23 Political Economy of Basic Service Provision in Urban India

Binti Singh

epgp books

 

 

1 Introduction

 

The history of urban planning in colonial India was informed by the concerns of health and sanitation. Not much has changed since then. The Swacch Bharat Abhiyaan introduced by the central government in 2014 aims to spread awareness about sanitation and its linkage with public health. In India the provision of basic services like water and solid waste management is the constitutional duty of municipal authorities. There are many agencies and institutions involved at various levels. For instance, in the case of water there are water/ jal boards, public health engineering agencies and parastatal agencies of state governments, city level water supply and sewerage boards and municipal governments, Multimedia link    and a host of unregulated private companies. Again, theinstitutional framework is different for each state and swachhbharaturban.gov.in.there is no uniformity.

 

Over decades, government authorities and various departments at the national, state and local levels have not been able to adequately cater to the burgeoning needs of water, sanitation, solid waste management facilities of urban populations that are rapidly rising across urban centres of India.1 Shaban and Sharma (2007) point out that only 71% of households surveyed across major cities consider the quantity of water supply to be adequate. A study by WaterAid (2005) similarly points out that nearly 100 million urban dwellers will still lack access to improved water sources for domestic use in India even if the millennium development goal of halving the population without access to water and sanitation by 2015 is met.

 

Chaplin (2011) explains that as the gap between the supply and demand of sanitation and other basic services widens, the inequity in their provision places an even greater burden on the urban poor. She alludes to the 2005-06 National Family Health Survey, which found that while 83.2% of urban households used a sanitary facility for the disposal of excreta, only 47.2 % of the urban poor had access to adequate sanitation, compared to 95.9% of the urban non-poor (Chaplin 2011:57).

 

This brings us to the crucial political economy approach used to understand access to basic services in urban India. Political economy refers to the distribution of political and economic power in a given society and how that influences the directions of development and policies that bear on them. In India where the vast masses of the people are poor and often socially disadvantaged, a relatively small minority holds

 

1   The percentage of urban population to the total population of the country stands at  31.   6. There has been an increase 3.35 percentage points in the proportion of urban population in the country during 2001-2011(moud.gov.in). much of the power, although in recent years democratic expansion has started to loosen the grip of elite control.2

 

According to the recommendations of the High Powered Expert Committee (HPEC) appointed by the Ministry of Urban Development(MoUD) in 2011, there is a requirement of investment in urban infrastructure to the tune of ₹ 39 Billion (₹ 39.2 lakh crore at 2009-10 prices) over the next 20 years. As per estimates of the HPEC, water, sewerage, solid waste management, storm water drains, street lights would require 20% of investment. During the previous United Progressive Alliance (UPA) regime, a massive programme focusing on infrastructure, basic services and governance reforms was launched under the flagship Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) in 2005.3 Some of the reforms introduced include the internal earmarking by urban local bodies(ULBs) of budgets for basic services for the urban poor, with around 80% of funds committed for water supply, sewerage, drainage and solid waste management projects (for details, see Mehta and Mehta 2010).

 

Post-1990s, India has witnessed shifts in policy and practice in the wake of changing contours of urban governance following international and domestic trends. These changes are characterised by measures to reduce public expenditure and gradual offloading of essential municipal services, increasing efficiency in service provision by privatisation, decentralisation and introduction of user charges and developing new delivery systems through greater involvement of non-state actors like community-based organisations and local contractors (Singh 2012: 334). The role of the local government in the changed scenario altered from that of a direct service provider to that of a facilitator enabling service provision through effective private and community partnerships. An apt explanation for this change of role is given in the official website of the MoUD which says that such a huge estimated requirement of investment in basic service provision cannot be met only from within the budgetary

 

2  “Political Economy” by Pranab Bardhan (undated), available at: http://eml.berkeley.edu/~webfac/bardhan/papers/BardhanPoliticalEconomy.pdf accessed on 31 August 2015.

3  Ministry of Urban Employment and Poverty Alleviation and Ministry of UrbanDevelopment (no date), “Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission: overview”, Government of India, New Delhi.resources of central, state and local governments. The need to access financial resources from the market is therefore unavoidable and participation of private sector in urban development programmes is a policy mandate.

 

The rest of the module is divided into five sections. Section 2 traces the trajectory of the basic service provision from colonial times and discusses important milestones that shaped the current discourse in present times. Section 3 discusses the different institutions that are responsible for basic services provision in Indian cities. The municipal authorities are the main institutions entrusted with the responsibility of this task as laid out in the Constitution of India. However, budgetary constraints and demand-supply gap have forced the entry of other players in this sector. Non-government organisations (NGOs), local contractors, communities, are prominent participants. Section 4, 5 and 6 are discussions specific to solid waste management, water and sanitation with case studies, namely, the Advanced Locality Management (ALM) groups and the Slum Adoption Programme (SAP) in Mumbai, Greater Bangalore Water and Sanitation Project (GBWASP) in Bangalore and the ALLIANCE in Mumbai, respectively. Section 7 discusses the issues and challenges pertaining to private participation, especially those of unaccountability and inequitable access. The section In Brief summarises the module and offers concluding remarks.

 

 

Section 2: Urban Planning and Basic Services: A Historical Overview

 

Two important reports by health officials in mid-19th century Bombay, Henry Conybeare and Andrew Leith show the concerns of colonial administrators for public health, sanitation and urban planning in India. The first Report on the Sanitary State and Sanitary Requirements of Bombay, 1852 by Henry Conybeare and the second Report on the Sanitary State of the Island City of Bombay, 1864 by Andrew Leith conceived “traditional sanitation in India as problem and public health as solution” (McFarlane 2008).

 

 

Chaplin (2011) notes that when the Royal Commission into the Sanitary State of the Army in India linked health with sanitation, the colonial administration responded by physically separating the army and British officials from the indigenous city by building new cantonments and residential enclaves in the form of the civil lines.

 

The army was provided with new, well-ventilated barracks while officials built spacious bungalows on wide streets that were serviced by piped water and underground sewers. This segregation of cities into two parts – the indigenous and the European – was further enhanced by the pursuit of military security, which resulted in many cities, particularly Lucknow and Delhi, which were directly associated with the revolt, being radically restructured to reduce the threat of disease and further unrest (Chaplin 2011: 59).

 

As Chaplin (2007) notes, provision of new sanitary arrangements brought about the development of local government that had the power to collect taxes to finance sanitation services and public works across the subcontinent during the 1870s. “In May 1882, the Viceroy, Lord Ripon, introduced his Resolution on Local Self-Government, which shaped local government until the early 20th century.” With the intention to create a political forum for the newly created, western-educated middle class, this resolution also introduced a majority of elected non-official members on a limited franchise of Europeans and wealthy Indian ratepayers. The Indian middle class liberals took interest in civic affairs that affected their lifestyles like recurrent epidemics, fires and persistent stench from unclean drains in slums (Chaplin 2011).

 

Further, Chaplin highlights how the outbreak of the plague in Bombay and Calcutta in 1896 brought an unprecedented level of medical and sanitary intervention into people’s lives, and on the insanitary conditions and overcrowding in Calcutta and Bombay. Municipal reforms started with increased spending by municipalities on sanitation, the introduction of the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms of 1919 which transferred local government, along with education, public works and health, to Indian control, as well as the establishment of improvement trusts in Bombay (1898) and Calcutta (1912) to address insanitary housing and congestion. These trusts demolished slums, build chawls for workers, created new arterial roads and developed new housing estates.

 

Section 3: Institutional Framework

 

 

The 74th CAA 1992 conferred constitutional status on ULBs, which were provided with elected councils and constituted as the third tier of government (the other two being the central government and each state government of the union). It transferred the responsibility of urban development, in particular of providing urban infrastructure and services as well as mobilising the required financial resources through taxes, levying users’ costs and attracting private national and foreign investments on municipal authorities.

 

It is the municipal authority (municipal corporation, municipal council or nagarpalika) that is responsible for the provision of water, sanitation and solid waste management facilities to its citizens.

 

The political economy helps us understand how access to basic services is far from equitable in urban India. In fact, for socio-economically weaker sections of the population, it is very difficult to access these services. For instance, in Mumbai, Bawa (2013) observes that slum and pavement dwellers access water through sources like “boring holes in pipelines to draw water, fitting booster pumps to increase pressure in the water flow, borrowing/purchasing water from neighbours who have metered connections, and buying water from brokers, who may be municipal employees, licensed plumbers, party workers, local leaders or politicians”(Bawa 2013:89).

 

According to the Report on Indian Urban Infrastructure and Services (HPEC 2011), a large number of the urban poor still depend on public toilets as there is an acute shortage of toilet facilities in their homes. Even most of the times public toilets do not have water supply and sometimes their outlets with water supply are not connected to the city’s sewerage system. Therefore, the poor have no choice but to defecate in the open (Bawa 2013:50). Similarly, it is the poor who suffer from lack of access to water. Sections of the population living in lower-income households have no access to public networks and have to rely on market sources to access water at a higher price and bear other inconveniences like standing in long queues on days when the water arrives and forgo work and daily routines.

 

Municipal authorities have not been able to address the rise in demand for these basic services in the wake of increasing urbanisation. Scarce availability of resources,increasing competitive demands, inefficient management of urban distribution systems and investment constraints have been attributed as causes for the entry of private players. Urban centres like Goa, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune, attempted to bring in private sector participation either through Build-Operate- Transfers (BOTs) or construction and management contract. In the BOT format, the private sector is in charge of building the infrastructure, operating it for a period of time (20-25 years) and to later transferring it to the municipality.

 

The increasing participation of private companies, contractors and NGOs has rendered basic service provision as largely unregulated, informal and unaccountable. The political economy perspective helps us understand how such market-based institutions prove to be disadvantageous in providing services to the economically weaker sections. The next sections based on examples of such initiatives in solid waste management (SWM), water and sanitation collated through empirical research will help understand these issues better.

 

Section 4: Solid Waste Management

 

Historically, SWM remained a neglected area until the intervention of the Supreme Court of India that resulted in the Municipal Solid Waste Management and Handling Rules, 2000, under the Environment Protection Act, 1986. As a solution to the inability of municipal authorities to handle conservancy operations, the rules called for involvement of actors like community-based organisations, private contractors and NGOs in SWM functions.

 

The SWM Rules, 2000, mark a watershed in the management of solid waste in urban centres in India as for the first time; they laid out procedures for waste collection, segregation, storage, transportation, processing and disposal. Second, these rules also specified standards for compost quality, health control and management and closure of landfills. Third, these rules stress upon collection of waste from its source of generation (households, office complexes and commercial areas) and give procedures for distinct treatment of different categories of waste. Fourth, the rules made the municipal body responsible to organise awareness programmes for segregation and recycling of waste. Finally, the municipal authorities were required to adopt proper technologies to recycle and process waste so as to minimise burden on landfill as prescribed in the rules. It was expected that individual states would form their own rules on SWM drawing copiously from the SWM Rules 2000 (Singh 2012) (for details see MoEF 2000).

 

The rules are significant because for the first time there is mention of awareness campaigns, segregation and processing of waste with regard to solid waste. And the rules also partly shift the responsibility of SWM to citizens and organisations (Singh 2012). Section 4.1 discusses two community initiatives in the SWM sector in the city of Mumbai.

 

4.1 Advanced Locality Management (ALM) Groups and Slum Adoption Programme (SAP) in Mumbai In the face of an inability to handle massive amounts of waste and also to counter the powerful trade unions of the conservancy department, the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) outsourced its functions. Community initiatives like ALMs were the logical outcomes. The ALM model gained popularity partly from the support of the MCGM and partly from civic activism in the city to curb further strikes

 

Know More

 

In the 1990s, municipal workers’ strikes were common in Mumbai (Baud and Nainan 2008). The most notable strike was on the eve of Diwali in October 2000, when after the Mayor of Mumbai refused union demands for higher bonuses and ex gratia payments, 140,000 workers from the MCGM went on a two-day strike called by the largest union of municipal workers. This strike hampered city functioning, as taps dried up, garbage piled up and municipal hospital staff joined the strike. To control the growing disruption in the city, nearly 200 councillors decided to support the strikers’ demands by passing a unanimous resolution to pay 65% of the bonus to municipal employees. However, AGNI’s vice-chairman, a member of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) and a former municipal commissioner and chief secretary of the Maharashtra government, approached the High Court of Bombay asking for urgent interim relief on his petition, admitted in 1997, that challenged the high salaries and bonuses to civic employees. The Bombay High Court restrained the MCGM administration from giving in to worker demands and struck

 

down the councillors‟ resolution2. Under similar conditions the following year, AGNI pressurised state government to end the municipal workers‟ threat to strike again, based on essential services maintenance. “The union did not strike and since then has only issued threats or undertaken one-day strikes, keeping essential services untouched”(Baud and Nainan, 2008:497).

 

 

that threatened to halt basic services [See Box]. An ALM is an identified locality, the residents and users of which have committed to improving the quality of life in close cooperation with the MCGM. It covers a neighbourhood or a street, with normally about 1000 citizens, is registered in the municipal ward office, which appoints a nodal officer to attend to citizen complaints. The ALM model was first implemented in 1996 through a pilot project of waste management in the residential colony of Joshi Lane, Ghatkopar East, a suburban area in Mumbai. There are as many as 50 ALMs spread across the 24 administrative wards of Mumbai.

 

The Slum Adaptation Programme (SAP) is the slum variant of ALMs. Under the SAP, grants are allocated to slum communities according to estimated population figures by the MCGM. The amount of the grant depends on the population of the slums, which in turn determines the number of volunteers required. From the allocated grant, payment is made to the SAP volunteers who purchase cleaning equipment like brooms, buckets and those for the volunteers like gloves, masks and boots. The work of volunteers includes sweeping, collecting and clearing the garbage. If municipal toilets exist, then they also clean the toilets. Cleaning campaigns and advocacy work is also carried out under the SAP in slums.

 

Various other NGOs and citizen associations have been actively involved in the SWM sector in Mumbai like the Stree Mukti Sangathan, and the Dignity Foundation.

 

In Delhi organisations like Sulabh International, Centre for Science and Environment and INTACH are active in their interface with the municipal corporation proposing alternative plans, policy suggestions and other kinds of interventions.

 

Section 5: Water

 

The entry of private players in water sector has happened in ways. For instance, Ruet et al (2002) notes that a large number of Indian cities considered the BOT option to develop new sources of water through international funding. However, the authors also explain that many of these projects fell through (the main ones were to be in Hyderabad, Goa and Bangalore) due to the lack of political commitment, the very high cost of the water, the lack of clarity in the contract attribution and the lack of clarity in the process to be followed.

 

The authors also note that private companies are widely involved in supplying water through tankers, supplying bottled water, providing piped water supply, roof-top rainwater harvesting and recycling waste water in urban region, like in Chennai, Rajkot, Kolkata and Mumbai.

 

5.1 Greater Bangalore Water and Sanitation Project (GBWASP) in Bangalore

 

In their study, Ranganathan et al (2009) discuss the GBWASP which aimed to connect people living on the outskirts of Bangalore to piped water and sanitation as a good example of the broader trends and debates around market-based reforms in the water sector in Karnataka. By market sector reforms, the authors mean “specifically to a policy move away from a reliance on public investment in the water sector to financing by users, municipal bonds, and various forms of debt” (Ranganathan et al 2009: 54). This project introduced the concept of capital cost recovery from customers. However, upfront payments from beneficiaries – frequently termed as “stakeholders” — have not guaranteed timely and satisfactory service nor enhanced customer entitlements. The authors add that the term “stakeholders” creates an impression that the utility and the citizens have equal “stake” in the infrastructure, but that is not the case. Their fieldwork showed that for most residents, payment guaranteed neither improved responsiveness from the project implementers nor proactive information dissemination. Therefore, the use of the term “stakeholder” had little meaning in this project.

 

The authors point out serious disconnects between the model and ground realities. The lack of attention paid to the rapidity and heterogeneity with which the peripheries of Bangalore were developing resulted in severe delays in installing pipelines, miscalculations in the length of pipeline needed, and low ability to service technically difficult areas which are typically poorer, unauthorised, and less able to pay for an expensive piped water system. This, in turn, delayed water delivery and undermined accountability in the project. However, connection and supply of water to richer revenue-generating areas proceeded with few hitches.

 

Section 6: Sanitation

 

The Report on Indian Urban Infrastructure and Services (2011) notes that sanitation is a greater problem in urban areas than in rural due to increasing congestion and density in cities. It also points out the serious environmental and health implications of poor sanitary conditions in cities. The report also alludes to the Water and Sanitation Program study of the World Bank which observes that “the poorest 20 percent households living in urban areas bear the highest per capita economic impacts of inadequate sanitation.” (World Bank 2011: 58).

 

The National Urban Sanitation Policy of 2008 that provided the framework for addressing the challenge of city sanitation emphasises the need for spreading awareness about sanitation through an integrated citywide approach, assigns institutional responsibilities with a special focus on the urban poor. Section 6.1 discusses one such initiative that addresses the sanitation needs of the urban poor in Mumbai.

 

6.1 The Alliance

 

The innovative partnership, known as the alliance, developed between the Society for the Provision of Area Resource Centres (SPARC), the National Slum Dwellers Federation (NSDF) and Mahila Milan (“women together”) in Mumbai focuses on issues of land security, resettlement and the entitlement of the urban poor to basic urban services. Within the Alliance, SPARC serves as an intermediary between the state and urban poor communities. After the strategy is decided, the leaders of the federation then explore the process and train community members. SPARC provides support, documentation, quality control, review and scaling up. (Chaplin 2011; Patel and Bartlett 2009 and McFarlane 2004).

 

The Alliance has a focus on building community toilet blocks because “…toilets unite communities and give them the confidence to undertake something which they need and which they can actually do” (Patel and Mitlin, 2001: 7). Its initial experiences in building and maintaining such community toilet blocks comes from between 1988 and 1996 in Mumbai, Kanpur, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Lucknow (Burra et al 2003). As Chaplin notes, the Alliance has built relationships with the various levels of state bureaucracies, municipal corporations, the central government and several of its authorities and the private sector “by not aligning itself with a particular political party” (Chaplin 2011; Appadurai 2001: 29).

 

But such partnerships and their replication still remains a challenge. Chaplin (2011:64)   explains that one of the major challenge still facing efforts to scale up successful low-cost sanitation projects into citywide schemes in India is that governments, bureaucracies and the international agencies have not made the shift …from seeing ‘the poor’ as clients or targets to whom development and environmental management must be delivered to recognizing them as active agents with knowledge, resources and rights to influence what is done and how donor assistance is used .

 

Section 7: Issues and Challenges

 

The political economy approach to basic services makes it evident that private participation, whether through NGOs or private companies, has serious implications on the questions of equity and accountability. More often than not it is the socio-economically weaker sections of society who are adversely hit by these initiatives. For instance, in the Bangalore study, the authors point out that the fringes around the city of Bangalore where piped water was to be supplied is “a heterogeneous and haphazardly developed expanse mainly comprising unauthorised developments”. These spatial patterns posed challenges to pipeline laying contractors. Local roads and sewers (where they existed) did not follow gridlines and did not link up with main road and sewer lines. This made the process time-consuming. Some areas on the periphery, like the Bandepalya slum in Bommanahalli that is perched on an abandoned quarry, and therefore, technically more difficult to connect and often far poorer may never get piped water supply. Even after the completion of the distribution pipelines, only approximately one lakh connections have been provided as against a total estimated requirement of 4,50,000 connections.

 

From the cases of ALMs and SAP in Mumbai, a clear demarcation along class lines is evident in the prevailing SWM practices in the city. The greater involvement of communities has complicated the SWM scenario in Mumbai resulting in a clash of interests on the ground. The MCGM has greatly divested itself of the sole responsibility of SWM by involving communities and passed on its obligatory functions to agencies (contractors and spurious NGOs) that are often unaccountable. Workers receive an unfair deal in the hands of such agencies and lose their entitlements they once received from the government.

 

The SAP has introduced changes in nomenclature, for instance, the word “worker” was replaced by “volunteer” and the word “wages” was replaced by mandhan (voluntary work) without any corresponding changes in actual wages and social security. In fact, volunteers have a weaker bargaining position than regular conservancy workers because their services are contractual and can be terminated at any time. The question of SWM in slum communities and rehabilitated buildings remains a grave concern with no one in charge.

 

Unlike ALMs, SAP is not supported by middle-class NGOs, corporates and private clubs. ALMs are more powerful and visible in their SWM activities. In their quest for maintaining cleanliness, ALMs often ignore the needs of neighbouring slums. In his narrative, a volunteer of the SAP pointed out:

 

Our main contention with the cleanliness activities of the ALM is that they aim for zero garbage and that is why with the help from MCGM they have removed all centralised dust-bins. That works fine for them because the MCGM trucks arrive by eleven in the morning and collects the garbage from each building and leaves. But the SAP volunteers take time to clean (because of the sheer difficulty of the taskDo You Know in  the  slums);  they also  collect  the A trade union leader of the conservancy workers garbage after lunch so by the time theyfinish  their  work  it  is  late  in  the of the municipal authority narrated the story of a worker called Shekhar Sundaram, who was killed afternoon. We have requested the MCGM by a truck used for garbage collection. Both the ward office to send us trucks in the MCGM and the concerned contractor for whom he afternoon  too when we collect more worked refused to compensate his family. With garbage after people have had their lunch, the intervention of the trade union and a legal battle that went on for four years, the principal but they did not. That is the reason the employer – the municipal authority – was finally centralised dustbins were required whereforced to provide compensation. (Singh 2012)garbage could be accumulated. One must understand  the  poor  conditions  slum dwellers live in. They have very small  forced to provide compensation. (Singh 2012) garbage could be accumulated. One must understand  the  poor  conditions  slum dwellers live in. They have very small rooms which can hardly accommodate people, where can they keep their garbage? Moreover, certain types of garbage cannot be kept inside the house and have to be thrown outside. As such garbage attracts rats, cats and dogs. Because of the absence of bins they throw garbage here and there leading to fights among neighbours. (Interview, SAP volunteer, Pestom Sagar,M-West ward, Mumbai, February 2010 in Singh 2012:338)Significant differences based on class situations could also be delineated between various ALMs spread across the city in terms of the services they commanded from the municipal authority, and in terms of the visibility in the media and support they received from corporate houses. Many of the achievements of the prominent ALMs (located in Malabar Hills, Marine Drive and Nariman Point, Juhu and Andheri) could be attributed to the strong social networks that were already in place through years of civic activism, advantages of geographical location and frequent interaction with municipal officials. This was in stark contrast to ALMs located in the lesser known areas like Ghatkopar and Vidyavihar West in N ward. MCGM officials even justified discrimination in their services offered to areas having ALMs and those that did not, . . . the city is cleaner at the neighbourhood level now, waste recycling has increased, and the waste management burden on the MCGM has been reduced. Citizens groups and corporate companies taking on the maintenance of public spaces have further reduced the responsibility of MCGM to protect land from encroachments (Redkar 2008, p. 219).

 

The discussion in this module can also be linked to the rise of middle class activism and ideologies in cities of India discussed in detail in another module.

 

In her study, Bawa (2013) documents the opposition to privatisation of water in K East ward in Mumbai by hydraulic engineers of the municipal authority. She explains that the engineers were concerned that water privatisation would completely take away their autonomy and opposed the project covered by mobilising support of people and organisations. Their knowledge about water distribution systems in Mumbai and their relations with different sections of the population, including unauthorised slum dwellers, facilitated access of water to various areas which would otherwise be excluded if privatisation took place. Citizens, especially unauthorised slum dwellers were also aware of their role. Therefore, the opposition to the privatisation drive led by the engineers met with success with support from local NGOs, CBOs, churches and local residents.

 

Many of the problems of accountability and equity in service provision can be addressed if private providers adhere to benchmarks that have already been created. The Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD), Government of India has prescribed service-level benchmarks for a number of urban services. A consultative process with state governments and other stakeholders was initiated in 2006, which culminated in the final benchmarks published by the ministry in December 2008. The benchmarks are important for shifting focus from the creation of physical infrastructure to service delivery because poor governance can create situations in which additional capital investments in urban infrastructure do not result in corresponding improvements in service delivery (MoUD 2011:44). In the water sector, for instance, Satapathy (2014) notes that service-level benchmarking (SLB) has been formulated in 2009 and launched by MoUD, for urban water supply, waste water, SWM and storm water drainage. The author concludes that benchmarking for the urban water and sanitation sector is well-recognised as an important mechanism for performance management and accountability in service delivery. Benchmarking involves the measuring and monitoring of service provider performance on a systematic and continuous basis, resulting in better service delivery to people (Satapathy 2014:51).

 

In Brief

 

This module discusses basic service provision in urban India employing the political economy perspective. This perspective is useful as it helps us understand how socio-economically weaker sections of the urban population are disadvantaged in accessing these basic services. Even when these services are provided by the municipal authorities solely, the poor have inequitable access to basic services in cities. Economic and spatial restructuring have pressured municipal governments to raise revenue, attract investments into the city for infrastructure, real estate, tourism and creating a brand image of the city, to become self-reliant, depend more on their internal resources and institutional finance that can range from “raising funds on the bond market, entering loan agreements for infrastructure development, capital market borrowing, privatisation, partnership arrangements and community-based projects” (Chaplin 2007:84). These shifts in urban policy and practice have also resulted in the entry of private players into the water, sanitation and SWM sectors.

 

The discussion in this module devotes special attention to each of these sectors with the help of case studies. The ensuing analysis brings out the implications of greater private participation by communities, citizens themselves, NGOs or contractors, especially on the questions of equity and accountability. While self-governance seemed to have gone down well with the educated, middle class and elite citizens who are well-networked and live in well-serviced neighbourhoods, the same is not the case with poor neighbourhoods like slums. Private participation, operating within a regulatory framework and following certain benchmarks may yield better outcomes.

 

Interesting Facts

 

According to a survey conducted during 2014-15 commissioned by the Ministry of Urban Development, “Mysore tops Swachh Bharat rankings for 476 cities ; four cities from Karnataka in top 10 West Bengal does well with 25 cities in top 100 ; 39 cities from South in top 100”.

 

(Press Information Bureau, 8 August,2015, Ministry of Urban Development, Government of India) 4 Points to Ponder A slum resident observed about the SAP:

 

The municipal authority wants that people should learn to inculcate good habits and through self- governance take care of their own waste and garbage, and then the city will automatically become clean. But tell me is it possible for a working person to first clean his house and lane and then cook and bathe, drop children to school and then go to work? Multiple tasks mean they need to be delegated. Moreover, if the MCGM does not perform this basic task of cleaning, then why does it have to exist? (Interview with slum resident, Irla slum, Juhu, Mumbai, September 2009 in Singh 2012:340)

you can view video on Political Economy of Basic Service Provision in Urban India

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