Ways of democracy: making politics work for the urban poor

Abstract

The history of urbanisation in India can be traced to the country’s ancient kingdoms, where the movement of goods, royal power, and structured hierarchies defined spaces for human interaction, material and ideological productions, and social control. During the British colonial period, municipal administration emerged as a form of political rule and a space for collating petitions. It also served as a weak platform for consolidating interest, a mirror in which emerging classes envisioned their political future. The East India Company established Madras as a corporation as early as 1687, and a modicum of municipal order came into being in the Bengal Presidency in the first half of the nineteenth century (1842). By the end of that century, there were nearly 700 municipalities in British India, and in a significant majority of them, the members were nominated by the colonial administration. It was Lord Ripon’s resolution of 1882 that gave a new lease of life to municipal governance in colonial India.2 He argued that local government must be constructed from below, rather than imposed from above. By the early twentieth century, the major corporations, such as Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras, had a moderate sense of power in relation to taxation, sanitation, basic services, and health. During the anti-colonial struggles, the emerging urban spaces with limited electoral representation provided platforms where emerging nationalist leaders sharpened their political acumen. With independence in 1947, the political fortunes of cities and municipal administrations in India were eclipsed. As the provincial and national political arenas opened up for political competition, the city governments lost their earlier pre-eminence. Despite the decline in the pre-eminence of cities, India, as evidence suggests, now lives less and less in its villages. In 1951, 17.3 per cent of its population was urban, in 2001 it was 27.8 per cent, and the provisional figure for 2011 is 31.16 per cent.3 For the first time since independence, urban areas witnessed an absolute increase in population in comparison with rural India. According to an estimate, by about 2030 nearly 41 per cent of India’s population will be urban (Urban Poverty Report 2009). This is definitely not a picture of hyperurbanisation, but in terms of population, it is the second largest in the world. A distinctive feature of Indian urbanisation is the growing concentration of the urban population in large cities. The number of cities that have a population ofmore than one million increased from 12 in 1981 to 35 in 2001. The metropolitan cities of Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Bangalore, Madras, and Hyderabad have grown rapidly in recent years. India’s mode of urbanisation continues to remain top-heavy, although the growth of population in ‘mega cities’, according to the 2011 census, has slowed during the past decade (2001 to 2011). The picture of small and medium towns, largely, is one of stagnation and decay. Historically speaking, cities and towns hold an ambivalent position within the Indian imaginary. The ambivalence, of course, varies along class and caste lines. Dalits, for instance, view cities as a place that brings good fortune and a space where caste rules do not apply with the same brutal intensity as they do in villages. In modern Indian literature, in different languages, the city is simultaneously a sign of wonder, a crucible of curiosity, and a location where individuals lose their moral anchor and their sense of community and fall prey to aggressive individualism.4 The power of cities as the loci and generators of fantasies is on the rise in India. This is at odds with the demographic statistics on urbanisation. From a neo-liberal perspective, cities are primarily engines for economic growth, and the future of India’s economy depends on how they are governed and reproduced. From this point of view, cities should not only have adequate and cheap supplies of labour, but their productivity should also be enhanced. The neo-liberal ambition of Indian policymakers is reflected in the consensus visible across political parties and ideological lines. For example, there is little difference between the Indian National Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party when it comes to core economic policies. However, the poor and vulnerable social groups continue to challenge their legitimacy and point out their inegalitarian character. In the struggle for their own well-being, besides the traditional communitarian strategies, they have often exploited the growing potential of India’s competitive electoral democracy. Unfortunately, these strategies turn out to be effective only in limited circumstances. Between elections, in everyday situations, the poor in general and the urban poor in particular have to devise new ways of ensuring the delivery of services and the implementation of a plethora of rights that the Indian state has recently granted to its citizens, such as the right to employment, to education, and to subsidised food grain.