Mumbai Day 41: On Democracy

"In 1950, with 12-14 per cent of the total population in cities, India and China were overwhelmingly rural and equally urban. In 1990, too, at 25-26 per cent of the total, the urban proportions were similar. By 2011, however, a dramatic gap had appeared. At the end of 2011, the Chinese government said, China was 51 per cent urban, whereas that figure for India was only 32 per cent. Urban China has stolen a big march over urban India in the last two decades.

"Why is that so? And who has paid for China's urban transformation? While firmer answers must await careful scrutiny, we can begin to generate some early ideas for reflection and debate.

"In China, local governments have led the drive for urbanization. They receive a proportion of taxes collected from commercial activity, but most of all, they keep a large part of the revenue that transformation of land use — from rural to urban — generates. The more local governments convert rural lands for commercial purposes, the greater their incomes. Moreover, as the land becomes urban, government benefits of urban planning — better sewerage, water, power, schools — also arrive. In rural areas, these public services, provided by the rural collectives, are rickety.

"Again, the contrast with India could not be sharper. India's cities may be engines of economic growth, but politically, India's democracy is weighted towards the countryside. Elections are decided in the villages, not in the cities. As a consequence, public resources flow towards the countryside in greater magnitude. The rural population is currently about two thirds of India's total population, and the urban population a third. But the budget of India's ministry of rural development is five to six times larger than that of the ministry of urban development."

The above excerpt from “Moving To The City,” a short article by Ashutosh Varshney, speaks to just some of the political influences which have shaped both India and China in the past thirty years. At beginning of the nineteen-eighties, China and India were approximate in their level of urban development. Today, however, they are almost incomparable. While India has experienced a flourish of urban production within the past two decades, its pace falls far behind that of its Eastern counterpart; China’s centralized government has radically altered the political, economic, social, and physical state under its control, unhindered by need for popular consensus. India’s bureaucratic structures, trapped by the confines of a bloated democratic system, have made relatively microscopic progress. This much is obvious: many are quick to comment on the political and developmental fissure between these two titans. What few seem to grasp, however, is the extremity of this ideological discord, and, most importantly, the current role of "democracy" in shaping India's urban and social future.

In a recent interview with Lara de Rooij, principal of Mumbai-based LMC Architects, her and I discussed the importance of self-governance in the development of Indian cities. As Lara related during our conversation, LMC Architects is located on a small street in South Bombay; she owns a car, and, consequently, drives to her office on a daily basis. She explained with great vigor that those who live near her office collectively determine if, and where, she is able to park her car during the day. “The neighborhood,” in fact, controls many goings-on in their communal sphere of influence: the ability and location of others to park on this particular street, what vendors are able to sell their wares at certain locations, and how the street should be utilized at various points of the day. “The neighborhood,” in this same vein of control, also affords permanent residence to a cow––a sacred creature in the eyes of Hinduism––at the end of the street, in place of a parked car. This form of control exists entirely separately from formal governmental structures; it is democratic control in its purest form.

This form of self-governance, completely removed from the influence of elected officials, is very much a way of life in India. It is also decidedly in opposition to Western conceptions of the term “democracy.” In the words of Rajeev Thakker, director of Studio X Mumbai, “in India, the people don’t elect people to do the job––the people do the job.” At an urban level, this molecular authority manifests its power in the divide between bureaucratic vision and constructed reality: major streets in Juhu, for example, despite being zoned for purely residential development, have slowly mutated to accommodate small shops in every ground-level space. Street vendors occupy sidewalks intended only for the transportation of pedestrians. Slums overflow from, and are maintained on, land earmarked for governmental facilities or public recreation space.

Upon first glance, it is easy to view this form of development as unbridled chaos, an obvious resultant of elected officials’ inefficacy in maintaining order. Yet here, perhaps, is where a comparison to recent Chinese urban construction is most important. Though surely gleaming, new cities in the far East are founded largely on hypothesis, on the motivation, speculation, and all-encompassing vision of a single, centralized government. China’s rise has unquestionably been meteoric in recent years. Yet one cannot help but see the plastic nature of its urban consequences in sprawling shopping malls, deserted boulevards, and ghosted cities. Indian urbanism, by contrast, is a result of pure need; there is no time, ability, or scope for conjecture. Its results, while unpredictable, are genuine. As a prominent Mumbai developer noted,

"[In China] there’s a lot of artificial growth in cities, because the government is pumping public money to generate development; it doesn’t really care what this development might eventually become. So, in the long run, cities in India might become more self-sufficient and resilient than those in China, because it’s all happening organically and nothing is done without the involvement of stakeholders."

This resiliency, though powerful, requires management. It is evident that India’s government must act quickly to harness both formal and informal democratic structures, to channel complex social, economic, and urban systems for public good. At present, many local structures within India exist in complete isolation from––and often defy––grander visions of India’s future development, generating a constant battle between bottom-up and top-down initiatives. The last Development Plan for Mumbai, for example, conceived in 1993 by its municipal government, was only five percent realized during its supposed timeline for implementation. This minuscule rate of implementation typifies a developmental stalemate; local and national structures are in constant competition, each unable to effectively control the other.

​Clearly, such ineffective management must change. Citizens and elected officials, instead, must work together to produce meaningful change. Harnessing the power of democratic governance is key to improving the state of cities in India, and is likely critical in refuting the sweeping, authoritative structures prevalent in China today.

It is unclear how improvement might best be achieved; there is little doubt that corruption, apathy, and an enormity of population present significant challenges. Effectual democratic governance of over one billion people has yet to be realized anywhere in the world, let alone in a country in the midst of such rapid industrial development. Yet India's governing bodies, at this critical juncture, must make every effort to propel its populous toward their most lofty ambitions and dreams, and to do so with highly advanced forms of governmental intervention and regulation. Cities like Mumbai have a rare opportunity to demonstrate the power of truly generative, self-directed urban development, and to showcase the global potential of local influence in the twenty-first century. This promise should not be overlooked lightly.