Taking stock of India's urban decline, drawing attention to cities' issues

Those observing Indian cities today are likely to concur that these are inexorably heading towards a Malthusian catastrophe - where a population explosion, eroding or non-existent infrastructure, shoddy governance and a fundamental lack of vision spell doom for urban environments.

The controversial scholar, Thomas Malthus, proposed that only famine, diseases and wars could restore a semblance of balance to civic life in overcrowded and under-equipped cities.

Janaagraha, a non-profit Bangalore-based organisation focused on citizen participation in local government, is hoping to prevent a Malthusian nightmare from unravelling here with, among others, a new product it rolled out yesterday: A first-of-its-kind annual survey of India's city systems. (BEST OF THEM ALL)

"Governance has become a buzzword," says urban planner Swati Ramanathan, who co-founded the NGO with her husband, Ramesh Ramanathan, a former investment banker. "But, how do you focus political and bureaucratic energy towards a solution? You need to define the work."

An effort at catalysing this urban change is in defining what the Ramanathans call a "framework", which will then serve as a medium of analysis.

Janaagraha's framework for its city-systems model consists of four components: Enhanced urban planning and design (Does your city have a vision of what it wants to be in the future and is there institutions for plan implementation and enforcement?); improved urban capacities and resources (Are the right people running our cities and do they have the means to harness resources for the city?); empowered and legitimate political representation (Are empowered mayors the answer, for instance, and if they are, could that even be a political reality)?; transparent, participatory cities (How inclusive, open and accountable are cities?).

Each component has sub-parts housing assessment points. The city-systems framework has 107 of these points, responsible for evaluating the 11 Indian cities in the study.

So, who came out tops? There was no aggregate ranking for the survey but each category had winners and losers. So, in planning and design, Kolkata and Delhi came out ahead but the Bengal capital didn't do so well in capacities and resources, something that Delhi topped. However, the nation's capital was at the bottom in the rest of the segments. Ironically, Hyderabad, capital of a state now notorious for scams, ranked first in transparency, accountability and participation.

Janaagraha, along with market research firm TNS, also polled residents of the 11 cities on the quality of civic systems and the quality of life in their cities. What was striking was the divergence in Janaagraha's scores versus those given by the residents. For instance, Ahmedabad's residents say their city was either first or second on the list across the city-systems categories, while Janaagraha ranked it at seventh or eighth across three categories.

The surveyed cities were also ranked next to global benchmarks, London and New York, which consistently received scores of eight or nine out of 10 across categories. Indian cities hovered largely between 1 and 3.5. "In the 18th and 19th century, urbanisation was going on in a massive way in other parts of the world. New York and London built their first underground mass transit systems in the 1800s," says Swati. "Here, in India, under the British Raj, it was stalled."

Now, however, Janaagraha's report could be a wake-up call for all those who would rather see Malthus proven wrong as far as India is concerned.