of our colleagues asked a woman who lived in a blue plastic tent on private land right next to a restored lake if she ever went to the lake, she burst out laughing, asking if we thought she had the time to go jogging at the lake.

Her children and husband sometimes went to the lake, she said. But where did she have the time to go? When they returned in the late evening after a long day of work, her chores at home began. She had to wash clothes, clean the utensils, and cook dinner for her family. There was no time for leisure.

Children in government schools, which often lack the space and money for playgrounds, cannot access these spaces.

Several of these lakes and parks have schools—often government schools or aided schools, which cater to children from low-income homes—at their boundary. The exclusionary nature of public planning cuts deepest here. Parks are closed from 10 am to 4 pm on weekdays in many Indian cities. Thus children in government schools, which often lack the space and money for playgrounds, cannot access these spaces. Boys may find ways to make up for this after school hours, running free along the roads, and in and out of each other’s homes. But the freedom of girls is much more restricted. They go straight home after school, and stay there for the most part. Closing public parks means depriving them of freedom. Even worse—when parks and lakes are closed during school hours, this means that girls—often menstruating—are denied access to public toilets, and have to hold themselves all day. Forget access to play spaces—when we deny young girls access to basic sanitary facilities, the city shows us its cruellest side.

How does one plan public spaces for all women? Young girls at the cusp of adolescence seek non-judgmental, freeing spaces to be themselves—but are excluded from such spaces by gates, guards and timings. Women from erstwhile village communities have a strong, deep-rooted and sacred connection to lakes, but cannot recognise these water bodies in their new avatar, transformed as they are into landscaped recreational sites with long lists of prescriptive rules. Women from migrant worker families have no time for leisure despite a deep need for it—can there be some way to give them a break in public spaces? And what about the women that the public planner is perhaps most familiar with—from a middle-class or wealthy home, who seeks a place for some solitude and time with families to wind down after a busy day? Even she, who is the most privileged in this set, finds herself deeply disadvantaged in comparison to men. Urban nature, a woman whom we interviewed recently mentioned, was also much valued during the COVID. “So then when we meet up at the lake, we get the opportunity to meet different kinds of people with whom you can develop different kinds of interest. Somebody’s into singing, somebody’s into cooking, somebody’s into sewing. A kind of informality connects us there which carries away the daily distress in your minds—especially in these extraordinary times. And I think it’s very important to have that kind of informal chats and discussions because we look forward to that, considering so many other complexities.”

The world has a long way to go in planning its cities, its public spaces, to be women friendly. But India perhaps has the longest journey to make. We need to find more ways to bring women’s voices out strong and loud, in collectives—without privileging one type of woman over another. Otherwise, we will continue to leave half the population out of consideration.

This article was originally published by The Third Eye.

In Nagrika’s research over the past few years we have often asked the question: Where are the citizens’ voices? More often than not, we’ve found that the role of citizens in city affairs is not institutionalised and is systemically missing. More recently, we’ve focused on understanding where and how urban citizens can provide inputs to influence the world around them and how they are represented at various levels of government. We synthesise some of our key findings in this article.

Why do citizens need to engage in urban governance?

According to the World Bank, citizen engagement is a “two-way interaction between citizens and governments or the private sector that gives citizens a stake in decision-making, with the objective of improving development outcomes”. While there is no constitutional definition of citizen engagement, India’s structure as a representative democracy includes the participation and engagement of citizens in its governance by default. 

Citizen engagement is particularly critical in urban settings because of the sheer diversity and density of cities. The benefits of an engaged urban citizenry are multifold:

• It can play a crucial role in identifying urban challenges as well as in providing perspectives that can help design better solutions.
• Engaging citizens can also help municipal authorities better understand the needs of communities, resulting in more inclusive programmes.
• Being part of the governance process creates a sense of agency, ownership, and belonging among citizens that affects how they engage within their communities.

India’s urban development programmes post Independence were initially largely top-down and did not have much space for citizens. In 1992, the 74th Constitutional Amendment Act created room for citizen engagement in urban governance through ward committees. A ward committee is a body comprising an elected representative along with citizens where ward-level plans and projects can be worked on collaboratively. However, it was only in 2005, through the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) that these provisions were operationalised. The city development plans prepared under JNNURM required citizen participation in the form of public consultations. These efforts, however, were met with limited success. More recently, initiatives such as the Smart Cities Mission and the Swachh Bharat Mission have extensively focused—at least in policy guidelines—on engaging citizens when designing programmes for their cities.

How do citizens participate in decision-making?

On taking a closer look at spaces that engage citizens, we find two types: invited and created. The former refers to when authorities or institutions decide to ‘invite’ public views or participation in some form. Various non-governmental organisations and citizen groups try to make the most of these invited spaces and, at the same time, ‘create’ their own spaces—usually to solve self-defined problems. One example of this is when the citizens in Mysuru came together to protest against a ropeway project that was leading to the felling of trees.

While both invited spaces and created spaces have always existed, they have been evolving in recent times.

The changing nature of invited spaces

1. Representation of smaller cities

Representation of smaller cities has increased in the newer urban programmes. Almost 45 percent of the cities under the Smart Cities Mission have a population of less than 5 lakh—this number was around 25 percent for JNNURM.

We are also seeing the demand for ward committees growing in Tier-II cities. Through citizen-led efforts, Mangaluru has been able to get ward committees elected for all its wards. Similarly, there are efforts and demands in cities such as Hubbali and Coimbatore to provide representation through ward committees.

Additionally, as spaces for citizen engagement get digitised, small- and medium-sized cities have been more successful than metro cities in engaging people owing to greater ‘civic intimacy’ between citizens and their cities. Small towns and cities possess many of the essential components needed for stakeholder-led governance—stronger social ties, frequent interactions, and social norms that are centred around civic participation. Small cities also tend to have a better representative-to-citizen ratio, which enables better communication between the two parties.

2. Informal to formal

The inclusion of ward committees in the 74th Constitution Amendment Act was an attempt to formalise citizen participation in urban governance. Despite this, for years, engagement has continued to be informal and ward committees have not been created mainly due to disinterest on the part of governing agencies.

More recently, while a few cities are focusing on revitalising ward committees, newer urban programmes are also creating formal spaces of engagement. For example, as per the Swachh Survekshan toolkit, a key criteria for the city’s ranking depends on inputs taken directly from the citizens. Based on this mandated institutional provision, the 2022 Swachh Survekshan gathered citizen feedback from approximately 1.14 crore citizens from 4,355 cities.

3. Offline to online

Historically, citizen engagement was undertaken through traditional in-person means such as surveys, focus group discussions, and interviews. Over the past decade, this has slowly evolved into using technology to enable citizen participation. National, state, and city government departments as well as private bodies have been using information and communication technologies to design large platforms for encouraging citizens to ‘discuss and do’. 

These newer technologies are enabling dialogue between governments and citizens through open discussion forums, creative competitions, polls, and surveys. At the national level, the Government of India has created MyGov.in, a platform for citizen engagement. Alongside this, many cities have been using technology to involve citizens in decision-making too. For instance, when finalising the designs of an entertainment and commercial project for the city, the Vijayawada Municipal Corporation launched a website and created social media accounts to gather public opinion.

4. Passive to active

Traditionally, communities have passively provided feedback on issues, and only when asked. In recent years, a growing focus on public participation has seen a shift from passive feedback to active engagement and consultation. In these consultations, citizens are often engaged early on to provide their inputs at the initial design stage of the programme.  

For example, through the Streets for People Challenge, more than 1,800 design professionals, students, and other organisations came together to develop and test creative solutions to reclaim streets for the general public. The challenge received inputs from more than 60,000 citizens through surveys, and over 600 civil society organisations extended their support to cities.

Similarly, Church Street in Bengaluru was temporarily pedestrianised in an initiative led by the Directorate of Urban Land Transport that involved local residents, businesses, start-ups, and the Department of Tribal Welfare. The authorities conducted a public consultation, facilitated permits to let businesses use streets, allowed participation of start-ups, and curated cultural events in accordance with COVID-19 protocols.

The evolution of created spaces

1. Traditional media to social media

Traditional media such as newspapers or signature campaigns are some of the oldest platforms used by citizens to communicate with their governments. Citizens and civil society have used such campaigns to ask for fare reduction in bus services or demand the extension of transport services. Neighbourhood groups such as resident welfare associations have convened meetings and raised issues through media to voice their demands and concerns such as increased traffic.

Social media is steadily becoming a key space created by citizens to appeal for services from their government departments. This has forced even city governments to be active on it to communicate with citizens. For example, citizens have used Twitter campaigns to raise grievances while commuting, memes to point out flaws in government projects, and social media campaigns to raise awareness about greener mobility modes. Citizen groups are also coordinating activities such as heritage walks through social media and at the same time using it as an informational bridge between the government and the citizens.

2. Reclaiming public spaces

Over the last decade we have also seen the rise of placemaking—a process where citizens or voluntary organisations attempt to claim public spaces while drawing attention to important issues faced by citizens. One of the early examples of this is Raahgiri Day, an open-street initiative to restrict automobile use on the streets of Gurgaon and to turn them into recreational spaces for the public. More such efforts have been under way in various cities, where they are led by media groups and nonprofits, among others.

3. Litigation and protests

Although less common, citizens also use litigations and petitions as bottom-up approaches to influence urban governance. In 2006, a coalition of resident welfare associations in Delhi went to court to defend their neighbourhoods against what was seen as degrading informalisation, which led to the infamous Delhi Sealing Drive. Recently, the steel flyover project in Bengaluru was cancelled due to protests by citizens.

What steps can be taken to increase citizen participation?

1. Bridging the gap between created and invited spaces

Both created and invited spaces provide an opportunity for citizens to voice their opinions in decision-making, and a convergence between the two seems to be the logical way forward. The CITIIS project, for example, has included a ‘stakeholder engagement plan’ in the design project schedules, which also requires identification and meeting with relevant stakeholders. Similarly, citizens and citizen-centric organisations need to be constantly aware of the points of entry that exist and that can be created to make their voices heard.

2. Engagement at more stages

Though overall levels of engagement have increased, we’ve observed that citizen consultations are mostly limited to the beginning of a programme and are not continued through the project life cycle. There were few to no examples of governments engaging citizens once a policy or programme is implemented to get their feedback on its utility or challenges.

3. Looking beyond the 74th Amendment Act

Even after 25 years of the passage of the 74th Amendment Act, its aim remains unfulfilled as most states have not been able to institutionalise citizen engagement through ward committees. One new approach is making funding for certain projects conditional on engaging citizens in the process. CITIIS projects, for example, mandate a one-year maturation period which requires stakeholder engagement and feedback during conceptualisation, even before a project design can be tendered.

India’s cities are diverse, and citizens living in these cities have equally diverse needs. Making citizens a part of the governance process can help ensure that our cities grow sustainably.  

Pranjal Kulkarni and Oishika Basak provided research support on this article.

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Know more

• Watch Talk in the Town, a series profiling city-based changemakers who are bridging the gap between citizens and governments and thus ‘creating’ spaces for engagement.
• Read this article on making urban planning work for smaller cities.
• Watch Small City Dreaming, a documentary film about the working lives of young people in small cities in India and Indonesia.

Do more

• Identify the ward councillor from your ward and approach them for raising local issues.
• Add more local knowledge about your city on Wikipedia to expand its reach to citizens. Learn more about this initiative here and write to the authors at info@nagrika.org in case of questions.
• Use the MyGov platform to identify areas where you as a citizen can contribute, such as providing comments on policies and taking polls.

Beyond the contribution to sustainability goals and targets, low-carbon urbanisation can also provide economic and social co-benefits for Indian cities. Studies have shown that the adoption of carbon-neutral strategies can spur job creation in local government and the private sector in the Indian context. Furthermore, reimagining urban public spaces provides an opportunity to make cities more inclusive and resilient. For instance, the city of Melbourne is strategically investing in planting thousands of diverse species of trees and plants in parking lots, along boulevards, and even on rooftops. This investment is not only creating urban green spaces for sequestration, facilitating water resource management, and reducing urban heat, but is also creating common community spaces and aiding with improving people’s long-term health.

The challenge for Indian cities

While cities across the world are pledging carbon neutrality and adopting strategies to mitigate emissions, there are multiple challenges for Indian cities to commit to low-carbon transitions.

1. Rapid urbanisation

India’s tremendous urban transition demands a radical transformation of the built environment, transportation, and energy sectors in cities. According to the 2011 census, India’s urban population has grown by almost 32 percent in the past decade. Projections further indicate that between 2014 and 2050, 400 million people will move to cities. To ensure that cities are not locked in to unsustainable trajectories, they must decarbonise their systems. However, the capacity of cities to implement these changes is bound by current planning processes, which are in turn limited in vision and scope.

Cities are currently governed by statutory master plans, city development plans, service-level improvement plans, and city sanitation plans, which rarely include visions for low-carbon futures and are made without adequate public participation. As a result, urban climate action has often piggy-backed on local development priorities through unique projects and not through integrated planning. For example, a study of 59 city plans in India found that only 10 percent have incorporated climate strategies. In fact, poorly planned urbanisation is resulting in emissions growing faster in India than in other countries. Research shows that a 1 percent increase in urbanisation translated into a 0.24 percent increase in emissions in India but led to only a 0.12 percent increase in emissions in China.

2. Limited capacities

Cities are not equipped to drive climate action independently. There is no formal mandate for cities to produce or finance climate action plans, even though local actions are most effective at fighting climate change and building resilience. Limited devolution of urban governance means that central and state priorities influence how cities implement climate efforts, as local bodies are dependent on them for policy directions and funding. There is also limited capacity within local governments to imagine low-carbon transitions as city managers of line departments and town planners often lack technical knowledge about climate change.

In recent years, capacity gaps have been filled by non-state actors, often through collaborations with consultants, researchers, and global donors. Yet, this has resulted in local climate action being driven by private rather than local needs and a relatively experimental approach to addressing climate impacts through projects without addressing governance and long-term planning. For example, business communities in Surat were able to lobby and direct adaptation efforts to an industrial area that was at risk to flooding and sea-level rise. However, these processes were informal and highly exclusionary as regular citizens and the urban poor were rarely informed or included in decision-making processes around climate adaptation.

3. Lack of climate-friendly urban policies

While existing initiatives such as the government’s Climate Smart Cities Assessment Framework benchmark cities on the basis of their climate actions, most urban schemes still do not adequately mainstream climate action or decarbonisation strategies. For example, the Smart City Mission and the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Transformation (AMRUT) encourage cities to invest in non-motorised transport infrastructure, waste management, green and energy-efficient buildings, and solar energy. However, they are only advisories and cannot be enforced.

In order to transition to low-carbon urban growth trajectories, planners require information about population, economy, urban growth, and associated emissions.

Moreover, these schemes are neither accompanied by financial incentives nor are they tailored to accommodate capacity building for city-level officers. As a result, several of our large urban policies are not actually climate friendly. And even though they provide the much-needed infrastructure, they have negative externalities. For example, Bhopal’s Smart City project to redevelop T T Nagar involved the cutting and planned translocation of a large number of trees, activities which are likely to exacerbate future urban heat island effects and air pollution.

4. Insufficient data and evidence

In order to transition to low-carbon urban growth trajectories, planners require information about population, economy, urban growth, and associated emissions. Unfortunately, data collection, especially about industry and sector-specific greenhouse gas emissions, is at a nascent stage. This is due to limited capacity in government bodies to generate timely and spatial data. Siloed governance also plays a role as it doesn’t create channels for data sharing and coordination between departments. 

What needs to change?

With much of India’s urban infrastructure yet to be built, there is an opportunity for Indian cities to address challenges in governance, coordination, data systems, and capacity to make a low-carbon trajectory both possible and achievable. Here are six important aspects that cities must focus on to plan for low-carbon transitions.

1. Adopting a systems approach

Emissions in cities are driven by systems that transcend local boundaries and jurisdictions such as energy, economies, infrastructure, and transport. A systems approach therefore becomes crucial to adequately address regional emissions. It takes into consideration the interdependent nature of urban structures such as infrastructure, land use, local economies, and environmental systems, and how people interact with them. By adopting a systems approach and working across governance scales—cities, districts, and states—mitigation strategies can have a greater impact.

2. Strengthening local government capacities

City officials need to be trained on climate-sensitive urban planning so that these principles are reflected in the projects they commission and implement. They must also have the autonomy and skills to manage future risks, provide basic services, and plan sustainable infrastructure and green jobs locally. While several capacity-building projects such as those under AMRUT already exist, they need to be tailored to cater to local government needs. In India, officials in Tiruchirappalli, Udaipur, and Vadodara are being trained on climate-resilient planning and infrastructure, but these efforts too need to be scaled.

3. Prioritising integrated planning

Spatial planning plays an essential role in influencing the way cities are built, and therefore is a key factor to consider when talking about urban emissions. Sprawling cities with separated land uses encourage private vehicles and aren’t sustainable. Compact and mixed use development, on the other hand, can help reduce emissions. Cities where residential and commercial services co-exist can cut down travel time and minimise energy and land consumption.

Visions for low-carbon futures need to be local and participatory.

Furthermore, planning that incorporates nature-based solutions and blue-green infrastructure can help reduce pollution and mitigate emissions through sequestration while improving community access to public spaces. For example, the city of Buenos Aires has transformed an urban landfill into a nature reserve by restoring a local wetland and greening the dumping site. This reserve is now not only a public space for residents but also an investment towards climate resilience, as the reservoir helps mitigate flooding in the area. Additionally, the restored wetland has great potential to store carbon.

4. Tailoring plans to address local environmental contexts

Visions for low-carbon futures need to be local and participatory. While planning, this also means taking into account the implications of low-carbon transitions on livelihoods, local economies, and more.

5. Institutionalising frameworks for data collection and sharing

Data from various agencies, including central and state agencies such as the Indian Meteorological Department, electricity departments, and other parastatals, must be shared with planners and urban decision makers in a timely manner. This will enable cities to take decisions that are informed by reliable local data instead of planning in response to central diktat.  

6. Creating space for coordinated government action

Innovative governance approaches need to be put in place so that the various city-level agencies can coordinate their approaches. Urban living labs, or spaces that bring together government, policymakers, and residents on key thematic issues to facilitate discussion through workshops, can help in addressing institutional silos. Globally, these urban living labs take varied institutional forms and are initiated by governments, universities, and civil societies. In India, they have the potential to address several challenges by localising solutions, working with multiple stakeholders, and addressing siloed governance.

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Know more

• Learn more about what low-carbon development of cities looks like.  
• Learn more about the importance of applying a climate lens to urban planning.
• Read this article to understand what India needs to achieve net-zero status by 2070.

Do more

• Explore what your city is currently doing to reduce emissions and build resilience to climate risks on the National Institute of Urban Affair’s Climate Data Observatory.
• Contact your city mayor to understand what city projects are in the pipeline and discuss how they can be more climate-sensitive.

Given these facts, an urban employment guarantee (UEG) scheme is imperative to provide livelihood security for the urban poor. The parliamentary committee on labour had recently recommended instituting a scheme in line with the MGNREGA, which would offer income support during lockdowns, mandatory health insurance, and an increased number of maximum work days. Jharkhand, Himachal Pradesh, and Odisha already experimented with versions of UEG during the 2020 lockdown, and Kerala has had one since 2010. Although varying in scope and design, each of these schemes at its core has a shared policy framework that guarantees minimum wage employment to all who demand work for a stipulated period. Reports suggest that this has benefitted a significant proportion of the urban poor.

Gig workers, or platform workers, are increasingly providing crucial services across urban areas as cab drivers and couriers delivering food, groceries, medicines, and other essentials. Therefore, it’s important that we include them in discussions around formulating UEG schemes.  

Why should gig workers be included in UEG programmes?

Digital platforms such as Ola, Uber, Zomato, and Swiggy are credited with heralding a new age of entrepreneurship, autonomy, flexibility, and formalisation. Despite their booming expansion, the very people who make these platforms work have not been able to reap the benefits of their success. Public dialogue shaped by gig workers has highlighted the dark underbelly of the exploitation and vulnerability they’re subject to. Due to low base pay, incentive-based payout structures, high commissions, and arbitrary surveillance systems that gauge work quality, these workers spend long hours under hazardous conditions, working or searching for work. Moreover, their status as ‘independent contractors’ forces them to bear several other costs associated with purchasing fixed assets and fuel, without any legal claims to social security benefits.

Despite these layers of precarity, platform workers remain ineligible to claim social security under existing schemes.

Even though workers such as delivery partners were deemed to be providing essential services during the pandemic, platforms reduced incentives and changed payment structures, causing many to earn less than minimum wage for 12–15 hour work days. Many also lacked access to insurance, safety equipment, and affordable healthcare. Research on delivery and taxi-driving sectors has shown that platforms rely on a pool of migrant workers from historically dispossessed communities who already had severely limited claims to social security during the pandemic.

Despite these layers of precarity, platform workers remain ineligible to claim social security under existing schemes, even ones with the most significant coverage such as the PDS. In the case of the PDS, exclusion may have resulted from outdated definitions of urban poverty—households eligible for PHH ration cards under the National Food Security Act must not possess four-wheeler vehicles or internet-enabled laptops/computers. There are other restrictions on families that possess two-wheelers. This immediately introduces barriers for delivery workers and taxi drivers, who have to self-invest in many of these assets, often by entering into long-term debts, to sustain their livelihoods. These workers, apart from ride-hailing drivers, also did not explicitly figure in any of the targeted relief packages offered by governments. Such conditions pushed many workers into chronic debt.

The Code on Social Security 2020, for the first time, recognised platform workers as eligible for social security benefits, albeit with many limitations. It fails to recognise these workers as employees, and also introduces several exclusionary eligibility criteria for social security benefits. More importantly, the code fails to uphold the accountability of gig platforms beyond a nominal mandatory contribution to the gig workers’ social security board. Other labour codes, as already implemented, do not mention platform work/workers, thereby precluding their rights to minimum wage, occupational safety, and decent work. Even as gig workers’ organisations continue to struggle to achieve legally enforceable protection, their inclusion in UEG programmes could serve as a step towards short-term measures that safeguard rights. But how can this be done?

Reimagining urban public works

Public policy responses during the pandemic have encapsulated an expanded imagination of ‘public works’. Urban infrastructure systems were expanded through state–platform partnerships to enhance access for under-serviced neighbourhoods and regions. For instance, the Delhi government partnered with Swiggy to deliver cooked meals to migrants living in temporary shelters during the lockdown. In another move, governments also tied up with Ola and Uber to provide free transportation facilities to frontline workers.

However, these works are rarely included within considerations of ‘public works’ under UEG proposals. Employment in UEG proposals is mainly prescribed under work commissioned by urban local bodies (ULBs); within this framing, platform workers would be forced to work in manual jobs such as building, repair, and renovation. Many are also attracted to ‘professional’ designations. Therefore, manual work as currently proposed under UEG schemes may be unattractive for many gig workers.  

1. Addressing on-demand service needs of public institutions and recognised employers

Given the intention to universalise coverage to all who demand work, gig work—particularly in transportation and delivery sectors—should be explicitly covered within these proposals. This can be achieved by experimenting with the experiences of public institutions such as hospitals and government offices, who relied on platforms for their service needs during the pandemic, ranging from logistics, last-mile delivery, and mobility. Jean Drèze suggests that other publicly recognised employers such as schools and colleges could be involved in the governance and implementation of the UEG scheme. Many of these institutions have capacities to meet their service needs through engaging gig workers, including demand for services such as cleaning, disinfection, and repair and maintenance of assets.

2. Ensuring flexibility

The promise of flexibility in terms of determining one’s own work and working hours remains a central attraction of gig work. Despite this, research on platform labour has pointed out that this flexibility is seldom instrumentalised due to gamification of work through incentives, ratings, and algorithmic manipulation.

However, lessons from some of the current UEG models can be adopted to restore flexibility and control over work outcomes while expanding coverage to gig workers under UEG schemes. For instance, Drèze’s proposal to cover both part-time and full-time work to accommodate women’s unpaid care responsibilities may be applicable to gig workers. Furthermore, several existing measures under state programmes, such as Kerala’s AUEGS, which stipulates the provision of work within a five-kilometre radius, could be experimented with. The provision of affordable, quality, and subsidised public transport facilities to UEG job stamp holders through partnerships between states and non-motorised ride-hailing workers is a way in which daily wage workers, such as rickshaw pullers and tuk-tuk drivers, can be covered under UEG schemes.

3. Anticipating benefits and challenges

Employment under UEG stipulates payment of daily minimum wages. But, like many informal sector workers, gig workers have been excluded from such legal assurances under the Code on Wages 2019. Employment guarantees could be a way to combat insecurities associated with dynamic and piecemeal earnings. As proposed by Drèze’s model, allowing worker collectives to be engaged as placement agencies might offer a solution here. These collectives could set wage floors to ensure that invisibilised costs related to platform work are appropriately taken into account.

The inclusion of gig workers within UEG proposals cannot be a substitute for regulatory measures that enforce safeguards.

ULBs can also consider partnering with platforms in the form of placement agencies for job cards issued by them. This would mean that all workers registered with the platform immediately become eligible for UEG benefits. This must be done alongside setting wage floors and dissociating incentives and work availability from gamification tools such as ratings. These measures will help tackle multiple challenges that gig workers routinely grapple with, such as information asymmetries, dynamic pricing, and insecurities related to earnings and long working hours, while ensuring availability of minimum wage work. Such ULB–platform partnerships have already emerged during the pandemic and prevented platforms from unilaterally reducing wages by stipulating base pay rates and limiting platform power to charge high commissions and supervise quality of service provision. 

4. Ensuring minimum wage considerations

 Currently there is no clarity on how gig workers’ wages are determined. Swiggy, for instance, has categorised wages for delivery workers under three heads: per order pay, surge pay, and incentives. Another major determinant of earnings is commissions, which most platforms charge for each task (delivery/trip/haircut), ranging from 10–35 percent. To replicate the elasticity of minimum wage considerations according to states, development zones, industry, occupation, and skill levels, there is a need for comprehensive public data on earnings and payment structures, which is currently available only with platforms.

Worker unions have demanded that minimum wages be pegged to the number of hours worked in a day, where working time will be calculated by accounting for all time-rated factors, such as waiting time, commute, and total time taken to complete shifts. While many of these considerations are complex, they are important to determine fair unemployment allowances in cases where such forms of employment guarantees become more feasible.

The inclusion of gig workers within UEG proposals cannot be a substitute for regulatory measures that enforce safeguards such as minimum wages, occupational health and safety, and decent work. Nevertheless, as experiences from other countries have shown, enforcing such regulations is a long-term process, particularly against the global tide towards greater flexibility and labour precarity. In the interim, schemes such as UEG could be particularly rewarding for gig workers while paving the way for universal social protection. As we continue to debate the shape that the UEG programme should take in India—whether it should be framed as an employment generation scheme or as a scheme that provides unemployment insurance—we must remember to include gig workers in these discussions.

Aditi Surie, Aayush Rathi, and Ambika Tandon provided critical inputs to this story.

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Know more

• Read this symposium of articles published by leading policy experts on the urban employment guarantee scheme.
• Read this report by the Center for Sustainable Employment at Azim Premji University about a national urban employment guarantee scheme.
• To understand gig workers’ access to social security and institutional policy responses to their vulnerabilities during the COVID-19 pandemic, read this issue brief published by CIS and IT for Change.

Do more

• Follow the work of gig worker unions such as the Indian Federation of App-based Transport Workers (IFAT) and the All-India Gig Workers’ Union (AIGWU) to ensure social protection for gig workers. 
• Follow and support this public campaign on employment guarantee. 

The failure to plan for such transformations often creates pockets of social, economic, and ecological deprivation in cities. This ‘urban distress’ takes many intersecting forms such as poor-quality housing, inadequate infrastructure, poverty, and pollution, which affect the development of the city as a whole.

In developing countries like India, two intersecting factors can explain urban distress. The first is increasing socio-economic vulnerabilities among city dwellers, which are a result of economic inequality, lack of universal access to basic amenities, lack of social security, the threat of climate change–related disasters, among other reasons. This is compounded by a second factor, which is the limited capacity of local bodies to adapt to emerging issues in both small and large urban centres. Therefore, successful progress towards the Sustainable Development Goal 11 on sustainable cities and communities and the New Urban Agenda requires deep urban governance reforms in India.

Urban distress looks different across metropolitan cities and small towns

Successfully addressing urban distress through governance reforms first requires acknowledging that it plays out differently in cities of different sizes. Take for instance Chennai, a megacity in Tamil Nadu with a population of more than 7 million, and Sitamarhi, a small town in Bihar with a little over 100,000 inhabitants. Both cities doubled their population between 1961 and 1981. And although they are different in terms of size and economic importance, both cities have experienced a slowing rate of urbanisation. Between 2001 and 2011 Chennai added only 0.3 million inhabitants, while the total population of Sitamarhi decreased due to changes in the city’s official boundaries. Further, both cities have struggled to manage their urban growth, and a large section of their populations lack access to basic amenities. Around 63 percent of Sitamarhi’s total population lives in slums. Chennai on the other hand has been struggling with scarcity of water and frequent flooding in recent times.

Though there are similarities between the cities, the reasons behind their distress is different. The lack of adequate housing in Sitamarhi is a result of systemic neglect of deteriorating living conditions in small towns by governments at all levels. Even though there is a need for more housing, the city has been sanctioned only 3,400 houses under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojna. Out of these only 470 have been completed. Under the scheme, INR 510 million was sanctioned to Sitamarhi, of which only INR 160 million has been released. In Chennai, on the other hand, rapid urbanisation led to an increase in its total built-up area from 29 percent in 1991 to 64 percent in 2013. This caused overexploitation of groundwater and loss of wetlands and water bodies that acted as a natural sink against flooding.

Smaller towns and cities are often unable to access adequate resources.

In spite of these differences, policies and plans to tackle urban distress are often built around the needs and requirements of metropolitan cities. As a result, smaller towns and cities (non-million plus statutory towns)—where 43 percent of India’s urban population lives—are overlooked.¹ This means that smaller towns and cities are often unable to access adequate resources, thus limiting their ability to upgrade and expand urban infrastructure as they grow. Additionally, the lack of technical knowledge and organisational capacities among the administration in small towns is a bottleneck for optimal utilisation of already scarce resources. This hinders a city’s ability to attract investments, which in turn affects the living conditions for a majority of its population.

The unique problems of census towns

Across India, villages are urbanising rapidly. These rural areas that have urban characteristics such as a minimum population of 5,000, at least 75 percent of the male main working population in the town engaged in non-agricultural activities, and a population density of at least 400 persons per square kilometre are being reclassified as census towns. According to the 2011 Census, nearly 15 percent of the country’s urban population lives in census towns.

However, despite these areas being functionally urban, they continue to be governed as rural areas (rather than municipalities) by panchayats. This raises a question: How should we address urban problems—relating to urban infrastructure such as streets, water, electricity, and waste management—in towns governed by rural systems? Using a rural development and governance framework for census towns can heighten distress and limit their access to schemes and finances available to urban areas. This can significantly hinder their growth, if special attention is not attributed to them in urban policy. 

In most cases, urban growth will outpace the adaptive capacity of the urban governance system.

Take for instance Oggiyamduraipakkam (Thoraipakkam), a census town near Chennai that has a total population of 75,000, which is larger than many towns in Tamil Nadu. Despite the majority of the population engaged in non-farming activities and the town having urban infrastructure, it continues to be governed as a rural area, leaving it vulnerable to water scarcity and lack of other civic amenities.

Moving beyond a one-size-fits-all urban governance framework

In most cases, urban growth will outpace the adaptive capacity of the urban governance system and distress will continue to persist to a certain extent. However, by expanding our understanding of urban distress to include how it manifests in smaller towns and cities, we can help bridge the gap between urban growth and governance. To do this we need to improve the adaptive capacity of urban local bodies in both small and large urban centres so that they can keep up with the rapidly changing urban landscape in India.

Improving the adaptive capacity, especially in smaller cities, will involve:

1. ensuring universal provision of public infrastructure in urban areas
2. integrating resilience in urban areas to ensure better preparedness against disasters and climate shocks
3. shifting the focus from poverty alleviation to redressing vulnerability
4. mobilising investments from the private sector

Achieving the New Urban Agenda and the SDGs requires a specific focus on geographies and patterns of vulnerabilities that emerge from the current urbanisation trends. Understanding urban distress in the many contexts in which it occurs is necessary for urban governance systems to sustainably manage growth, improve adaptive capacity, prioritise interventions in which constrained resources are optimally allocated, and help cities to build back better in a post-pandemic world.

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Footnotes

1. Based on the authors’ calculations from Census 2011 data.

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Know more

• Learn more about participatory slum upgradation and delisting efforts undertaken by the Government of Odisha.
• Explore Nagrika, a platform covering citizens voices for and from small cities in India.