Abstract
The author had been a practicing urban manager in India. Having
worked in Municipal Corporation and Development Authorities, he
is now working in the Federal Government.
Government of India did never have any stated policy on urban development,
although it twice pronounced a 'housing policy'. This is a reflection
of the dualism in the approach to the whole issue - while affirmative
intervention was sought to ameliorate the problem of housing of
the middle, lower middle and the poor class, issues of urban infrastructure
and services were marginalized, and left largely to the initiative
of the Municipal Corporations, and para statal Development Authorities,
which did not go much beyond using land as a resource for development.
The policy of 'economic liberalism' since the nineties did not
much percolate down to the City Governments, despite many prescriptions
of the donor agencies, although a few cities did adopt innovative
approaches, mainly around land, to attract private capital for housing
development. However, economic liberalism impacted heavily on city's
economy and infrastructure, as reflected on growing informalisation
and casualisation of the job, deteriorating physical environment
and worsening of the conditions of the poor.
This paper will scan the initiatives of the federal, provincial
and city governments of a few mega polis in the nineties and the
present decade to highlight that economic liberalism remained a
non starter in the realm of urban development, but it did impact
the urban situation substantially. The much hyped 'urban sector
reform' also did not take place meaningfully, despite the constitutional
amendment for empowering the urban local bodies, prolonging the
urban chaos, or more appropriately urban laissez faire, which charaterises
the scenario of most of the towns and cities of the country today.
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