What is Right for the City or Right to the City: Criticality of Citizenshipand Governance?

Kumar, M. S. (2021). What is Right for the City or Right to the City: Criticality of Citizenship and Governance?City Prosperity and Sustainability. Routledge.

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Download date:08. May. 2022

What’s Right for the City or Right to the City?

Criticality of Citizenship and Governance

Dr. M. Satish Kumar, FRGS, RCS, FHEA Director of Internationalisation

Engineering and Physical Sciences School of Natural and Built Environment

Queen’s University Belfast Belfast BT7 1NN

Email: s.kumar@qub.ac.uk

Future of Cities: Opportunities and Challenges Session- Citizenship and Governance

New Delhi- 27-29 July 2017

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What’s Right for the City or Right to the City: Criticality of Citizenship and Governance

Abstract

Amidst all the scramble of global investment capital, climate change and SDGs, there is an explicit nod toward the exigency of getting cities to function right. ‘Political deficit’ has characterised the urban development literature across the emerging and the developed economies. This is largely reflected in the absence of engagement across civic and community groups in dealing with proposed changes being orchestrated in the cities. For example, the announcement of Belfast to Bangalore, Deyang to Surat and Durban to Rio De Janeiro as the Rockefeller Foundation sponsored ‘Resilient Cities’ is a case in point. At the same time, the UN Habitat III- Urban (2016) has mandated to ‘Leaving No One Behind’. Getting the city to engage with urban managers have become a challenge towards inclusion and cohesion of city policy framework. The challenge is for maintaining distributional justice and at the same time managing the integrity of the metropolitan cities. This paper will seek to establish the key contours of critical urban development debates by drawing examples of urban governance and citizenships globally. Getting the social, the cultural and the political right is a key challenge in framing the principles of trust and collaboration within the framework of cities. Therefore, situating the local in the transformation of urban governance is critical for the cities of India. Keywords: Subsidiarity, participation, citizenship, civic engagement, sovereignty, managerialism and entrepreneurialism, civic society and civil society

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Biography Dr. M. Satish Kumar works collaboratively within the School of Natural and Built Environment at Queen’s University Belfast. As a specialist on India, with more than 27 years of experience in the higher education sector, he has taught in JNU (New Delhi) and the University of Cambridge, Soka University of America. He was the founding Director of Queen’s Academy India and is currently holding charge as the Director of Internationalisation. He has contributed to internationalisation strategy, partnership development and the management of external relationship with India. He completed a Visiting Professorship at Jawaharlal Nehru University and at the University of Calcutta. Over the last 8 years Dr. Kumar has engaged in Queens University's Strategic Planning and Development for Higher Education Partnership in India. This led to key contributions to internationalisation strategy and partnership development and the management of external relationship. He is a member of the South Belfast Partnership Board and is currently engaged with the regeneration opportunities for the City of Belfast. He established the Young Civic Leaders of Northern Ireland (2014), which is focused as a space for the youth to design and define their own city. Currently he is the founding Member of the Royal Irish Academy National Committee of Future Earth Ireland and is a Member of AHRC Peer Review College and Newton Global Challenge Fund. He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, and Fellow of Higher Education Academy. Dr. Kumar has worked across social sciences, humanities and sciences. He was awarded the Queen’s University Teaching Award, (2014) and the Bhoovigyan (Earth Scientist) National Leadership Award, India (2002). He has published extensively across multidisciplinary themes with a global perspective. His key publications among others are: Colonial and Postcolonial Geographies of India, (eds.) Saraswati Raju, M. Satish Kumar and Stuart Corbridge. Sage. 2006; Globalisation and North East India: Some Developmental Issues (eds.) A. Dubey, M. Satish Kumar, N. Srivastava, and Eugene Thomas (Standard Press, New Delhi) 2007. His current research relates to the role of communities in the management of their heritage and cultural resources in the context of global developmental challenges.

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What’s Right for the City or Right to the City: Criticality of Citizenship and Governance Introduction Kautiliya’s Arthashashtra and its relevance to urban governance and citizenship Kautilya’s Arthashashtra (c.300 BCE- 300 ADE) provides a key insight to the settlement history of Indian subcontinent. It presents us with perspectives relating to urban planning, rural-urban relationships and the spatial organisation of early Indian city-states. The central message is that sovereignty overrides all aspects of existence in this period of time. Have we today taken our sovereignty for granted? “The King, the minister, the country, the fort, the treasury, the army, the friend and the enemy are the

elements of sovereignty”. Arthashashtra, Bk, VI Chapter 1. Here Samrajya and Rajneeti are deeply imbricated in this scheme. Shamasastry, the librarian of the Mysore Government Oriental Library in 1905, first brought this text to the attention of European orientalists. The entire collection of manuscript was then translated by Shamasastry and published between 1915-1967. The textual evolution of this incredible manuscript since c 300 BCE provided a fascinating insight into more than a millennium of settlement history of the Indian subcontinent. This document provides a rare insight into the nature of Indian city-states, the traditional architectural images that highlighted the form and function of cities, the relationship between the town and the country (before the advent of 74 Amendment of our Constitution), and the evaluation of resources to the city. The urban geographical significance of this work is hugely significant for our current analysis. The Arthashashtra suggests the following hierarchy of central places, viz: “There shall be set up a ‘Sthaniya’ (fortress of that name) in the centre of eight hundred villages, a

‘Dronemukha’ in the centre of hour hundred villages, a ‘Kharvatika’ in the centre of two hundred villages and a ‘Sangrahana’ in the midst of a collection of ten villages”.

The ‘Sthaniya’ becomes the royal-fortress/ capital city of a kingdom comprising of eight hundred villages and a total population that can be estimated of half a million. There is evidence of other such hierarchies in the context of market towns or Pattana and of religious/ pilgrimage centres. What we observe is that the identity of the village was distinct to that of the urban centres. Today in India there is a rapid blurring of such distinct boundaries. The functions of the city or Sthaniya were geared towards servicing the administrative functions, and the needs of the royalty, the priests, the army, and the enormous bureaucracy, which was the administrative arm of the ruler or the executive. The city acted as a collection point for taxes, and other forms of revenue (GST) with much of it in kind from the rural areas. Arthashashtra focused on the sophisticated behaviour and conduct of town dwellers and with the government or ‘Shashan’. The countryside was perceived as a resource base with its own functions and traditions. It was from here that wealth and power was derived, an area to be governed and taxed. Life in the city was governed with by a series of byelaws aimed at achieving an orderly urbane existence. Pollution of the streets, tanks, temples, or places of pilgrimage was punished by large fines (much before the Swacch Bharat Abhiyan of today). There were strict fire precautions and thousands of vessels were kept at strategic points in the city to prevent fire and destruction. Strangers could be accommodated in the city, however their presence had to be registered with the city officer. Yet another precursor to Foreigners Regional Registration Office (FRRO) today!

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At the same time, unauthorised squatting or the emergence of slums in the city was forbidden. The key point of Arthashastra was the emphasis on Good Citizenship, of Civic virtues and any deviance was reported to the King for action. The question for us today was how and why did this orderly urban existence descend into informality and chaos as seen today. The blame for the demise of good citizenship, of intrusion of informality in urban spaces can be directly attributed to the colonial imposition on the subcontinent. The early science of town planning-Manasara Silpasastra and the Arthashastra provide clear perspective of how traditional Indian cities functioned before it descended into unorganised chaotic existence of anarchy and spatial disorder. The ideas of ancient town planning were then exported to cities of Sri Lanka, Myanmar, and in South East Asian countries or Borobudur in Bali and the Indus valley civilisation in Mohenjo Daro and Harappa. The ideals of Arthashashtra provide the opportunities that existed and what we lost in the process. Today we find higher levels of informality, which tends to undermine rational planning for the cities. Land use management has created a plethora of unsavoury practices where private speculators vie with public management, and individual entrepreneurs. As recorded by Ghertner (2008) notes almost all of Delhi violates planning and building laws at all times thereby enabling unauthorised settlements within the national capital region. The violation is also transposed across fragile ecological zones across the riverine belt of Ganges and Yamuna. Successive governments have provided amnesty for this purposive violation of urban and rural spaces. This is directly an outcome of the democratisation of urban spaces in India and goes against the very principles highlighted by the Arthashashtra and Manasara Silpasastra. Informality, which is at once disembodied, usurps ideals of sovereignty and power and legitimises corruption and violation of city planning principles. Here the collusion across diverse stakeholders makes a mockery of that which is legitimate and legal. Such a dissonance is articulated when we consider how “governance is prescribed” by our master plans and how “governance is finally inscribed” by such informality (Chatterjee, 2011). Such a vagrant violation of states sovereignty has become part of the sub-continental tradition within the south Asian region. Thus, the progress of the urban and the rural region is held hostage to such forms of informality, which in effect subjugates norms of justice and development or Vikas for all. Deregulation has become logic for endorsing corruption, and inefficiency to be embedded into the urban systems. This calls for an insurgent citizenship (see Revanchist City, Neil Smith, 1996) whereby exclusionary versions of the civil society needed to be overturned. This resonates with the Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call of Sab Ka Sath and Sab Ka Vikas. Such an idea can only be realised by strengthening the role of sovereignty, of civil society to not just endure change via governance and regulation, but also to ensure sustainability of policies and programmes in urban India. Urban India seeks a quality of life, which cuts across all divides. We cannot sweep the symptoms of poverty and homelessness out of sight under pressure from city managers and elite urbanites and business leaders. Moving into the 21st century has progressively ushered in the complexities of becoming a largely urban century. This is distinctly different from the past, which followed one revolution after another, from the Enlightenment to the Renaissance, from the Industrial to the Service, from the ICT to beyond the Clouds. The patchy urbanisation of the Global South of the mid nineteenth century has given way to an urban revolution of today- a ‘planetary urbanisation’ (Brenner and Schmid, 2012). There is an urbanisation everywhere, of everything. The structural features of this shift in urbanisation is the critical move from port-dominated urban development on the 18/19th centuries to one where there is increased proliferation of inland city development, enabled largely by transportation revolution and securing of new raw materials from previously inaccessible spaces. In this sense cities have become critical ecosystems for the implementation of new forms of initiatives in the transformation and securitisation of resources. The top-down urban policy intrusions are met with bottom-up civic resistances, of alternative visions. In all of this the significance of sovereignty, of governance and citizenship have become deeply influential towards informing change, of success or indeed failures. Urban spaces are held to account

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for successful deliberation of this new change in a globalised-neoliberal era. Inter-urban competitiveness is now the embedded mantra for all cities of India towards sustaining economic growth and prosperity. However, subversion of established norms of urbanism by quotidian actions of the poor and disenfranchised continues to remain a major threat. These are direct challenge to India’s economic growth and sustainability, of emergent urbanism emanating from exclusions as a result of deepening inequalities and disparities across the rural and urban divide. Acts of ‘insurgent citizenship’ (Holston, 2008) of ‘occupancy urbanism’ because of ‘speculative urbanism’ have erupted at different times across cities in India. The concern is with participatory, collaborative urban planning in India. The spatial ordering of urban space is deeply embedded in the concept of ‘neoliberal city-making’ engineered by the developmental focus of the state. Urban then is as much a ‘spatial’ as well as a ‘political terrain’ (Oldfield, 2014, Bunnell, 2013). Charting the path for social transformation, which will allow each citizen to become relevant and productive calls for understanding the nature of urban restructuring in India. European Model Cities versus Indian Cities In terms of the current debates on urbanisation the term European cities have become synonymous with Barcelona Model, Copenhagen Model or Amsterdam- the ‘Just City’, as exemplars of urban excellence. Can we think of cities in India, which have become exemplars for the region? To my mind, we have not moved beyond the 19th century characterisation of Indian cities and remain mired in centuries of obfuscation of our inherent greatness. What is this European City? This is taken to describe a socially equitable form of urban society. It highlights good public transport, high-density living, a balanced social structure and a progressive policy towards redistribution of wealth. Such a city is in key contrast to the great American cities denoting significant class-based segregation and sprawl (Lawton and Punch, 2014). With globalisation and increased neoliberal interventionist policies, urban governance is increasingly being geared towards making cities relevant to attract elusive global capital (Boyle, 2011). Making city attractive is closely linked to the idea of ‘place-making’, where urban design is marshalled to facilitate increased consumption (Gospodini, 2002). ‘European City’ therefore is tagged as being entrepreneurial in form and function. It is an efficient and equitable urban space for all, being a dignified, harmonious middle-class ideal (Montgomery, 1998). However Indian cities by contrast is high unequal, tension-driven and spatially and socially fragmented. The critical infrastructural reconstruction of Indian cities is an attempt to reach this goal. A more socially and environmentally sustainable urban order called for a normalisation of an entrepreneurial spirit, thereby increasing urban competitiveness and efficiency. Here the social and the political mediate to diversify immanent urban revolution. Thus, critical urban reconstruction moved hand in hand with the imperatives of redevelopment and regeneration of urban spaces. Cities in India are being reimagined, redesigned to meet global imperatives. The trigger was the Commonwealth Games, which India hosted in 2010. Today the ideals of urban development, of urbanism are transferred from one state to another, from one region to another. Re-designing the city has major implications, socially, politically, economically and environmentally. Sustainable urban communities in India will only come of age if there is in existence high quality of urban public space and design and mixed-use development among other things. Urban design helps to regulate behavioural norms in urban space (Helms, et al., 2007). While for centuries, the quality of the urban environment has been an outcome of economic growth of cities; today on the contrary, the quality of urban space has become a prerequisite for economic development of cities. Urban design has undertaken an enhanced new role as a means of economic development” (Gospodini, 2002:60). So, while we may have ticked the box of diversity Indian cities are

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yet to become exemplars of inclusion and democracy at the grassroots level. This was because decisions are still largely guided by city managers via the multiple layers of bureaucracy. This trend appears to become less rigid particularly within the new political dispensation, where jostling for political mileage across the multiple layers of the city has become far more competitive across various political jurisdictions. Models of inclusion and democracy are upheld as exemplars by the dominant city discourses as reflected in the recent municipal elections of Delhi city. Streets, ‘Mohallas’, and ‘Mandis’ are places where ideals of ‘Vikas’ are regurgitated to ensure compliance and acceptance. Fostering an urban civic realm as undertaken by the NDA government is unique and departs from a more civil society or an NGO oriented approach of UPA, II and I. The future of Urban India is determined by such a civic realm, reinvigorating the design oriented-urban-space discourse. This helps to reiterate and reshape the place marketing or urban space marketing rather than expending energies towards dealing with deep inequalities and muted tensions, which persist in the urban arena. Neither culture nor politics is a neutral entity in Indian cities. As we move forward, the critical awareness of the complexities of our cities will get increasingly normalised to meet the demand of place marketing and urban competitiveness. Political fix, design fix, social and cultural fix to urban problems and challenges will reinforce the spirit of both ‘managerialism and entrepreneurialism’ (Harvey, 1997) in the Indian context. To move forward, Indian urban renewal need to override the semiotics of colonial identities and ethos in policy and planning discourses. Communicative urban democracy is deliberate and discursive (Barnett, 2011). The Central Government continues to remain the key driver for such urban entrepreneurialism. State governments need to move out of the overdependence on the Central government to carve out their own niche towards urban prosperity. The local city/ Municipality Councils will need to get into the game and take a more pro-active stance in pursuing and experimenting with developmental goals. By including all affected persons into urban decision-making will enhance the civic functioning of cities and promote the democratic potential of urban India (see Amin and Thrift, 2002; Barnett, 2014). Governing Urbanism The term, governing urbanism has been in currency since the 1980s. According to Swyngedouw, (1992; 2005), “Governance is an arrangement of governing beyond the state (but often with the explicit inclusion of parts of the state apparatus). Organised as [apparently] horizontal associational networks of private (market), civil society (usually NGOs) and state actors”. The ever-changing relationship between the civil society (NGOs) as parastatal entities to project manage activities on behalf of the state was a norm since the 1990s, until the advent of NDA government. Today civic engagement and participation continues to challenge the power and resource base of civil society in Indian cities. This has challenged the most taken for granted notions of rural-urban, private and public domain of interaction. Urban governance is undergoing small and incremental changes in the Indian context. However, the issue of illegal or informal versus legal and formal land use dealings remain intractable. “Informal spatial practices affect the representation of spaces in Delhi’s Master Plan” (Narayanan and Vèron, 2018: 2). Here informality influences the formal representation of space (conceived space) via the Master Plans. Informal spatial practices thus become critical in reinforcing the criticality of civic citizenship, engagement and governance. Urban informality remains an abiding theme in Indian urban studies. Here the role of the state in the over conceptualisation of urban informality since the 1970s has effected a systematic marginalisation and by extension oppression of the vulnerable sections of the population in the city (Narayanan and Vèron, 2018; Roy, 2011 and Baviskar, 2003). This also reiterates the negotiations around conflicts orchestrated between the state and its citizens (Bhan, 2016; Ghertner,

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2015). It draws out ‘governance as inscribed’ (Chatterjee, 2011) by Master Plans, municipality bylaws, city development and regeneration plans and policies. Here informality is legitimised to allow a modicum of accidental and discursive flexibility to the marginalised groups in the city. In effect, urban space is divvied up as slums, planned and unplanned colonies, having or not having access to site and services, i.e. jugghis, jhopadhis, and chawls. Informality thus emerges as a by-product of formal planning instruments in a city (Bhan, 2013). This has more to do with the ruptures witnessed in the formalised planning machinery, particularly due to unplanned spatial incursions and which has to be accommodated within a democratic frame of reference for the Aam Aadmi, or commoners. Informality thereby coexists with the formal planning structures in India (AlSayyad, 2004; Sen, 1976). Indeed, collective rights can only be empowered by recognising and reinforcing civic citizenships in a city. Thus, urban policymaking is highly politicised and challenging in the best of circumstances. There is a constant rhetoric of whether instrumentalised urban policy needs to distance itself from established notions of redistributive and egalitarian objectives and instead focus on the elusive investment and efficiency protocols to meet global competition in order to remain within the IMF and Ratings Agency league tables (MacLeod, 2011; McCann, 2017). The revised mantra of partnership was largely subsumed under the notion of re-education and reorienting non-performing assets (NPAs) in the public sector. The private sector was left to its own devices to redeem itself. Partnership was historically organised through the civil society was not civic based. It involved public agencies, private sector, minus the community groups in the regeneration and redevelopment activities. Engagement of the community groups or the civic groups was a non-starter and reflected little by way of the democratisation of urban policies. The challenge therefore is to protect against the depoliticisation of urban governance model in Indian cities. Urban restructuring “involved rescaling the nexus between urban and state restructuring” (McCann, 2017:316). The call is for a regional or ‘territorial scope for urban governance’ (McCann, 2017: 316; MacLeod, 2011) which goes beyond the municipal limits. Accommodating the imperatives of globalisation and of neoliberalism in the context of Indian cities is a novelty with little precedence. Hence there is the desire to Look East, from Shanghai to Chongqing or to Beijing. We see the entrepreneurialisation of urban politics gradually gaining hold in the cities of India. Success of this urban politics will largely depend on the restructuring of relations between the public and the private and indeed of the civic. It will be guided by the essential reconfiguration of the labour market, of the built environment and the social composition and the aspiration of the youthful generation. Employability and skill development is key to providing a sustainable benchmark for urban development. Indeed, the rise of governance may provide much for the civil society or NGOs, however, without the participation and partnership of the community, without civic engagement, progress will be less than perfect and will be out of sync to the national aspiration and goals. As Kautilya noted in his Arthashashtra, that without reaffirming the principles of sovereignty, of rights and duties, without embedding the critical ethos of citizenship, urban governance and development will be a non-starter. This will involve the family, the community, neighbourhood, the ‘biradari’, and the social networks critical to the success of governance and progress. It will enable active and responsible citizenship through participation (Senol, 2005). It will enable ‘grassroots empowerment’ (Swyngedou, 2005; 1992) as a Civic Society, distinct from the Civil Society or NGO, without which there will be a ‘democratic deficit’ (Swyngedou, 2005; 1992). We need to articulate citizen’s or civic society’s relationship to governance to prevent authoritarian and undemocratic portents being unleashed in urban spaces. Thus, who is included and who is excluded? What are the mechanisms for accountability, legitimacy and representation in the cities and towns? Today we need to go beyond the structural features of urbanisation which has been flogged to a pulp since 1947 and focus on the critical questions of

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urbanism, or identity, participation, partnership, citizenship, sovereignty within a civic society. The social reproduction in urban spaces has been squared with the spatial reorganisation of urban centres. Contestation in Indian Cities Since the 1991 there has been a dominant shift from egalitarian policies towards increased utilitarianism in urban policies. This was largely propelled during the run up to the hosting of the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi, where beautification of the city image also resulted in re-designing of the city infrastructure. This metrofication of the city of Delhi has now rolled out across the metropolitan centres, targeting infrastructure bottlenecks and in the process regenerating the city fabric. The modernist vision of the city has given way to the concept of connectedness and efficiency. The makeover of the cities of India continues with some regions/ states showing higher levels of efficiency. The policy rhetoric oscillates between re-development versus regeneration of urban spaces. The romanticisation of grassroots urban movement has run its steam and today these are morphed into strategic NGOs or civil societies increasingly dependent on the payouts from international and national agencies. The demise of identity-based movements as decried by Shatkin (2014:3) was unsuccessful largely because it remained a non-civic activity. Effective Governance and Citizenship The need for effective urban governance and citizenship is possible only by reinforcing or even reintroducing the critical civic society. Such a civic society would cut across the middle class divide, going beyond a simplistic bourgeoisie and non-bourgeoisie city as reported by Ghertner (2011). State engineered urban enterprises are strategically aligned to corporate agenda and endorsed by the middle-class sensibilities of the city. There is a normalisation of urban aspirations today of living in the city across class, religious and ethnic lines in India. Urban symbolism is a status enhancer and a source of power for the urban citizens. This new emergent urban vision is not just imposed on the urban space but is also normalised as an effective basis of identity. New economic opportunities in the cities and towns have propelled new forms of economic and political alignments again cross cutting the traditional divide in the city (Shatkin, 2013:8). The politics of the poor, of the politicians, of the bureaucrats and indeed of the middle class and the elites have transformed the rules of engagement in the cities of India. The boundary between the legal and the illegal (Ghertner, 2008; Vidyarthi, 2008; Shatkin, 2013:10) or formal and the informal in the terrains of the Indian city remains blurred due to lack of effective regulation of laws and bye laws. The power base and power structure of Indian cities are highly fractious and unstable as witnessed during the rounds of municipality, national and state elections. Indeed, civic intervention is critical in such matters. This calls for trusts and collaborative planning in urban India (Kumar, and Paddison, 2000). Citizens’ involvement in the city will accelerate urban action. Consider the following options:

Civic society engagement will lead to stronger and effective plans for the city. Civic society engagement and stronger and effective plans will lead to higher rates of implementation of proposals made in plans

The choices that planners make about civic engagement will affect the degree to which all stakeholders participate in the making of urban plans.

These being assured will enable the achievement of democratic principles of planning to be embedded into the city fabric (see Arnstein, 1969; Day, 1997; Fainstein and Fainstein, 1985; Pelletier et al, 1999). Here the incorporation of local knowledge into urban consultation and planning is exceedingly useful (Innes, 1998). This will ensure that no one is left behind. It will propel the stakeholders or civic society to take ownership and control of their urban futures and imaginings (Burke, 1968; Ethridge, 1982). It will

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also provide the much-needed checks and balances in terms of corruption, nepotism, from elected officials and city managers, and will enable the creation of new alliances sometimes cutting across party political lines towards a common and sustainable urban goals and vision (Crieghton, 1992; Innes and Booher, 1999). This will also address the decline in citizen’s participation in urban development plans and policies. Public action will entail new alignment and new politics. Civic engagement strategies in urban spaces in India call for the incorporation of both a transactional and a transformational urban engagement (Bass, 1990; Bowen et al, 2010). The former is based on ‘giving back’ through community investment and the latter is more proactive corporate engagement strategy through listening and sharing of ideas and interests. Rural-urban binaries and competing logics

Changes in terrain have taken place through neoliberal urbanism where rural productive agricultural land has been taken over for new urban spaces. Harvey (2003) describes this as “accumulation by mass dispossession” to create rapid capitalist growth. The state governments are “bound hand and foot” to serve the wants of the company through land acquisition procedures, tax exemptions and guaranteed resources such as water and power (Nair, 2015). As a result, local spaces are transformed to meet this neoliberal agenda and urban governance is manipulated to meet the demands these capital enterprises. Whilst the rich benefit, the poor and marginalised are left as vulnerable victims of the rural-urban binary. Therefore, cities become arenas of ‘neoliberal localisation’ because local governments legitimise top-down performance regimes while shifting responsibility for outcomes back on communities and individuals (Blanco et al., 2014; Davies 2011; Fuller and Geddes, 2008). This highlights the competing logics within the city and how local governance prioritises the goals of competitiveness and efficiency over the needs of the local citizens (Geddes, 2014). It shows how neoliberal policies favour capital, especially foreign capital, over labour. This method of marketing the city provides a justification for the use of eminent domain to acquire land for business development and to achieve entrepreneurial urbanism. For example, the Bangalore-Mysore Infrastructure Corridor project resulted in mass displacement of local residents as 20,193 acres spread over 141 full villages and 52 part villages was required (Nair, 2015). These poor and marginalised were mute victims of this process of land acquisition, striped of their basic human and civil rights. They were forced to sell their land at low prices to the government even though the same land will then yield large amounts of global capital returns. Yet this was all part of India’s ‘master plan’ neoliberal agenda which promoted one sector of the economy as the engine of rapid accumulation resulting in the disinvestment from other sectors such as the rural (Goldman, 2011).

Similar cases have occurred in China where a 2005 survey found that land takings had increased more than 15 times over the last 10 years (Zhu et al., 2006). For example, land needed for urban development such as a new international airport and mega projects for the 2010 Asian Games was taken from rural citizens on the periphery because it was easier and cheaper to acquire (Lin et al., 2015). Consequently, these marginalised rural landowners were dispossessed as governments chased global capital and tried to rebrand their city as a competitive world city by hosting these international events. This highlight how neoliberalism has failed to provide adequate living conditions and civil rights for these marginalised groups. In relation to this, Harrison and Heeley (2015) demonstrate how economic competitiveness in the face of a new neoliberal agenda has increased spatial inequalities because there is a tendency for a ‘spatially selective, city-first’ approach. Shucksmith (2008:63) described it as cities being the ‘locomotives’ of economic development whilst rural areas are the ‘carriages’ being pulled along in the wake of the great modern metropolis. This prioritisation of the city’s needs over the rural needs has led to “an endless game of eviction and encroachment” (Bhattacharya and Sanyal, 2011:42).

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Challenge of governance in urban India There is a governance deficit along with a political deficit in urban India and this coupled with chronic infrastructural bottlenecks making urban sustainability a misnomer. The spatial divide between cities and within cities is glaring and affects competitiveness and efficiency of the sector. The urban local bodies which though numerous have varying capacities to deliver effective programme. Even within a highly centralised capital city of Delhi these deficiencies are acute. Political, spatial and regional complexities along with social and cultural differences all create enormous institutional and jurisdictional bottlenecks thereby thwarting efficiency and promoting logjams. There is a distinct absence of cooperation and of competition in these urban spaces. Post liberalisation of 1991, decisions became top-down and local and civic participation and engagement was non-existent (Kennedy, 2007; Gandhi and Pethe, 2017). The civil society in the form of multitudes of NGOs stepped in to orchestrate a semblance of order and delivery in the absence of any formal structures towards community engagement and participation. Urban is still seen as a disparate congeries of spaces with little or no integration across the board. The political imperatives of multitude of stakeholders constantly increase the level of attrition of the functionality of key urban institutions. As a result, there is under resourcing of urban services, e.g. public libraries, slums up gradation, etc. Cities continue to exist on drip funding thereby losing its ability to finance the aspirations of the urban citizens. Private developers in collusion with public officials deliberate on rent seeking exercise thereby leading to increased informalisation of urban development. Urban governance, despite the 74 Amendment has been ‘rescaled’ (Gandhi and Pethe, 2017:56). The question is how far are policy solutions for urban areas structurally similar? Perhaps the answer to Sivaramakrishnan, (2015) prognosis is that the elegant model works well when we put the people/ community of the equation. While the 74 Amendment Act recognised the Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) and Metropolitan Planning Committees (MPCs), yet the principles of collaborative planning or indeed advocative planning remain a non-starter. The needs and preferences of the citizens, of the civic society remain largely neglected. Here the experience of Belfast City in Northern Ireland is worth considering, especially after coming out the protracted 50 years of armed struggle between the Protestants and the Catholics. Belfast Partnership Boards The first step undertaken was to set up the Belfast Partnership Boards on the lines of enforcing key institutional arrangements to secure engagement across different religious, ethnic and political partners. The focus is how to secure the future of urban citizens across all constituencies. The partnership board has been tremendously successful in securing the urban futures of its citizens with the political endorsement in areas of urban regeneration and development. All key capital projects are not just vetted by planning permission but is also sought to address critical civic concerns, i.e. from connected health, to ICT reach, to smart city initiative and to inclusive housing, etc. Avoiding pitfalls from the European City model European model cities are focusing on ‘smart connected resilient place’ designed to secure their future against risks of flooding and climate change, supporting green infrastructure networks, management of solid wastes, development of robust public transport, and creation of renewable energy systems (Cutter, 2016). Although the emphasis is on the wellbeing of the population, resilient city concept has taken an engineering resilience approach to its policies (White and O’Hare, 2014). Social networks empower communities to be resilient through common interests to shape their own futures. These relationships are strengthened though the trust and collaborative planning of policy-makers, aiding the city to become a resilient place (Kumar and Paddison, 2000). Successful community integration will

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help to establish a ‘thriving and well-connected neighbourhoods’. Three key principles of Habitat III are worth considering.

1. The first principle of Habitat III is about ‘leaving no one behind’, through ensuring equal opportunities in a socioeconomically and culturally diverse population by promoting education, food security and access to basic services, alongside eliminating violence (United Nations General Assembly, 2017, p.5).

2. The second principle is about creating a sustainable and inclusive economy, through ensuring high productivity, innovation and work for everyone by promoting equal access to ‘decent’ jobs and secure land tenure (United Nations General Assembly, 2017, p.5).

3. The third principle is about ensuring environmental sustainability by promoting the use of clean energy, the protection of biodiversity and the adaption to climate change, through adopting a Smart City approach that promotes the integration of the social and the ecological land functions (United Nations General Assembly, 2017, p.13).

Leave No One Behind- Preface to a New Urban Agenda for India Cities are products of human creation and a measure of the progress of our civilisation. Cities were emblematic as sites for healthy, prosperous, peaceful living. Now with more than half of the humanity now living in urban areas it becomes incumbent on academics and practitioners to respond to the key challenges associated with the 21st centuries most transformative trends. While opportunities have multiplied, it has also resulted in rising inequalities coupled with critical environmental and socio-cultural challenges. By 2050 the world urban population is expected to double thereby making urbanisation one of the most transformative trends in human history. The fulfilment of Sustainable Development Goals in this context becomes far more relevant and critical. As of now the Indian city plans remains uniquely silent on the SDG goals and promotes a largely investor and developer driven vision of the city.

The New Urban Agenda as endorsed by all nations in Quito acknowledges that culture and diversity are sources of enrichment and contributes directly to the sustainable development of cities. Here culture and by extension heritage matters for cities, which are rapidly being cosmopolitanised beyond the traditional blue and green, divide. Empowering the communities to play a distinct role in helping meet with the sustainable development initiatives is critical in this regard.

“Habitat III” is shorthand for a major global summit, formally known as the UN Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development, held in Quito, Ecuador on 17-20 October 2016. This conference was organised to ‘reinvigorate’ global political commitment towards sustainable development of towns and villages. It sets out a global urbanisation strategy for the next two decades. The ideas are to bring together key stakeholders and actors to define and action on policies, which have key implications for the future. The New Urban Agenda, which was announced, sets the framework on how cities should be planned and managed to promote sustainable urban development. This 2030 New Urban Agenda- ‘Leaving No One Behind’ is built around the Sustainable Development Goals of which SDG11 aims to “make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable”. High on the agenda is also the issue of good urban governance. This includes three principle groups of actors: government, the private sector and civil society. It recognizes that decisions are made based on complex relationships between many actors with different priorities. It is the reconciliation of these competing priorities that remains at the heart of New Urban Agenda. Urban governance is inextricably

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linked to the welfare of the citizenry and provides a platform, which will allow citizens to improve their social and economic conditions. This is a measurable feature of New Urban Agenda.

The successful implementation of the New Urban Agenda calls for endorsement of good urban governance. This is based on the acknowledged principles of sustainability, subsidiarity, equity, efficiency, transparency and accountability, civic engagement and citizenship, and security, and that these norms are interdependent and mutually reinforcing. The principle of ‘subsidiarity’ is crucial here and aims to ensure that decisions are taken as closely as possible to the citizen and that constant checks are made to verify that action at City level is justified. This calls for greater participation of all stakeholders to reinvigorate trust in the urban process. Such form of decentralization and local democracy should improve the responsiveness of policies and initiatives to the priorities and needs of citizens in the city. In this regard, ‘equity’ of access to decision-making processes and the basic necessities of urban life are critical for the successful delivery of urban development programmes [add PM initiatives] . At the same time, ‘efficiency’ in the delivery of public services and in promoting local economic development is without doubt necessary for the future development of the city. In all this the call for ‘transparency and accountability’ of decision-makers and all stakeholders can only be reiterated. Without ‘civic engagement and citizenship’, the new urban agenda for India remain a passive exercise. Empowering the urban citizens of India to participate effectively in decision-making processes is a must to deepen the ‘Civic Capital’ in the cities of India, which unfortunately remains fragmented and truncate. This calls for engendering a sense of belonging and ownership among all their inhabitants, fostering social cohesion, inclusion, and safety in peaceful and pluralistic societies, where the needs of all inhabitants are met. This also calls for commitment to sustainably leveraging natural and cultural heritage in cities and human settlements, which are of deep value to the citizens of the city and the region. The critical role of language and culture in the rehabilitation and revitalization of urban areas, thereby strengthening social participation and the exercise of citizenship is far more urgent. At the same time while demanding the application of new technologies in the creation of smart cities for efficient delivery of services, one cannot ignore the critical rural-urban digital divide which remains embedded across the poorer towns of India. Successful urban governance is not just based on a top-down approach through the actions of the bureaucracy, the state and the business elites. Rather a bottom-up approach through the actions of various urban stakeholders will enable decisive citizenship. Citizenship and Governance in the context of urban centres is not just about urbanisation and economic development. It is about Urbanism where the relationship between citizenship, identity, social and community practices, struggles and opportunities come together to inform the principles of sovereignty. What frames such an urbanism is far more relevant today than ever before. Urbanisms of the future will be guided and decided by the actions taken today. As David Harvey (1997:68) states, “the fundamental difficulty with modernism was its persistent habit of privileging spatial forms over social processes”. To move beyond a group-based to an individual-citizen-based notion of an urban community is the key. Addressing groups of citizens works best for Indian cities enabling them to represent the shared community interests (Crane et al, 2004; Bowen et al, 2010). Social regeneration goes hand in hand with urban regeneration (Ginsburg, 1999) and in the context of India there is much that needs doing. The call for collaborative planning (Healey, 1997; 2003) now more than ever has become the cornerstone towards sustainability of urban vision and policy. Recognising the complexities of the urban communities is key to the successful implementation of urban policy and plans. As Jane Jacobs states, cities can only be understood with eyes, feet and ears. Today this still holds true of Indian cities.

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Collaborative planning emphasises advocacy planning (Davidoff, 1965) which in effect would celebrate diversity and vitality of the communities in Indian cities. Here space is created in the cities towards redistributing citizen power by making plans inclusive than being exclusionary in principle and nature. This matches well with Indian Prime Minister’s new urban vision is citizen-centric rather than regulatory-centric urban development. What’s Next?

Building trust as essential to urban decision-making and the creation of a transparent accountable system.

Ensuring the principle of subsidiarity where decisions are taken as closely as possible to the citizen and that constant checks are made to verify that actions at the City level is justified

Mapping of capacity-building initiatives on the ground for both governmental bodies and citizens to contribute and influence urban planning schemes

Action Plans emphasising co-design and ownership of urban plans and projects across public, private and people’s partnership (PPPP)

Acknowledging key projects of scale/ micro-projects contributing to urban fabric and community empowerment

Heritage and prosperous streets - revaluing heritage Celebrating Best Practices in the City as an Exhibition Development of civic leadership for the city by targeting primary, secondary and tertiary

educational institutions in the city. Empowering the citizens to participate effectively in decision-making processes is a must to

deepen the ‘Civic Capital’ in Indian Cities. Commitment to sustainably leverage natural and cultural heritage in cities and human

settlements, which are of deep value to the citizens of the city and the region. Civic engagement can help address the spatial fragmentation of the city, which has also emerged as a source of urban transformation (McFarlane, 2018: 5). The material fragments are regenerated through civic engagement and its consequent politicisation. A fragmented city space is reconstituted through the generative capacity of the city vis-à-vis engagement between and within diverse urban communities. As McFarlane notes, “Given that the experiences and needs of different people are geographically variable not just between but within cities, there is no singular frame here for progressive politics” (McFarlane, 2018:16). There is a need to ensure that established social institutions are reworked to the advantage of communities, thereby strengthening their civic citizenship (Mhaskar, 2018). Of particular importance is that of “localised socio-political mediations of everyday governance” (Truelove, 2018: 17) to reinforce civic sense of urban identity. Unmasking forms of spatial exclusion is critical not just for attributing culpability towards negligence in governance, but also towards ensuring inclusivity for a future cities framework in India. Civic citizenship calls for rescaling urban authority and knowledge to fix responsibilities in fractures emerging in governance strategies. Countering exclusions will be the key for preventing future urban fragmentation. Here social equity will be crucial to counter economic efficiency and social distance in any given urban space (Zèrah, 2008:1922). The will to facilitate informed decision making in the formulation of a differentiated urban policy is possible by addressing issues which are nationally and regionally significant thereby endorsing the role of cooperative federalism across the states of India. This will lend support to the key Missions launched by the government of India, namely, Swachh Bharat Mission, Smart Cities, Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and urban Transformation (AMRUT), Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana, Prasad Mission and

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