hsm whatsapp transcripts 160622-23 (ed)
Marina Joseph _ HSM members will be meeting with East Indian Gaothan residents today
Time: 6.30 pm
Venue: Kolivery welfare office next to st rock grotto near kalina church
We live in a world where economic development and urbanisation are like Siamese twins – we cannot have one without the other. India will be no exception.
Differences in per capita GDP between services (over $8,000), manufacturing (over $6,000) and agriculture (over $1,500), show that even as reforms are required to raise agricultural productivity, millions of jobs will need to move towards services and manufacturing. The changing structure of the labour market is the core engine of rapid urbanisation. India is already past the tipping point – 400 million urban residents in 2016, expected to rise to over 800 million in the next 30 years. During this period India will witness the largest urban migration in human history, even larger than China’s.
However, rapid urbanisation does not guarantee sustained economic growth. For this, we need well-managed urbanisation. The frequency and scale of everyday problems we face in our cities is increasing, across thousands of cities and towns in our country.
The good news is that we are no longer in denial: policy makers and opinion leaders have finally begun to focus on urban problems. The bad news is that we are still placing band-aids when the patient has a deep disease. We need to acknowledge the complexity of urbanisation if we are to get ahead of the curve. The urban phenomenon is the result of a complex system at play. Understanding and solving the challenges of our cities will require a ‘city-systems’ framework.
Such a framework needs to have four components: spatial planning, municipal capacities (human and financial), political leadership and lastly transparency, accountability and participation. By their nature, systems comprise components that are distinct and yet inter-related.
The first city-system of spatial planning is crucial to fulfil objectives of a city across economy, equity and the environment – ultimately, the destiny of a city is irreversibly defined in spatial terms. India’s cities need modern spatial planning laws, planning institutions, and adequate number of qualified town planners to ensure that the spatial needs of the city are met.
The second city-system is municipal capacities. Bengaluru and New York both have approximately 9 million residents – New York employs over 4,00,000 city workers whereas Bengaluru has less than 30,000. It isn’t just a problem of quantity, but quality as well: close to 5% of New York’s human resources are qualified senior management – in urban planning, finance, infrastructure, mass transport and so on. Bengaluru barely has 0.5% of its headcount as senior management, and even this is mostly with generalists, not domain experts.
The same massive challenges are visible on the financial front as well: our cities are starved. Indian cities account for barely 1% of the total fiscal wallet available to all governments; the global average is over 7.5%. We cannot build the cities that we deserve on love and fresh air, we need massive injections of sustainable financing. We need to strengthen the institutions in our city on both human and financial capacities, beginning with the municipality but also other civic institutions such as the development authority, water authority, transport corporation, metro rail, police, fire services and housing authority.
The third city-system is beginning to receive public attention – the political ownership of a city. Fragmented leadership across the state government, MLAs, the Mayor and the city council and fragmented service delivery across civic agencies is hurting our cities and citizens. We need to work towards having directly elected metropolitan mayors as leaders of our cities. Interim measures that fix ownership and accountability clearly on one political leader who is empowered and has a tenure of say, five years are a must. Minimum tenure of five years for a Mayor will enable medium term planning and execution. In its 25th year, the 74th Constitution Amendment needs to be respected.
The fourth city-system is transparency, accountability and citizen participation. Besides public disclosure and data-driven accountability for performance and service levels, formal platforms for citizen participation are urgently needed. Our villages have left our cities behind in this respect, with gram sabhas that are constitutionally required. Citizen participation has both intrinsic as well as instrumental benefits. Most importantly, it builds trust between citizens and governments.
Our sectoral urban challenges – roads, public transport, solid waste management, sewerage, pollution, housing, etc – all require solutions that cut across all four themes of the city-systems framework. City-systems are the root causes, sectoral issues are symptoms.
Janaagraha’s Annual Survey of India’s City-Systems (ASICS), which recently released its third edition, highlights the challenges: of the 21 Indian cities that were covered (most state capitals), no Indian city scored more than 4.2 on a scale of 10, whereas London scored 9.1 and New York 9.2. It is no surprise that these global cities offer substantially superior quality of life – they are underpinned by superior city-systems.
ASICS provides a comprehensive diagnostic of the health of our cities and also a reform agenda that accompanies the same. State governments can create time-bound, measurable blueprints for our cities that incorporate these reform agendas. This will take patient, systematic work that will need to be driven by exemplary political leadership.
Mayuresh Bhadsavle _ Sathi…who is going to conduct session on rights of the children? A senior journalist wishes to attend….could you please pass on the contact details? Name , org and phone number of the person could conducting todays session ?
Marina Joseph _ Multiple presentations are being made by different people. Do pass on this number to the journalist. Vijay Kharat: 9757249486
jaimati22 _ Hamara sangarsh kamyab hua Bigarr dalal k bogar rishwt. Diye San ka ration card banana chalu hua is liye sabhi karykrta ko shyog k liye shukriyada krta hu
Prakash Kumbhar _ ???
Sanjay Shinde _ Today’s andheri meeting
Sanjeev Shamanthul _ ???
Marina Joseph _ Does the MumbaiDP envision and promise to create a childfriendlycity? children at the consultation demand spaces to play and access to toilets.
Siraj Shah _ ????
Raju Vanjare _ Discussions about Right to Pee, Solid waste Management and Pani Haq Samiti
Aravind Unni _ Homeless collective meeting in HRLN office.
