New Forms of Urban Governance in India: Shifts, Models, Networks and Contestations

This volume examines Indian cities’ mixed experiences with decentralization and partnerships in service delivery, and helps to evaluate whether governance reforms have yielded the expected benefits. Decentralization has been widely touted to improve service delivery, enhance municipal accountability and foster wider participation. India’s constitution was amended in 1992 to mandate decentralization and empower local institutions. But contributors to the volume found limited improvements in several Indian cities, including Mumbai, Delhi and Hyderabad. Kerala and West Bengal have allowed greater decentralization, yet researchers in these states still uncovered inadequate financial devolution and limited community participation. Through case studies of ineffectual ward committees and contestations at higher levels of government, the contributors provide a micro and macro level understanding of the challenges in enacting local governance reforms in India. The authors also ask how service delivery has been affected by the shift towards partnerships and away from state provision. Although coverage has often increased, service delivery and standards remain highly inequitable. India’s experiences are placed in the context of globalization and wider shifts in governance, providing useful information for urban researchers and students beyond the sub-continent.

In Chapter 1, the editors give an overview of India’s governance reforms and identify the main themes that structure the volume’s three parts. Part I examines different models of urban decentralization in India, noting the role of NGOs and assessing the new ward committees. Ward committees were intended to play a vital part in fostering participation and local accountability, but as argued in Chapter 3, few cities have ward committees worth the name. Chapter 3 offers an initial evaluation of ward committees, identifies areas of future research and provides recommendations to strengthen decentralization. Part II looks at service delivery partnerships, or “multi-stakeholder arrangements”. This section includes chapters on Mumbai’s solid waste management and the city’s slum rehabilitation programme. Part III helps illuminate governance contestations, and includes a discussion of the judiciary’s clashes with the government of Delhi; another chapter looks at regressive regulatory reforms in Mumbai. Contributors often highlight areas for future research, since India’s governance reforms are relatively recent and under-examined. Mumbai and Delhi feature in several chapters, alongside considerations of Hyderabad, cities in West Bengal, Kerala and other states. Taken together, the chapters reveal useful contrasts in governance between cities, as well as intra-city variations.

Among the richest case studies are ones from Kerala (Chapter 11) and West Bengal (Chapter 4), where decentralization has been more extensive. Chapter 11 compares the ward committees in Kolkata, Delhi and Kollam (a medium-sized city in Kerala). Kollam’s committees prepare annual action plans on 12 different sectors (water, sanitation, etc.), which subsequently inform the city’s development process. This chapter suggests that while Kollam’s committees are more successful than other cities’, participation levels have been declining and monitoring processes should be improved. Chapter 4 compares ward committees across three cities in West Bengal and explore the cities’ intra-ward variations. Within cities, committees differ widely depending upon the ward chairperson’s political background, citizens’ willingness to participate and the committees’ functional and financial powers. Across the three cities, committees differ in the size of the geographical area and population covered, so that proximity to citizens is sometimes limited. The authors advocate proper financial devolution and more participatory mechanisms to ensure that the benefits of decentralization are indeed realized.