ITPI JOURNAL 1 : 3 (2004) 65-69

I T P I JOURNAL
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74TH CONSTITUTION AMENDMENT ACT AND PRESENT ECONOMIC GROWTH AS CATALYZING AGENT FOR URBAN DEVELOPMENT Sanjeev Vidyarthi
Pursuring Doctoral Research in Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA
ABSTRACT The author re-examines the deficiencies that prompted enactment of the 74th Constitution Amendment Act (The 74th amendment is singled out as it explicitly focuses on the urban areas, while the 73 rd amendments focus is on the rural areas) and hypothesizes on some of the probable impediments that have blocked the 74th amendments implementation. The author argues that the present system has failed to implement the 74th amendment and this failure is more deep-rooted than the commonly perceived procedural problems and administrative apathy. The article hypothesizes that the present spectacular growth of the Indian economy and the ensuing economic development and the 74th CAA has far more potentials to influence and catalyze the processes of urban improvement / development.

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INTRODUCTION
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It is about 12 years, since the 73 and the 74 CAA to the constitution of India were passed by the parliament. The bills were perceived as path breaking in nature and the then Prime Minister of India Rajeev Gandhi during the ensuing debate in the parliament th 1 on 15 May 1989 said the single greatest event in the evolution of democracy in India was the enactment of the constitution which established democracy in parliament and the state legislatures. This historical revolutionary bill takes it place alongside that great event as the enshrinement in the constitution of democracy at the grassroots. Many of us would remember the spate of laudatory articles these bills generated, especially in the architecture/planning literature. It seemed as if Paeans are being sung and the planning profession is brimming over with a deep sense of long awaited th deliverance. Indeed yet another reading of the 74 CAA might still succeed in giving goose pimples to some of us - the very first three items in the Twelfth 2 Schedule (Article 243 W) referred respectively to Urban Planning including Town Planning, Regulation of Land-use and constitution of buildings and Planning for economic and social development. The author re-examines the deficiencies that th th prompted enactment of the 74 CAA (The 74 CAA is singled out as it explicitly focuses on the urban rd areas, while the 73 CAA focus is on the rural areas)

and hypothesizes on some of the probable th impediments that have blocked the 74 CAA implementation. The author argues that the present th system has failed to implement the 74 CAA and this failure is more deep-rooted than the commonly perceived procedural problems and administrative apathy. Despite the legislatures will to devolve the th power to grassroots, the 74 CAA by its very attempt to devolve power finds potent and pernicious enemies that have ensured that it is not implemented. Firstly the amendment threatens the PatrimonialBureaucratic culture of governance in the country. Secondly the amendment goes against the long-held view that decision making, especially involving technical matters requires specialization, expertise and a chain of command. This makes the concept of th popular participation (exactly what the 74 CAA aspires to do) not only unrealistic but also a persistently revolutionary idea and finally since the constitution of India is rooted in the western liberal thought which in itself is build on the schism between the individual and the state, the intermediaries (in this case the city) become and remain weak. The article hypothesizes that the present spectacular growth of the Indian economy and the ensuing economic development has far more potential to influence and catalyze the processes of urban improvement rather than the mere wish of the legislature and concludes that the current growth of Indian economy augurs particularly well for the urban sector, if harnessed properly.

1 The bills (as 64th and 65th amendment) though passed by the lower house (Lok Sabha) in 1989 could not be adopted in the upper house (Rajya Sabha) and were reintroduced by Narsimha Rao government in 1992. 2 In the wake of the 74th amendment, Twelfth Schedule has been inserted in the constitution that contains a list of fields over which the local bodies may have autonomy.

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BACKDROP OF 74th CAA

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The euphoria in the wake of the 74 amendment was at least related in part to the fact the constitution of India, though the longest written constitution in the world had not elucidated the role of local self-governing bodies. In fact the constitution was almost silent except but for the article 40 which sanctioned the establishment of village Panchayats. This too probably was to accommodate the long standing wish (articulated in his frequent musings about the Village Republics) of the Father of the nation. The article 40, however, was noticeably silent about the organization of town governments. Hence after 1950 the only hope for the local bodies in both the rural and urban areas was the state governments. The state governments in order to lighten their own burden created the local bodies in their jurisdictions and finally the Balwant Rai Mehta committee (1957) institutionalized Panchayati Raj. However as far as the question of constitutional protection was concerned the cities remained weak 3 and can be called mere creatures of the state . To make matters worse for the cities, the state governments legislated the formation of Development Authorities and Improvement trusts in the cities (Through the 70s and 80s) as it was felt that the existing municipalities are and increasingly becoming incapable of looking after ever burgeoning needs of the city. These new institutions were entrusted with development activities while the responsibilities of the municipalities were relegated to maintenance related measures. Since both the development authorities and the Improvement trust were directly responsible to the state government (being their creations) and were staffed by career bureaucrats / technocrats (mostly on deputation to maintain a tighter leash) the state government began to play a much bigger role in the city affairs than the popularly elected local bodies. The 74 amendment was created against this backdrop to provide greater constitutional status to the local bodies in urban areas. It must be noted that the idea, however, was not to bring any
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substantial change in the pattern of local government administration but to provide them notable 4 constitutional protection . Further since the subject of local governments continues to be in the state th list, hence, the 74 amendment was to be implemented by the respective state governments in their jurisdictions (This becomes very conspicuous by the use of word may instead of shall in the approved bill.) 3.0 THE POTENT AND PERNICIOUS FORCES IN OPPOSITION OF 74th CAA

The foremost and the most noticeable stumbling th block, the 74 amendment faces is the contemporary over reliance on the generalist bureaucratic system of governance. The author would like to argue that contrary to popular belief the present mess has deeper roots than generally recognized. And the point of interest for the purpose of this study is the historical cultural and social moorings of the present days generalist dominated bureaucracy. Though Lord Cornwallis (1843-1892) is recognized as the father of the modern Indian bureaucracy, a predecessor to the colonial bureaucracy existed during the Mughal period. It was a bureaucracy centered on the ruler who in turn used it to extend his own private domain to the entire state. It was a mutually beneficial relationship and the king and the bureaucrats enjoyed what is called a patron-client relationship. This Mughal model was also widely replicated by other smaller kingdoms and became the de facto mode of governance. This patrimonial-bureaucratic model was based on the fundamental premise that the ruler was the center of the state (and metaphorically also of the universe) and the bureaucrat (subedars in Mughal India, thikanedars in Rajasthan, etc.) were in actuality an extension of the King in their own domains. This can also be understood as the part being an equally important constituent of the whole as the whole is of the part. The only glue that kept this patron-client relationship together was a sense of personal loyalty, albeit it may be argued that then it was stronger at the clients end.
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Gerald E Frug uses this term in his seminal piece City as a legal Concept, Harvard Law review, Vol. 93, April 1980, Number 6 Amareswar Mishra in Constitutional Status of Local Governments in India page 311, paper published in Constitution and Constitutionalism in India, APH Publishing Corporation, New Delhi, 1999. 5 A detailed study by Prof Stephen P. Blake Shahjahanabad: The sovereign city in Mughal India, 1639-1739, Cambridge University press, 1991 coins and elucidates the patrimonial-bureaucratic model in exhaustive detail.

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Sanjeev Vidyarthi / ITPI Journal 1: 3 (2004) 65-69

The colonial bureaucratic model that sought to reform the Mughal bureaucratic model succeeded in improving only some functional aspects while the bulk of the attributes that were socio-cultural in nature have remained till the present day. For example the British model sought to redirect the bureaucrats loyalty from the person to the office. However, the author argues that the contemporary Indian bureaucracy still exhibits the social-cultural trait of loyalty that is rooted in the patrimonialbureaucratic model of Mughal administration. The colonial efforts have made the feature of loyalty simply assume one more layer that of loyalty towards office rather than a person and in reality the loyalty now works diabolically at two levels- loyalty to a patron as long as he is in office and then loyalty to the office once the patron is not in that office. As a direct corollary to the above postulate the patron and the client (For example Chief Minister and the bureaucrat) feel more comfortable with each other if they share a sense of mutual loyalty (that could be based on caste and creed affinities, reciprocated gratification or monetary considerations) and vice versa. In such a setting the bureaucrat sees his office as an extension of the goodwill he enjoys with his patron. In other words it can also be understood as the privileges of power enjoyed by the office of the bureaucrat as the largesse of his client relationship with his patron and the patron in turn being gratified by the bureaucrat either by doing his bidding and / or ensuring quick delivering of even the undeliverable(s). However, since the patron (the elected politician) does not enjoy permanence of tenure anymore in the democratic setup, which ironically is now the privilege of the bureaucrat hence it may be argued that the bureaucracys dice is more loaded. In simpler words th since the 74 CAA, to begin with would have obliterated the powers of the development authorities and the Improvement trusts (headed by the career bureaucrats) and enhanced those of the municipalities (headed by elected but generally minnow and small time politicians) the bureaucracy holds it out by putting spanners in work. In this the bureaucracy is aided by two very disparate but surprisingly converging phenomenons. The first is the widely held societal belief that any decision making requires great technical skills and the matters especially involving technical issues require specialization, expertise and a chain of command.
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The apparatuses (specialized technocrats headed by a bureaucrat both having vast field experiences) of the development authorities / improvement trusts hence are perceived more competent than the municipalities (that are headed by a politician who is perceived as inexperienced in urban administrative and planning matters). Secondly using the previously described Mughal bureaucracys analogy the present bureaucrats succeed in depicting their offices as a mere extension of the office of their patron (The Chief minister or the minister). This is more often than not is demonstrated by quickly ensuring that the wishes of the patron are fulfilled. Where as the popularly elected mayor could probably belong to the opposition or may have his own quirks (even if she / he is from the same political party), the bureaucrats office generally ensures a quick, confidential and the least troublesome mode of implementation. Further the office of Mayor is perceived as parochial (a phenomenon as old as Plato - Power appeals to the worst instincts of the individual and leads to a despotism of ignorance and prejudice) and to use the frequently used (abused) Indian term of having vested interests. This is at best paradoxical and is a doubly loaded argument as the Mayor is the first citizen of the city and supposedly represents the city as its duly elected constitutional representative but the underpinning societal trust in the scientistic and the technocratic urban development authorities and improvement trusts that supposedly function with more checks and balances has constantly undermined the Mayors position. No better example of this could be found than the centrally sponsored Scheme for Infrastructure development in Mega Cities. This scheme was announced in the year 1993th 94 (almost immediately after the 74 CAA in 1992) and its purpose was to undertake infrastructure development projects of city-wide/regional significance covering a wide range of components like water supply, sewerage, roads, bridges and solid waste management, etc. The scheme envisaged setting up of Revolving Fund by nodal agencies designated by State Governments for infrastructure development on a sustainable basis with appropriate direct and indirect cost recovery measures. Instead of empowering the Municipal Corporations of the Mega cities (more remarkable because the Municipal Corporations of the Chennai, Kolkata and Mumbai are the oldest in the sub-continent and arguably the most experienced in managing urban affairs) the

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following scientistic and the technocratic organizations (off course headed by a generalist bureaucrat) were designated by the respective state governments: Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) for Mumbai. Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority (KMDA) for Kolkata. Tamil Nadu Urban Finance and Infrastructure Development Corporation (TUFIDCO) for Chennai. Andhra Pradesh Urban Infrastructure and Finance Development Corporation (APUIFDC) for Hyderabad and Karnataka Urban Infrastructure Development Finance Corporation (KUIDFC) for Bangalore. The irony of a communist government in West Bengal that is theoretically underpinned by a long history accompanying the slogan power to people preferring a bureaucratic organization over Kolkata Municipal Corporation (where incidentally the communists were / are in power as well) is not lost. The detractors may like to argue that since the infrastructure development in Mega Cities was to be funded by the Central and State Governments as grant in the 25:25 ratio and the balance 50% was to be mobilized by the nodal agency from financial institutions and capital market and hence the specialized agencies were preferred over municipal corporations that are overburdened and hence deemed incapable for this task. For one this is a self-defeatist stance that goes against the very spirit th of the 74 CAA and secondly there have been repeated examples of Municipalities (beginning with Ahemedabad Municipal Corporation in 1995) raising money, without government guarantee, from the market to finance infrastructure projects. This brings us to the fundamental phenomenon of the powerlessness of the cities in the present scheme of things. The debate about the apparent powerlessness of the cities is in fact not new and can be traced to as early as the nineteenth century when the question about the public / private distinction for the corporations arose. This was necessitated to determine the relationships between the corporations and the legislature. Cities were placed in the sphere of the state while the corporations in the sphere of the individual in the society. It means that the corporate executives are private individuals and the city executives are public individuals. Marx suggests in his essay On the Jewish question to label the individual in a civil society private and the city employee as public is to divide those who can lead
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an earthly life of economic gain from those who must regard themselves a communal beings and act in heavenly fashion. This vision still retains a powerful influence on our thinking and has produced the contemporary bizarre situation where the intermediaries between the individual and the state are weak (for example cities) and a expert dominated bureaucracy is more trustable than the popular participation. The present status of urban affairs amply demonstrates the effects of many such interesting layers (the ones described here are at best a relatively small sampling) that the present Indian system has either inherited or have been forced upon it. For starters, on one hand we have the loyalty feature of the patrimonial-bureaucratic model and then we have powerless cities because of the liberal western thought (the legitimate parent of our constitution, with no historical, social and cultural connection with the Indian context) that is rooted in the schism between the individual and the state (remember the recurrent thought in the French and the American Revolution) on the other. And no prizes, at this point in guessing, why the cities in South Asia are, what they are! Finally assuming that the cities are powerless and would continue to remain so, if the above reasoning is indeed true, then can anything be done about the planners elementary pre-occupation with urban improvement? The author would like to hypothesize that the present spectacular growth of the Indian economy and the ensuing economic development indeed has the potential to catalyze the processes of urban improvements. For one there are several historical precedents that support this hypothesis. Let me use an analogy to explain this. We know that any particular phenomenon is triggered off (quite like a laboratory reaction) when the right chemistry happens. The two most important ingredients for the issue in question are the present degraded urban status that is at its nadir and the author takes the liberty to assume that it is extremely difficult to make it any worse and secondly some of our cities, whether we like it or not, are becoming part of a global network of cities. Apart from other things it means that such cities have become sort of a showcase for the country. The global visitors for one and the new money that finds its way in the local economies of such cities

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will provide the incentive, if not force, for the governments to act. Remember the Victorian reforms in London and Haussmans urban improvements in Paris were both triggered off by economic growth accompanied by the globalization of those cities. Secondly the trickle down effect of the increased purchasing power will ensure that an increasing number of residents, with more money in their pockets, will demand and get better urban environments. 4.0 CONCLUSIONS

planners in the coming years. Sadly this makes th reminiscing about the 74 CAA more painful as it indeed was and remains the most powerful attempt yet to empower not only the grassroots but also the planners.
References 1) AG Krishna Menon Imagining the Indian City, paper presented at Theatres of Decolonization Conference, Chandigarh; January 6-10, 1999 Blake, Stephen P. Shahjahanabad: The sovereign city in Mughal India 1639-1739, Cambridge University press, Cambridge, UK,1991 Desouza, Alfred. The Indian City Manohar Publishers, New Delhi, 1983 (1995) Friedmann, John. The World City Hypothesis. Development and Change, Vol. 17, No. 1, January 1986, pp. 69-83. Frug, Gerald E City as a legal Concept, Harvard Law review, Vol. 93, April 1980, Number 6 Gooptu, Nandini. The politics of the urban poor in early Twentieth-Century India. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 2001. Jha, Gangadhar. The seventy-fourth Constitutional Amendment and the empowerment of Municipal Government A Critique in The 74 th Constitutional Amendment- Power to the People, National Institute of Urban Affairs, New Delhi, 1994 Mohanty, Dushmanta Kumar Grassroots Democracy in India in the context of 73rd and the 74th Amendments in Constitution and Constitutionalism in India, APH Publishing Corporation, New Delhi, 1999 Mishra, Amareswar Constitutional Status of Local Governments in India in Constitution and Constitutionalism in India, APH Publishing Corporation, New Delhi, 1999

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This is not to say that it is entirely a rosy picture, currently it is just the presence of the right chemicals. For any chemical reaction to be rightly successful controlled conditions are equally important and this is where the planners come in. If the right conditions are not provided then the Indian cities may not be able to use the constructive power of this chemical reaction. Planners by the virtue of training and understanding of the power play can contribute, if willing and empowered. Otherwise the most obvious pitfall is that of an increasing fragmentation (where the smaller parts of the cities continue to turn into enclaves of richness surrounded by vast stretches of poverty) of such cities and the growing disparity between the cities themselves in the same state, for example Bangalore and Belgaum, Jaipur and Jaisalmer etc. This is the primary task, the author believes, that confronts and will continue to do so the Indian

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10) Mukharji, Nirmal. Self Government and its Instrumentalities in The 74th Constitutional AmendmentPower to the People, National Institute of Urban Affairs, New Delhi, 1994

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