Urban Governance and Local Democracy in South India

Anil Kumar Vaddiraju

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000294446
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book examines the issues of urban governance and local democracy in South India. It is the first comprehensive volume that offers comparative frameworks on urban governance across all states in the region: Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. The book focuses on governance in small district-level cities and raises crucial questions such as the nature of urban planning, major outstanding issues for urban local governance, conditions of civic amenities such as drinking water and sanitation and problems of social capital in making urban governance work in these states. It emphasizes on both efficient urban governance and effective local democracy to meet the challenges of fast-paced urbanization in these states while presenting policy lessons from their urbanization processes.

Rich in empirical data, this book will be useful to scholars and researchers of political studies, public administration, governance, public policy, development studies and urban studies, as well as practitioners and non-governmental organizations.

1
INTRODUCTION

There is an ongoing debate in Indian urban studies that urbanization in India is essentially ‘topheavy’ and that only the megalopolises are developing and attracting ever more flows of migration of people into them. In opposition to this argument, another view is that there is an unacknowledged urbanization process from below, that is the development of small towns known in the literature as census towns (CTs) and statutory towns (STs). However, protagonists of both arguments believe that the process of urbanization has of late been rapid and has crossed what the 2011 census has projected as 31.2 percent. Today, India is estimated to be urbanized at a much higher level than that. This is supposed to be an accelerating process, and India is not alone in this as several regions across the world are undergoing a similar process.

For the first time in human history, 50 percent of the world population lives in urban areas, and therefore, the 21st century is said to be the ‘first urban century’ (Avis, 2016). However, while the study of urbanization is not new, the study of urban governance is still at an incipient stage in India. This lacuna is more pronounced in India, where the prime focus of political science has been rural governance and politics rather than urban. Therefore, this book aims at filling that lacuna to some extent.

Urbanization is a historical process which involves demographic, economic, sociological, and geographic/region-oriented processes. The study of the process of urbanization has received sufficient attention in India. There have been a number of studies on the urbanization process. Regional study specialists and sociologists have been at the forefront of these studies. Urbanization has been studied both as a process entailing the development of metropolitanization and ‘top-heavy’ development and as a process entailing urbanization from below, that is ‘subaltern urbanisation’. Also, the process of urbanization has been called ‘sluggish’ in India and, on the other hand, from a different point of view, ‘rapid’ in India. The process has also been examined from the point of view of exclusion/inclusion studies. The process of urbanization has been described as ‘top heavy’ and ‘exclusionary’ and as ‘dispersed’ and more or less ‘inclusive’ of social and geographical groups. Thus, urbanization, as a historical process, has received sufficient attention in India. Urban governance, however, has not received the same amount of examination. Urban governance is the process of directing and channeling this process of urbanization in a democratic manner. Urbanization when unaccompanied by urban governance can become chaotic and anarchic. Urban governance entails planning and directing and channeling this process of urbanization in a democratic, transparent, accountable and participatory manner. The state, market and social and political forces play important roles in this process. This book is a modest attempt in understanding the process of urban governance in the context of rapidly progressing urbanization. The book examines whether such a process of urban governance is taking place or not at the district level in the context of South India.

As the title of the book makes clear, this book deals with two key dimensions of urban politics: ‘urban governance’ and ‘local democracy’. The dimension of urban governance has begun receiving some attention of late after the promulgation of the 74th Amendment to the Constitution whereas the focus on the dimension of local democracy in the context of urban reality has been very limited. The difference between ‘urban governance’ and ‘local democracy’ is the same as that between ‘governance’ and ‘democracy’. While the former, in spite of its emphasis on participation, has a top-down connotation and overtones, the latter means more active engagement by the people in government in opposition to policies and contestation over either specific policies or over the nature of the urban politics itself. Arguably, the concept of local democracy goes beyond participation in local elections. While the media has never shied away from reporting on urban politics and contestations over issues, resources and developments, the academic writing on urban local democracy has been less.

Among all the sub-disciplines of urban studies, urban governance and politics are the most neglected. For example John (Davies and Imbroscio, 2009: 17–24) asks the question, ‘Why study Urban Politics?’(emphasis in the original) and provides a persuasive answer. Furthermore, Stern (Davies and Imbroscio, 2009: 153–168) provides an overview and the raison d’être for studying third-world cities facing the forces of globalization in his article titled ‘Globalisation and Urban Issues in the Non-Western World’. In India, however, there are strong traditions of urban sociology, geography, demography and urban economics, but there is hardly any tradition of studying urban politics. The absence of urban politics studies and the intellectual vacuum itself should be a major justification for this book. But it is only a beginning and a modest one at that. In social science research, the big cities often hog all the limelight while smaller cities are consigned to academic oblivion.

This book follows the definition of the urban governance provided by Avis (2016):

Urban governance is the process by which governments, (local, regional and national) and stakeholders collectively decide how to plan, finance and manage urban areas. It influences whether the poor benefit from economic growth, and determines how they bring their influence to bear and whether political and institutional systems processes and mechanisms facilitate inclusive and pro-poor decisions and outcomes. It involves a continuous process of negotiation and contestation over the allocation of social and material resources and political power. It is not just about the formal structures of city government but encompasses a host of economic and social forces, institutions and relationships, formal and informal.

(pp. 1–2)

‘Governance’ itself is a broad thematic area within political science, the broadest definition of which is provided by Bevir (2011) as that of a ‘pattern of rule’. There are many other definitions of governance (Bevir, 2011), and the one that has most salience at present is that of neo-liberal governance, which attempts to subordinate politics and ‘pattern of rule’ to markets. This definition of governance excludes, and attempts to suppress, the questions about social cohesion, communal harmony and social capital. Neo-liberal governance also envisages governance reforms in the ‘pattern of rule’ to make the same effective, economic and efficient for markets. The relationship between governance and markets is important for neo-liberal theory whereas, for political science in India, there are questions of good governance, affordable and effective delivery of services, social capital and social cohesion. Social capital and social cohesion are not just means to economic ends. They are ends in themselves. Being intrinsically important, they determine the very individual and social well-being. It is known that neo-liberal theory is more concerned with well-being of markets than society. Therefore, for this theory, governance is a tool to facilitate markets. The problem with neo-liberal world view is that governance itself is seen as operating, or should operate, with a profit motive. Therefore, the privatization of public-sector undertakings, restructuring of enterprises, casualization and informalization of labour, marketization of urban services and restructuring them on market-driven tenets are part of the agenda of neo-liberalism. Neoliberalism puts profits over people. However, governance in its true sense should put people and society over markets and profits.

In this book, I do not adopt the neo-liberal definition of governance. Instead, I ask questions pertaining to constitutional governance at the district level. I also ask questions pertaining to what makes constitutionally guaranteed institutions work better. In this context, I adopt social capital theory as the framework for the study of district-level cities. In the following, I dwell on the latter at some length.

Theoretical framework

The work presented here follows social capital theory. Social capital theory came to prominence in the 1990s and was made popular in political science and governance studies by Robert Putnam. Putnam’s major study, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy, published in 1993, has set the tone for an entire range of studies on social capital and its relationship to governance, specifically local governance. Putnam’s major contribution was to bring social capital theory to the study of politics. P...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of figures and tables
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Why urban governance? Why not rural?
• 3 Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh: urban primacy and urban centralization
• 4 Kerala and Tamil Nadu: rapid urbanization and dispersed urban growth
• 5 Urban governance, local democracy and the future
• Index