Overview
The Urban Systems and Governance webinar attempted to unpack the complexities of Indian urban systems and the structures that govern them with the following objectives:
- To improve, within the collective and the larger ecosystem- the understanding of governance and systems (outcomes, finances, personnel, technology, policy) of cities and the linkages to each other – by investing time in the problem space in these components.
- To understand the effects and relationships between the service provision gaps in these sectors and the universal higher needs of economic development, gender and community engagement
Siddharth Pandit – CEO (Urban Collective Action Network) moderated the panel with Milind Mhaske – CEO (Praja Foundation), Anand Iyer – Chief Policy and Insights Officer (Janaagraha), and Shishir Ranjan Dash – Lead-Urban Habitat (Tata Steel Foundation)Â discussed what ails our cities and towns, and what lies at the root of their problems.
Key Outcomes
- Larger and mid-sized cities are facing more issues as compared to smaller cities because they are also rapidly growing. However, adequate mechanisms are not in place to tackle this challenge. Further, cities do not have sufficient autonomy in planning. Therefore, there are gaps in delivery of urban services which manifests in the form of broken roads, shortage of water supply and inadequate solid waste management. This points to the urgency of putting systems in place while the cities are smaller, else the service delivery gaps will worsen as the cities grow.
- Both the government and social sector have to go beyond solving the symptoms of these problems – the issue lies in the governance of cities and their planning processes. There is limited interaction between departments and the sectors within the municipal governance hierarchy to exchange valuable data and take forward the development agenda. Also, cities have been sporadic in their efforts to redress issues and even been reactive to crises, whereas the need is for sustained systemic change.
- Fragmented work is being done in areas such as technology and data-driven governance, community toilets, and waste management. This can be leveraged to develop a strategic approach towards urban development, especially catering to community development and empowerment. Such an approach is visibly missing in the current paradigms.
- Municipal governance – municipal councilors and municipal administration has to increase gender representation . The municipal administration suffers from a dearth of women , this problem is not so acute in the municipal councilors which have sufficient representation of women. Research shows having better representation in both these aspects will help in improving the quality of spending and build infrastructure that is more responsive towards building public interest.
- Civil Society Organisations such as Janaagraha and Praja have been trying to address some of the systemic urban issues. Janagraha’s ‘City Systems Approach’ entails empowered and legitimate political representation, and urban capacities and resources with a focus on transparency, accountability and participation. Praja’s ‘Urban Governance Index’ has tried to demystify urban problems and underscored four specific areas where improvement of service delivery is envisioned.
- The donor ecosystem for catalysing system changes in urban development should take into account ground realities along with being flexible in supporting organisations in the space. The donors should assess the quality of services and the processes that achieve the services, beyond the current model of looking at service provision numbers to achieve sustainability.
