approximately a year on facebook

Between September 24th 2012 and August 8th 2013 UDRI moved its project conversation on the Mumbai City Development Plan 2014-‘34 onto a selected array of social networks. Starting first with facebook posts, with intermediate cross-posting of long reads on wordpress and finally news and interactions on twitter. The content period earmarks a significant time in the development planning process as it approximately lays out the Existing Land Use (ELU) deliverable stage with all its events involving the conversations between the citizen groups and state. Though institutionally centered exercise earmarks in sketch the apprehensions shown with the successive rebuttals or clarifications to the same. The objective of this exercise has been to observe the role of an agency that aspires to be a voice of the populous and how its managed to negotiate this position as a project mandate. To extrapolate the various post heads from the three platforms are instrumental as methods towards an experimental timeline of activity points for the project. Documentation of the platforms begins with wordpress where the list of articles, papers and essays tries to expand on the different aspects of the planning tasks. Twitter has been an information board that has tried to link both the broad of wordpress and the medium updates from facebook. Facebook, the most elaborate of the three in terms of content has been limited only to content in English. Effectively since the other two have only English material and on facebook, multilingual updates are limited to newspaper clippings. Video posts those present are moderate bilingual strategies and thereby included. Multiple posts on the same day have been grouped together as sub-points to the first post of the day. References of cross-posting has been avoided. Collected thus are transcripts from the three platforms:

PLAN YOUR MUMBAI @ WORDPRESS
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About - This blog is an endeavour to help the people of Mumbai participate and engage in the planning of their city. Come 2014, the country’s financial capital will have a new development plan. One that will set the agenda for the next 20 years, laying out how the available land will be used for amenities, transportation and other vital services. It’s a decision that must involve the people of Mumbai. They should have a say in the process that will decide what their neighbourhoods will look like. Through this blog we are hoping to do that. Write in with your concerns, your battles and your vision for this city. Find out how people are trying to make a difference in their own small way. We all can be a part of building a better Mumbai.

PLAN YOUR MUMBAI @ TWITTER #

PLAN YOUR MUMBAI @ FACEBOOK
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About: Participate in the 2014 Mumbai Development Plan. Your chance to contribute towards an open, efficient and equitable Mumbai.

Description: Come 2014, a new development plan for Mumbai will be unveiled. A 20-year-plan that will define how the available land in this space starved city is used for amenities and transportation networks. This campaign is trying to help build public participation so people have a say in this critical process.

Observations #

An aspect to look into for all three platforms is to what effectiveness has content dissemination have been on the basis of the project and the trajectories for engagement it needed to take. With the institution taken upon itself the role of a societal watchdog, what are hence the activities imposed as the project and individuals who want to be part of the planning process. With that operational standpoint few questions could be raised as follows _ What is a city’s plan? What is the citizens understanding of how one’s plans in the city? Who is raising the concerns on what is significant and finally what are the earmarked key issues? Scope of engagement of via these spaces though possibly immense haven’t been able to reach its potential because of the lack of interest in allocating resources in this exercise. As a result we see the impromptu rise and demise of project activity on these social networks. With almost 60 to 75 percentage of the content associated with news clippings and material from the press, its abundantly clear that with the existing networks in place the institution is unable to venture into alternate models of engagement. Based on the available statistics on the respective pages it could be noted that wordpress blog has been the most successful of the three generating over 10,000 page views and about 140 subscriptions over email. Twitter averaged with between 35 to 30 followers though could have been higher when it was operational. Even though the facebook page has superseded in creation and in content quantity the page has had abysmal results. To counter the lack of interest in participation popular models of social networking UDRI sticks to the conventional methods of public events/ meetings/ conferences, print publications and contribution to news reportage. With this project in particular what is required is significantly clarified method in in how they would prefer a citizen to associate with provide the adequate material to facilitate the same. Sporadic calls for involvement would ideally only confuse anyone interested in participation. A systematic and sustained outreach with adequate accessibility both in terms of material and avenues for participation may bring in a broader demographic interest and benefit both UDRI and the project objectives.

HOUSING, TRANSPORTATION, FINANCE, WATER, LIVELIHOOD, ENERGY, GOVERNANCE, ENVIRONMENT, HEALTH, EDUCATION & URBAN FORM builds the eleven point institutional strategy for the development plan project. Tags associated with posts consider the following subjects of Citizenship, Development Plan 2014, Health, Housing, Open Spaces and Sanitation. Though directed only to a selected set of issues from its own mandate the blog missed out on having to sporadically update/ publish view on the various plan layers under consideration. UDRI’s project website though over time could have been consolidated with the blog or vice versa. Point is towards a clarity in project content disseminated that could have facilitated participation is the factor to be noted. Judging just the digital interface of the project would be limiting towards the work done by the institute. But there is definately a cord to pull when your citizen’s representative’s website and the municipality, organisation they are accusing of doing a shoddy job has almost similar project updates mandates when comparing project information. Twitter, to comment on is limiting as the medium seems to have been sparsely used though could have proved more effective than facebook. The archive of a project phase that facebook proceeds in constructing should be commendable but its failure to connect and be an interactive interface for the project is in principle lethargy. The page doesn’t play the role of connector of agencies but only moots the role of members associated within themselves. Four instances of collaborations with partners (praja, TISS, BMW Guggenheim Lab and MoneyLife Foundation) are acknowledged and are a welcome blimp to the otherwise self promoting page. A brief map of content on the page would trace itself from the public meeting to introduce the ELU, request of data collection to check inconsistencies/ consistency of the state published maps, announcements for greater citizens participation, planning for mumbai development plan workshop, issues with the MCGM ELU, meetings with officials at the MCGM, deliverables of the planning process, heritage conservation, hawker evictions and interviews on lokmat by udri and friends of the institute. Even though the goals of the project promote overarching visions time and biases contain conversations to select areas. It therefore becomes only right to suggest that the act of being consistent in following an institutional project mandate should be built into every citizen initiative. If unable to meet its own objectives adequate reasons have to be submitted as and when required. Method of engagement somehow seems absent. In all the agencies working on the public participation on the development plan only UDRI has gone ahead with a legitimate attempt trying out the project in domains where people do voice out when appropriately staged. There isn’t adequate proof on how citizens are interacting with the institution. Public meetings are mostly announcements, discussions or conferences and data collection exercises have only been two in the known entirety of the project. Principles of the development plan those published and presented have been undertaken by stakeholders that comprise of expert groups. Discussions are done directly with the MCGM by the institution along with its partners and independent consultants. Who exactly the citizen is and how institutions representing it are interacting with them thus becomes very ambiguous. Now that the plug has been pulled on the network engagement citing funds one can only wonder where both its citizens representatives and the municipality argues incapacities to execute tasks beyond its comfort zone can the city really have a credible plan for itself?

 
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