Towards City States

Towards City States

The other day my maid asked me if I could help one of her relatives, who lives in Bihar, get any job in Delhi – expectation was for any job that pays Rupees six to eight thousand  a month. I asked her if that would actually result in a better standard of living as costs here will be much more than that in Bihar. However, apparently for people without land, there are very few jobs available and they are more comfortable doing manual jobs in an urban environment than in their own village. It’s also because most people generally relate moving to a city as a sign of moving up the socio-economic ladder and can actually result in better education for their children.

Perception of Development seems to have a direct correlation with Urbanization. As families expand and land holdings get fragmented, more people in rural areas are moving to cities in the quest of better life. If you talk to people in the villages, the general perception is the cities have better schools, hospitals and employment avenues. This is also confirmed by migration data. Urban population has expanded from 17.3% in 1951 to 27.8% in 2001 to 31.2% in 2011. In the last 10 years, urban population grew by almost 91 million.

It is also anticipated that more than 100 million people will move from villages to cities in the next ten years. These numbers may exceed 300 million in the next 20 years. How do we plan for such a massive urbanization phenomena? Do we need to bring in structural changes in our Governance structures to adapt to a situation when more people will be living in cities than in villages?

As per Census 2011, we have around 46 cities with a million plus population, 91 with a population of 500,000 and more and 497 cities with a population of 100,000 or more. The bulk of the migration today takes place in the million plus cities and they are today bursting at their seams with no provision for additional housing, sanitation or capacity to absorb increasing traffic. They just don’t have the wherewithal for the additional 100 million people who will be moving to cities in the next 10 years. To meet this challenge, we need new cities or look at the smaller cities as potential big cities.

Projects like the Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC) which is a $90 billion infrastructure project and will create 24 new cities along the 1500 km long corridor seem to be the way forward. However, there are constraints on the number of such projects that can be undertaken on account of availability of resources and time required for execution of such projects. Thus, can we think of a mechanism by which the 500 odd 100,000 plus cities are made into hubs of growth that can provide city like opportunities and amenities to the people in the hinterland? These 500 cities can be equipped with infrastructure so that each can take in about 200,000 more people in the next 10 years, thus absorbing the additional 100 million people expected to move to urban centres. How do we make this happen?

One way to do this will be to put focus on the cities in our Governance structures. Each 100,000 plus city can be the hub of governance for the population around it. Presently they are governed by Municipal Bodies but lack the financial and administrative authority to be able to devise plans and implement them. Unfortunately in the predominantly Centre-State federal Governance structure that we have, the objectives of developing cities and urban agglomerations are lost. Political authority and power lies in elected MLAs and MPs who have constituencies that are primarily rural and hence the political discourse remains on rural development, agriculture and creating low skill – low pay jobs for people. The real political authority lies in Chief Ministers who are unable to focus beyond their own constituencies. Many States are so big and unwieldy that political executive is unable to focus on the needs like creation of cities and building infrastructure. 

Another problem is the structure of the administrative departments itself – most States and the Centre has too many departments and it does little more than just adding layers of bureaucracy which further makes any real change difficult. The same is true at Centre also and there are many Departments who try to do things at National level which should actually be done at the local level. Most such departments end up just becoming a fund disbursing and account keeping clearing house.

What we need is massive downsizing of Government at Centre and State level. There are almost 50 Ministries in Government of India with more than 52 Departments in addition to Cabinet Secretariat, Planning Commission, Prime Minister’s Office and President’s Secretariat. Compare this to 16 Ministries in Singapore and Australia and 24 in United Kingdom. The situation is similar in State Governments where the compulsions of managing coalitions and keeping MLAs happy had led to almost everyone becoming a Minister. There used to jokes about two Ministers looking after Sports – One Khel and the other Kood Minister!! This stopped when Supreme Court put a cap on the number of Ministers a State can have. However, this has been circumvented by the innovative practice of appointing Parliamentary Secretaries who function just like Ministers. This results in mammoth and irreparable damage to Governance.

Such huge departments and ministries start functioning for themselves and the Ministers for their acts are not accountable to the constituency that choses them. The majority of MLAs and MPs do not get a chance to playing an active role in Governance. Most of them are very often as frustrated with the way Government systems function or rather don’t function, as anyone of us. Everyone in the system has someone to blame for whatever is wrong and there seems to be a very depressing outlook. How can we ensure that elected representatives get an active role to play and at the same time be accountable to their constituency?

In order to address these challenges, we need to move to a City State kind of Governance system with directly elected Mayor as the head of political establishment for the City. The Mayor needs to be supported by a CEO who can be a civil servant with 15-20 years of experience. The CEO can have under him a crack team of 5-6 young civil servants looking after Education, Health, Sanitation, Power and Infrastructure. This team can be given targets and goals which are audited by independent third parties and their performance evaluated accordingly.  The Mayor can be elected every 4 years with provisions of right to recall. The City will also have ward counselors who would vote on the Mayor’s proposals. Thus accountability to the City’s people will be ensured. Funds from Centre and State should devolve to the Cities based on population and development index and there can be complete transparency on the funds flowing and works being undertaken.

State Government’s role would be limited and will have departments that only need to deal with inter-city matters and policy matters. All intra City matters will be the lookout of the Mayor and his team. In order to make this a reality, the Cities can be centered around the 543 Lok Sabha constituencies. Each Constituency can have the largest urban conglomeration as the City centre. Developing the Cities in a holistic manner on the pattern of Gram Swaraj that Mahatma Gandhi talked of can help us to not only move up the development ladder but will also help create jobs locally that will eliminate the need for migration. Thus all cities will end up having quality schools, super speciality hospitals, recreation centres and more symbols of big cities. Each City can identify one or two areas as its core strength areas and we will be able to create City specific Special Economic Zones that will ensure people with specific skill sets are able to find employment and add value to the City.

An example can illustrate how this will work. Moradabad is a district in Uttar Pradesh with a population of around 4.77 million which is roughly equal to that of Singapore. Moradabad has two Lok Sabha constituencies and nine Assembly Constituencies. The district has two urban centres at Moradabad and Chandausi. However, the quality of urban amenities – roads, power, hygiene, sanitation, water – is dismal. The district has been known for its Brassware exports. However, as part of the State of Uttar Pradesh, the voice of its MPs and MLAs get lost as the priorities and focus of State Government are different.

Instead if Moradabad and Chandausi had their own Mayors and teams off officials to govern the cities, they could address the key issues in a much more holistic manner. They could prioritize the key intervention areas and use the resources to develop the civic infrastructure as also take measure for increasing the brassware exports and creating jobs for its population. The State Government could recognize clusters of such cities as a special economic zone for brassware industry and take measures to promote the industry. The role of Central Government could be in ensuring an export friendly taxation system and access to airports and ports for facilitating exports. The idea is that the Mayor of Moradabad will be like the Prime Minister of Singapore who will make a plan for developing Moradabad as a City State and be responsible for it. The plan will have all critical inputs – education, health, infrastructure, jobs and he along with his team will ensure that the same is achieved in a time bound manner.

So are City States the future of our urban landscape??

Abhishek Singh

(Views are personal)