Abstract
This chapter introduces a book on the effects of decentralisation reforms on small Indian towns. Previously controlled at the State and Central level, responsibility for urban management has been radically redefined since decentralisation reforms were launched in India at the beginning of the 1990s. Most of the attention on this subject has so far focused on metropolitan cities; however, reforms have also been quietly taking place in other, far smaller urban areas where more than half of the urban population is actually living. Therefore, the purpose of this introduction is to present the aim of a survey undertaken in four small municipalities. In order to identify the impacts of the reform in all their complexity, a multi-dimensional approach has been used that reviews not only the local democratic aspects but also the more technical and financial processes being implemented. As the country embarks on this reorganisation, this research will help build a better understanding of the processes underlying the emergence of municipal institutions in India and, more generally, of the future facing rapidly changing small towns in the global South.
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Notes
- 1.
The ruins of the cities of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro, built in the Indus Valley in around 2600 B.C.; Patna, the current state capital of Bihar, constructed on the site of the ancient capital of the Maurya empire (321–151 B.C.); and Vijayanagar (now Hampi, in the state of Karnataka), capital of the eponymous Hindu kingdom (1336–1565) and well-known example of the Chola dynasty (which ruled from the third century A.D.): all are ancient cities whose visual remains continue to reflect the importance of urban areas in Indian civilisation.
- 2.
This is a ten-year census. Full and detailed results of the last census, conducted in 2011, were made available in March 2014 (http://censusindia.gov.in/. Accessed 26/11/2015).
- 3.
- 4.
In literature on developing countries, the term decentralisation covers a wide range of processes, from administrative devolution through to the implementation of a policy for local democracy (Litvack and Seddon 1999, p. 2–4: Le Meur 1999, p. 6). This term describes the process through which a central government devolves roles and authority to public (municipal) local authorities (Jaglin et al. 2011).
- 5.
The official definition of urban areas distinguishes between “Statutory Towns” (municipalities) and “Census Towns”. Statutory towns are granted municipal status at the discretion of the individual state concerned. The decision is therefore purely administrative and there are no statistical criteria involved. For Census Towns, all urban areas are statistically defined as urban units by the Census of India if they meet the demographic and economic criteria set by the Register Central of India (RGI) (a minimum population of 5,000, with a population density of at least 400 persons per km2. and at least 75 % of the working population not employed in the agriculture sector).
- 6.
These are former rural communities that are now considered urban areas as they meet the criteria used by the Register Central of India (see Bhagat 2011b). Every 10 years during the Census, several towns are redefined as urban centres under these criteria, whereas others revert to village status.
- 7.
In 2004, “India shining” was the slogan used by Atal Bihari Vajpayee of the Bharatiya Janata Party, who stated his intention to transform the country into a major world power by 2020.
- 8.
Unless otherwise mentioned, all the translations from French sources are by Nicola Brodrick.
- 9.
Whether the German philosopher Georg Simmel at the beginning of the twentieth century or, for example, the English geographer A.J. Scott at the beginning of the twenty-first century, large towns have always held a fascination for researchers and dominated the field of urban studies.
- 10.
“Subaltern Urbanization in India” is a project financed by the French National Research Agency and jointly implemented by the Institut Français de Pondichéry and the Centre de Sciences Humaines de New Delhi between 2011 and 2014). (http://suburbin.hypotheses.org/. Accessed 26/11/2015).
- 11.
As just one of many examples, Véronique Dupont (Institut de Recherche pour le Développement) defines “small towns” as having fewer than 20,000 inhabitants and “medium-sized towns” as having between 20,000 and 100,000 inhabitants (Dupont 2002). In contrast, Amitabh Kundu (Jawaharlal Nehru University) refers to all urban settlements with fewer than 50,000 inhabitants as “small towns”, with “medium-sized towns” being all those with a population of between 50,000 and 1 million (Kundu 2007). Lastly, as far as S.S. Dhaliwal is concerned, “small towns” have fewer than 500,000 inhabitants, and “medium-sized towns” have a population of between 0.5 and 1 million (Dhaliwal 2004, preface, p. IX).
- 12.
Literature on urban studies in India is mostly produced in English and differentiates between town size by defining them as either “towns” or “cities”. Although this distinction is not always made, it helps make it clear that, in Indian studies, “small to medium-sized towns” are separate to “small and medium-sized cities”.
- 13.
In India, the official poverty line is between 816 and 1,000 rupees/per capita/month (around €10) in villages and towns respectively. Poverty ratios increase in inverse proportion to the size of the town. Thus, in 2004-05, towns with over 100,000 inhabitants contained an average of 12 % of poor households, whereas this figure increased to 23 % in towns of fewer than 50,000 inhabitants (Himanshu 2006).
- 14.
For a detailed summary of the development programmes implemented specifically for small towns in India since independence up to the 1990s, please refer to the introduction to Véronique Dupont’s research on industrialisation in the small town of Jetpur (Dupont 1995) and the introduction to the author’s thesis, which is available online (Bercegol 2012).
- 15.
References to Panchayat can be found in the Manusmiriti (the oldest Hindu text and founding text of the Dharma tradition), the Arthashastra (which translates as “political science”, a treatise on politics, economic policy and military strategy written in 4B.C.), as well as in the Mahabharata and Ramayana (two important epic Hindu poems written between 4B.C. and 4A.D.).
- 16.
Ahimsa is a Sanskrit word meaning “not to injure” and “compassion” and which originally appeared in the Chandogya Upanishad, one of the oldest major Upanishads (500 B.C.).
- 17.
Such as Public Administration and Development, for example.
- 18.
Unlike the World Bank’s normative “good governance” framework, the concept of “governance” is defined here as being a “process of coordinating stakeholders, social groups and institutions to achieve specific and jointly defined goals” (Levy and Lussault 2001, p. 418).
- 19.
For the World Bank: “The most complete forms of decentralization from a government’s perspective are privatization and deregulation because they shift responsibility for functions from the public to the private sector […].They allow functions that had been primarily or exclusively the responsibility of government to be carried out by businesses, community groups, cooperatives, private voluntary associations, and other non-government organizations” (Decentralization Thematic Team-b, cited by Jaglin, 2005b, p. 8).
- 20.
R. K Sivaramakrishnan particularly highlighted the fact that the 62nd Amendment (the precursor to the 74th amendment) was far more detailed, especially with regard to the quantitative classification of different types of local government; however, due to lack of agreement, these clarifications were left out of the final version that was ultimately adopted.
- 21.
For information on the completed APUG programme, see: http://www.csh-delhi.com/UAPG/index.htm and for information on the completed SETUP programme, see: http://setup.csh-delhi.com/ (both accessed 26/11/2015).
- 22.
Information on the now completed Indo-Dutch Research Programme on Alternatives in Development can be found at: http://www.indiawijzer.nl/university_education/den_haag/den_haag_idpad.htm (Accessed 26/11/2015).
- 23.
In Indian literature, the term “elite capture” (see Kundu 2009, for example) usually refers to the process by which local leaders use the benefits of decentralisation to further their own ends; whereas, in Africa, it usually refers to the central government’s hold over the local elite (see Crook 2003, for instance).
- 24.
With the notable exception of the work carried out by Pranab Bardhan, many of whose papers are available online at: http://emlab.berkeley.edu/users/webfac/bardhan/papers.htm (Accessed 26/11/2015).
- 25.
- 26.
Criticising the simplistic view of mono-centred studies, Krister P. Andersson and Elinor Ostrom thus propose to examine decentralisation from a “poly-centric” perspective, which refers to an ideal system in which no authority is superior to the others and each party is free to set and enforce rules within a clearly defined geographic area and jurisdiction (Andersson and Ostrom 2008, p. 79).
- 27.
See the work conducted by LATTS, in particular http://latts.fr/en (Accessed 26/11/2015).
- 28.
P. Le Galès and D. Lorrain refer to the metropolis as being a “MEGA technical system” (2003, p. 305) and we have borrowed this term here, removing the word “mega”, which denotes large metropolises, in order to apply the term to the town in all its sizes.
- 29.
Integration highlights all the links of solidarity and inter-dependence that contribute to the overall functioning of the town and, consequently, the fact that the town shapes society (Coutard 2008). In contrast, fragmentation describes the process of regulated or non-regulated dislocation and dispersal on a very—overly—small scale: that of community groups, neighbourhood or personal ties (Coutard 2008).
- 30.
S. Jaglin defines “regulation” as describing “the (legal, economic and political) mechanisms used by local public authorities during a period of change to settle differences, organise disorder and ensure the changing replication and/or transformation of a social system” (Jaglin 2004, p. 5).
- 31.
There is a wealth of literature available on this subject. For a critical analysis, it is worth reviewing L’eau mondialisée, la gouvernance en questions written by Schneier-Madanes in 2010, as well as the recent special ‘water’ issue of Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales written by Lorrain and Poupeau (2014).
- 32.
The demographic threshold is representative of the majority of towns in Uttar Pradesh, 65 % of which fall into category III (from 20,000 to 49,000 inhabitants) or IV (from 10,000 to 19,999 inhabitants). In addition, this is the critical threshold that usually triggers water supply infrastructure extension work to cover all areas of the town (see Chap. 2 for a detailed explanation of the town sampling method).
- 33.
The centre was renamed Centre for Social Sciences and Humanities in 2013.
- 34.
Fondation Palladio (http://fondationpalladio.fr/. Accessed 26/11/2015) provided financial support in the form of a grant during the final year of the research.
- 35.
The visit in June 2012 was conducted as part of a post-doctoral assignment for the ANR SUBURBIN programme http://suburbin.hypotheses.org/ (Accessed 26/11/2015).
- 36.
The public electricity service is not explicitly dealt with in this study as responsibility for this utility was not devolved to local governments under the 74th Amendment. However, it is occasionally mentioned as it is technically linked to the water supply service, which uses an electrical pumping system, which is covered in some detail in this study.
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de Bercegol, R. (2017). Understanding the Changing Urban Space in India. In: Small Towns and Decentralisation in India. Exploring Urban Change in South Asia. Springer, New Delhi. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-81-322-2764-9_1
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