Many of us live in bustling cities. And some live in even more bustling mini-metros. And of course, most of us live in the 6,43,700 plus villages that define the real India in more ways than one.The truth lies in the fact that urbanisation is the new norm. Even as you read this, 41% of India is urban by strict definition and a huge chunk of our villages are fast progressing to become as urban as any district and taluka HQ has become. The village cluster and the small town is therefore a threatened entity in itself. Governments at every level, be it at the Centre or the state, are making efforts to get every nook and corner of India onto the bandwagon of the urban way of living and thriving. As our national and state highway networks find their way into the gut of India, it is exposed to every urban offering. And the biome is changing.
What then is the definition of a city? If I am to quote Jane Jacobs, the celebrated city-activist of our times, “Cities are not like suburbs, only denser. They differ from towns and suburbs in basic ways, and one of these is that cities are, by definition, full of strangers.”To an extent, the city is a mindset. If you think like a city-dweller, your dwelling space must be a city. And how does the stranger in a city think? Let me look at it with a positive lens on one eye and a negative on the other.
The city-dweller is in the city by force in the beginning and by choice after he has spent the first five years, earning a livelihood, repatriating a part of it to his family in the village, and putting together an ecosystem of comfort in the new place he has been forced to migrate to. The early city-dweller starts accumulating wealth and creating cocoons of comfort for himself. The first thing he buys is a two-wheeler all on his own. This could be a cycle or a scooter or a motorcycle for a start. Once this is done, the craving is to get four wheels sooner than later. A place to live in is next. Every item of home comfort follows as a craving. And when all of this is in place, the city has become his home.
The city-dweller is all about accumulating everything that everyone has and flaunts. It is about dressing right, looking smart, eating right, talking right, and eventually getting your children into the right schools and yourselves into the right social networks. The city dweller is therefore all about the “I, me and myself” attitude that bites us at some time or the other. It is all about a constant hunger for more. A hunger that is never ever satisfied. Yeh dil maange more, forever.
On the flip side, the city dweller is all about motivation. This hunger that is forever seeking a new morsel to bite into is a motivational factor for a lot of enterprise and industry. There is a positive nudge to work hard that keeps the wheels of modern industry running and refuelled. The city-dweller is therefore forever on the run, forever on the treadmill, with clearly demarcated 350 days of work and 15 days of vacation.
A city is therefore defined by the people who live in it. They are the only living elements in the city apart from the trees, the animals, the birds and the bees, who don’t seem to have too much of a say in the way a city is governed.The big cities we live in do have big problems. The bigger a city gets, the bigger seem the problems. The more complex a city becomes, the more the most basic issues become complex and high profile. All cities somehow have the tendency to reduce their biggest problems to that of water, electricity and garbage. And the common thread to it all is urban governance.
Governments of the day that govern cities, mini-metros and urban-clones of every kind are indeed overworked, over-stretched and totally involved in managing the urban chaos on a day-to-day basis with a day-to-day mindset. Urban governance is itself on a very fast-rolling treadmill of its own. There is little time to stop, think and plan better. Our cities have the corporations and municipal bodies vested with the power to govern. And literally every one of them is stretched, if not over-stretched, in their ability to deliver.
The urban person is distinguished by one other big ability. The ability to criticise and critique. The urban person always flaunts the attitude that our taxes must do the work and deliver. The first duty performed best by the urban person is the fact that he pays his taxes and expects the money to be applied to common good. The second duty he performs is the fact that he diligently votes (at least 50% of urban folk do) at every municipal, legislature and Lok Sabha election there is to vote at.In many ways the city dweller simplistically expects his money and his vote to do the talking and the working. The pity is that it does not. The task at hand in managing cities efficiently is much too big. In many ways, the management of a city is much too important to be left to those mandated to manage the city.
There is a very important need for more. There is a need for active participation of citizens in managing their cities. There is a need for cities to set up collectives of their own to manage specific issues that need to be managed. There is a need to set up a whole menagerie of political and administrative action committees that offer the solution of shadow governance of cities. There is a further need to set up ward-level committees that have the interest of the city-dweller at the forefront. These specific action groups will need to act as shadow governance groups and micro think-tanks, and will indeed need to emerge as powerful hubs of local self-governance. An important missing link.
Small is indeed beautiful. The smaller the area of focus, the more efficient the ethos of local self-governance. To a very big extent, the future of Indian cities lies in the hands of these groups, more than any else. May they thrive!
Harish bijoor
Brand Guru & Founder, Harish Bijoor Consults
(harishbijoor@hotmail.com)