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By Darshini Mahadevia Urban development that is geared to the needs of global capital displaces or excludes poorer segments of the population and leads to the social and spatial segmentation of the mega-city into citadels and ghettos. How can globalising mega-cities be made pro-poor and inclusive?
Economic reforms in India since 1991 have been geared towards integrating the Indian economy with the global economy. Reforms in the urban sector have followed suit, with the aim of increasing urban productivity and thereby the national income. While macro-economic reform policies have been framed by the central government and pursued with varying degrees of vigour by different state governments, urban policy changes have been largely a state government subject, pursued by individual state governments at different paces and in specific contexts. There is more pressure to change urban policies in states that have mega-cities with the potential to compete for global stakes. Thus, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Delhi, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu face more pressure from different lobbies than West Bengal, Bihar, Orissa, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, where urban sector reforms do not seem to be a priority. The term ‘reform’ is, however, misleading. It signifies a change from earlier practices and a change towards State withdrawal from the urban development sector. It signifies change to make cities more liveable for those who can afford these cities. It means making some of India’s cities offer a quality of life on a par with cities of the developed world. Nobody would have problems with improvements in the quality of life in our cities. But the quality of life must improve for all the citizens of a city, not just a few. What we need is ‘inclusive cities’ and not ‘exclusive cities’. We do not want cities that are exclusive enclaves of the global business class, global service class, global bureaucrats, global politicians and global capital. We want cities that include the interests of local economies, of those engaged with local economies, and marginal and vulnerable sections. Castells, in his work End of Millennium argues: “Globalisation proceeds selectively, including and excluding segments of economies and societies in and out of the networks of information, wealth and power that characterise the new dominant system.” The experience so far
Globalisation at the national level leads to economic restructuring and global linkages of select regions in the nation, select cities in these regions and select geographical segments within these cities. Thus various levels of dichotomy permeate society. Unfortunately, the globalised population and geographical regions sponge on the population/regions bereft of global links. In developing countries, government policies play an integral role in bridging inequalities. But in their excitement to push rapid global economic integration, governments strengthen the processes of exclusion through fragmentation of employment, housing and social services. At the same time, as nations compete, cities too begin to compete with each other under the neo-liberal agenda. These cities differ from those of an earlier era in terms of the way urban space is utilised, governed, contested and represented. Capital mobility, leading to competition for investment, has forced city governments to adopt innovative and entrepreneurial approaches to local growth. This means that cities embark on programmes to improve the quality of urban life through various policies. This is the activity of urban local governments. Though there is scope to enhance the quality of life of citizens, and improvements are necessary, the truth is that local governments take up selective projects to improve the urban environment which end up either displacing or excluding segments of population or, through privatisation, leads to fragmentation of housing, infrastructure and services as well as institutional structures. City plans give priority to business and scarce city resources are diverted to cater to the needs of business. Many local economies providing employment to the poor are de-legitimised and face eviction from productive locations sought after by elite groups. An increase in inequality in cities leads to issues of internal security. This pushes the rich to live in enclaves that are well protected. The city gets segmented between the rich and the poor. Segregation may not be total, but some segments of the city would have a concentration of the rich and others of the poor, as observed in the case of Mumbai. In Buenos Aires, one finds rich enclaves cropping up. In Mumbai, the privatisation of basic services could exclude poorer areas from receiving an adequate level of services. In Buenos Aires, the rich have avoided contributing to the costs of services at the city level. In the wake of the outbreak of suspected plague in Surat city in 1995, some city planners came up with the idea of bifurcating the Surat Municipal Corporation into two -- a corporation consisting of residential areas where the rich and middle classes live, and another where the poor and industrial workers live and where the plague originated. Thus, the social and spatial segmentation of the mega-city into ‘citadels’ and ‘ghettos’ takes place, and the city’s geography changes. Different systems of the city -- social security systems, education and health, transport, housing, water supply and sanitation – start responding to the wealthy minority integrated with the global economy. For example, infrastructure projects based on the principle of public-private partnership or privatisation, including those for water supply and sanitation, increase the cost of living for the poor and may altogether exclude the poorest. Land development becomes an intensely contested area. The new environmental agenda, under the concept of Sustainable Cities, also ends up expelling the poor from the city space and economy. Thus, the vast majority, that is low-skilled workers in industries or industrial zones, services, and the informal sector, congregate at the fringes where systems are inadequately developed, or in areas of the mega-city that are environmentally stressed or hazardous. The development processes that unwind are exclusionary. Large sections are first expelled from the economic space and then excluded from various city-level social systems. Thus, even though overall poverty (measured by income or consumption) in mega-cities has shown a decline over time, the vulnerability of such populations has increased. Women in poor communities suffer the most. Lastly, the influence of multilateral international development agencies such as the World Bank and Asian Development Bank (in the case of Asia), and some bilateral development agencies, in development policies increases. Most of these agencies promote privatisation in urban areas. The conditionalities of lending for urban development often include clauses such as allowing transnational or multinational utilities to enter the city. Such policies lead to exclusion in the city through the process of privatisation and also increase debt-liability, reducing the city’s capability to address the issue of sustainable poverty reduction. NGOs and community groups can ensure that the poor in cities in developing countries are included in the process of globalisation by instituting redistributive mechanisms. For example, if there is ‘people-managed resettlement’ then it is possible to carry on with improvement in infrastructure in the mega-city, which may entail the displacement of population. Experiments have shown that it is possible to protect low-income groups from the adverse impact of infrastructure projects to improve the quality of life in a city by organising the poor, developing their capacity to negotiate with the authorities and developing viable alternatives. However, much more needs to be done. Along with such activities, there is a need for congenial macro-policies such as universal provision of basic services, universal access to primary and secondary education, introduction of safety nets, and social security and labour protection. There is a need for a strong redistributive role played by the local government itself. Local and national governments have choices and it is the exercise of these choices that determines the impact of globalisation in cities . An inclusive city is a political project and requires access to adequate and secure habitats, livelihoods and basic services not only for the present population, but also for the migrants from the countryside who will continue to flow in. Policies have to be geared to the needs of the informal sector and focus on employment, housing, water supply, sanitation, health and education. Strategies have to be based not just on token managerial participation of the poor in decentralised governance, but on their participation in critical policymaking itself. Research questions
Against this background, we are engaged in a research project titled Inclusive Mega-Cities in Asia in a Globalising World. The project directors are Dr Darshini Mahadevia and Dr Erhard Berner. The participating institutions in research are the Centre for Development Alternatives (CFDA), Ahmedabad (the Indian partner institution) and the Institute of Social Studies (ISS), The Hague (the Dutch partner institution). This research project is funded by the Indo-Dutch Project on Alternative Development (IDPAD). Other research collaborators are Dr Solomon Benjamin and Harini Narayanan. This study will compare mega-cities in India (Mumbai, Bangalore and Ahmedabad) and Bangladesh ( Dhaka). Mumbai is the commercial capital of India and also the centre of a large movie industry that is going global; Bangalore is the IT capital of India; and Ahmedabad has been globally linked through textile and garment industries. Dhaka is expected to face an exodus of its garment industry after the abolition of the quota system in textiles, and it would then not be left with strong global economic linkages. Traditional production systems have been losing out in the process of economic globalisation in these cities. The study is focusing on employment, land and housing markets and access of the urban poor to basic services. The key research question is: how can the globalising mega-cities be pro-poor and improve the quality of life of their citizens? In the face of multifaceted market failures, historical imbalances and unequal power relations in the development process, the key question is broken into a number of sub-questions: What is the position of the selected cities in the national economy, and where do they locate in the global commodity chain and link to the global economy? What is the specific impact of this on their informal economies? Do employment marginalisation and globalising institutional structures produce other forms of marginalisation, and is there an impact on access to land/housing and water supply/sanitation? What are the specific policies that are governing the city’s mode of global integration? What measures are taken to mitigate the negative impact of global integration, if any, with respect to policies in the area of housing and water supply/sanitation? What has been the role of NGOs and local elected representatives in addressing these issues, and how can it be improved in order to make a difference in moving towards inclusive cities?
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(Darshini Mahadevia is Faculty, School of Planning, Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology, Ahmedabad, and Visiting Faculty, Centre for Development Alternatives, Ahmedabad. She can be contacted at
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) InfoChange News & Features, February 2005
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