[Urbanstudy] For the people, by diktat article on NURM

[solomon benjamin]

Hi
I think Vinay's posting, despite its lenght, is
important to consider how we conceptualise cities, new
constests over law and legal process, and the varied
forces inc. global ones that re-constitute them. 

As part of this, the Master Planning process and
perhaps some of the normative discussion we have been
having, the interesting historical material by Dipu
and
Sanjeev Srivastva on the Urban list, and the kind of
fine grain reporting that Zainab excells at there. 

What do these tell us about what seems imposed via
World Bank conditionalities on what are constitutional
issues, with support of the Nation State (and the Min.
of Finance no less)? 
more later,
Cheers
Solly

--- Vinay Baindur <yanivbin at yahoo.com> wrote:

> apologies for cross mailings
>  
> For the people, by diktat 
> Reforms in urban governance are long overdue, and
> the cities are croaking under the weight of their
> neglect. But the National Urban Reforms Mission may
> be too much medicine, bypassing citizen input and
> consultation in a hasty drive for change. Vinay
> Baindur reports. 
>  
> 05 September 2005 - Considering the increasing urban
> angst, complaints against services, hobbled local
> governments, land and money scams, corruption et
> al., the history of efforts to tackle these problems
> has been a tale of repeated false starts. Consider
> the facts from recent years alone: In Sept 2001, the
> Central Ministry of Urban Development launched the
> Good Urban Governance Campaign in partnership with
> the United Nations Development Programme and the
> United Nations Centre for Human Settlements; this
> was supported by the Urban Management Programme and
> The Urban Governance Initiative. Subsequently the
> GUGC became overshadowed by other urban schemes, and
> disappeared soon after without a trace. Similarly,
> throughout the tenure of the NDA government, a
> National Urban Transport Policy, a National Slum
> Policy, and a National Hawkers Policy were drafted,
> but these were never finalised and implemented. 
> Now, the UPA government is leading a new charge on
> the old problems; last year the Centre accepted an
> increased disbursement of credit and grants for
> urban issues from the World Bank group, based on its
> Country Assistance Strategy 2004-07. The WB group
> board approved this CAS in Sept 2004. Now, almost a
> year later, a new more comprehensive but highly
> debatable urban reforms agenda has been cobbled
> together. 
> Like many previous efforts, this one too suffers
> from a poor understanding of the nature of the
> problems: considering that so many of the issues
> involved have to do with local governments and
> citizens' expectations of these, there has oddly
> been little public or civil society consultation in
> drafting the plans. Instead, there has been very
> frenetic lobbying by the private sector, especially
> from international and domestic real estate
> consultancies, financial institutions, industry
> confederations, etc. A predictable - and highly
> undesirable - consequence of these selective inputs
> is that the convergent interests of these players
> have been turned into conditionalities within the
> urban reforms agenda. 
> The proposed reforms agenda will create increased
> demand for the privatisation of crucial municipal
> services e.g. by urging States to adopt the Model
> Municipal law (MML), and by amending their own
> Corporations and Municipalities Acts. It is claimed
> that the Model Municipal Law will enable urban local
> bodies to play their roles more effectively and
> efficiently. The MML includes specific provisions on
> financial management of municipalities, municipal
> revenue, urban environmental infrastructure and
> services and regulatory jurisdiction. It is based on
> a set of policy postulates developed by the Times
> Research Foundation, Kolkata with funding from
> FIRE-D, New Delhi (a USAID-funded effort engaged
> with creating debt markets for urban water and
> sanitation projects). 
> In line with the conditionalities, the World Bank
> and the Asian Development Bank, along with the State
> governments, are initiating a plethora of urban
> development projects, such as the following: 
>    
> Karnataka Municipal Reform Project - Dec 2005 - WB 
> 
>    
> Karnataka Urban Water Supply project - March
> 2005-2008 - WB 
> 
>    
> North Karnataka Urban Improvement Project - 2006 -
> ADB 
> 
>    
> Kerala UDP - 2006- ADB 
> 
>    
> Uttaranchal UDP - 2006 - ADB 
> 
> 
> Looming ahead on the horizons of all these
> individual efforts is the National Urban Renewal
> Mission. With its sweeping scope, NURM will
> certainly impact many of these schemes in a big way;
> thus it is important to understand this mission, and
> its implications for the abundant ongoing schemes
> around the nation. Will NURM curb the exclusivist
> tendencies of the individual programs and bring in
> more citizen participation, or will it worsen the
> already poor record of these programs on civic
> engagement? 
> The National Common Minimum Programme (NCMP) adopted
> by the UPA govt in May 2004 included a single
> paragraph on urban issues, which states the
> intention of the government to launch the National
> Urban Renewal Mission. This has now crept up on us
> in a rather nebulous shape, catching many citizens
> of urban India unaware of the myriad nature and
> implications of this mission for our cities. The
> broad agenda of the NURM is purported to be to
> strengthen democratic governance structures and
> decentralisation in urban local government, though
> it has still not been clearly articulated by the
> Ministry of Urban Development or the Ministry of
> Urban Employment and Poverty Alleviation how this
> mission will be implemented to meet this objective. 
> Some of the directions for these ministries are,
> however, now known. The Mid-Term Appraisal (MTA) of
> the 10th Five Year Plan was discussed by the group
> of Ministers who accepted it in July 2005; according
> to the MTA, the ministries will go about
> implementing the urban reforms agenda in the
> following manner: 
>    
> Merge all schemes of the Government of India for
> urban infrastructure and civic amenities. In future,
> make normal levels of assistance available on a
> platform of reforms. Such allocations would be
> conditional on urban reforms being carried out by
> the state governments and the urban local
> governments [ULGs]. 
> 
>    
> Take up the 35 cities with million-plus populations,
> the capital city in every state, and a small number
> of other cities that are of historical importance
> (about 60 cities in all) for a considerably enhanced
> level of Plan assistance through the National Urban
> Renewal Mission. 
> 
>    
> Undertake reforms in urban land ceiling laws, rent
> control acts, and stamp duties (all supported by the
> Urban Reforms Incentive Fund that has been in place
> for some years now) in order to unleash housing
> activity in the urban areas. For the urban poor, a
> three-pronged approach is needed, involving
> availability of land, cheap and easy credit, and
> promotion of low cost building materials and
> technology. 
> 
> 
> The National Urban Renewal Mission 
> NURM is to be a reforms-driven, fast-track, planned
> development of identified cities with focus on
> efficiency in urban infrastructure and services
> delivery, community participation, and
> accountability of local governments towards
> citizens. The following broad framework is proposed
> for the Mission: 
>    
> Central sponsorship 
> 
>    
> Sector-wise project reports would be prepared by
> identified cities listing projects along with their
> priorities. 
> 
>    
> The funding pattern would be 35:15:50 (between
> Centre, States/ULGs and financial institutions) for
> mega cities (>40 lakh population), 50:20:30 for
> cities with populations between one and four
> million, and 80:10:10 for other cities. 
> 
>    
> The grant assistance (both Central and State) would
> act as seed money to leverage additional resources
> from financial institutions/capital market. 
> 
> The Urban Reforms Incentive Fund (URIF) was launched
> a few years back for conditional reforms based on
> 'carrot and stick' financial measures to the state
> government to carry out reforms. Some examples: 
> 
> 
> 
> Repeal of the Urban Land Ceiling and Regulation Act.
> 
> 
> 
> Rationalisation of stamp duty in phases to bring it
> down to no more than 5 per cent by the end of the
> Tenth Plan period. 
> 
> 
> Reform of rent control laws to stimulate private
> investment in rental Housing Schemes. 
> 
> 
> Introduction of computerised process of
> registration. 
=== message truncated ===



		
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