[Urbanstudy] JNNURM II: Failure is its own reward for MoUD by Kalyani Menon-Sen

[Cheryl Deutsch]

Does anyone have any idea what this report is that's referred to here?  "A
Citizens' Review of
the JNNURM, undertaken in 16 cities by a coalition of community groups
– grassroot activists, workers' organisations, NGOs working in informal
settlements"

Thanks,
Cheryl

On Wed, Jul 1, 2009 at 5:32 AM, <urbanstudygroup-request at sarai.net> wrote:

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> Today's Topics:
>
>   1. Re: City, nights and fear (Sumeet Mhaskar)
>   2. JNNURM II: Failure is its own reward for MoUD by  Kalyani
>      Menon-Sen (lalitha kamath)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Tue, 30 Jun 2009 20:45:55 +0530
> From: Sumeet Mhaskar <sumeet.com at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Urbanstudy] City, nights and fear
> To: urbanstudygroup at sarai.net
> Message-ID: <C8BC8042-5922-4FA2-BB04-8F47232713A6 at gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
> 26/11 might be one of the reasons why there are very few people on the
> streets in late evening but one must also note the decline of the
> textile and other industries such as chemical, engineering, pharma
> etc., from central Mumbai that employed more than 300,000 workers.
> Since there were three shifts  (7am, 3pm, 11pm) one could always see
> workers leaving for their jobs while others returning home. This made
> everyone feel secure as there were always many people around.
>
> With the economic transformation that Mumbai has witnessed over the
> last 2 decades the erstwhile backbone of Mumbai's economy (the textile
> industry and other allied industries) has been replaced with the
> service sector economy. In this new economy you don't have three
> shifts. BPOs do have night shifts but since they have their cabs you
> rarely find people on the streets.
>
> This view of mine, however, does not the deny the fact that 26/11 or
> the previous blasts in Mumbai have contributed to the present
> situation whereby the Shareef people don't stay out longer so that
> they don't get into any zhamela.
>
>
> Best wishes, Sumeet
>
>
> On 30 Jun 2009, at 19:43, Zainab Bawa wrote:
>
> > 9 o'clock
> >
> > 10 o'clock
> >
> > 11 o'clock
> >
> >
> >
> > Night,
> >
> > dark,
> >
> > inside their homes - the peoples
> >
> > but, this is Mumbai, does not sleep - the city that does not sleep.
> >
> > Someone asked me the other day - but you said that people do not
> > sleep here in Mumbai. Look around, everyone seems to be asleep - and
> > he smiled. I thought to myself, maybe it is the weekend and so
> > everyone is sitting tight in their homes.
> >
> > Then, returning back home at 11:15 PM at night, sitting in the cab,
> > I looked around. A sense of fear had also gripped me - how will I
> > return home? When will I return home? When will I snuggle up in my
> > bed and feel safe. How can this happen to me in Mumbai - the city
> > whose prodigy I am. Fear, that feeling of lack of safety, was
> > creeping up my neck.
> >
> > Sitting in the taxi, I asked the driver - no public on the streets?
> >
> > He said - Sunday nah? Little public out at night.
> >
> > But, I prodded further, even the bus services into the city have
> > reduced at night. What is th deal?
> >
> > The buses kya? They run empty at nights and so, the BEST has decided
> > to reduce them. But yes, the streets are empty at nights these days,
> > after the bamb-kaand.
> >
> > Bamb-kaand? You mean 26/11?
> >
> > Yes. After that, people have reduced going out at nights. A sense of
> > fear has gripped people. We taxi drivers, our income was mainly from
> > the fares we got at night. Now, that has reduced drastically. All
> > the shareef, good character people don't come out at nights. It is
> > only the badmaash, the bad characters, that come out at night. Plus,
> > so much naaka-bandi, police watch. Who will come out? Which shareef
> > person will come out?
> >
> > Just a while before the driver was drawing a distinction between the
> > shareef and the badmaash, I had watched a bunch of well-dressed
> > prostitutes and one of their clients in the classic white kurta and
> > pyjama, laughing and making jokes around the corner of a hotel at
> > Grant Road. And I had thought about respectability. Now, I think of
> > the shareef, the badmaash, and the night and the city -
> > transformation, perhaps it is happening at these subtle levels.
> >
> > Then, I watched the city last night as we rode past one end to the
> > other. Are the streets really silent? Is this what the bamb-kaand
> > has done? Penetrated into the fabric of the city and spread fear ...
> >
> > We halted at a signal around the corner of one of the posh Western
> > suburbs. There she was - no fear - just dexteriously weaving the
> > flowers through the thread and making garlands, perhaps readying
> > herself for the clientele in the morning who may want to offer the
> > flowers to their gods and goddesses, allaying a fear of a different
> > kind (that between the devotee and the devout). She weaved away
> > quickly, without care. Is she afraid, I thought to myself?
> >
> > Then we passed the roads. There they were, those people, those
> > people we call slum dwellers. Three hutments jutting out from the
> > walls, just onto to the streets. They had also called it a night,
> > lying down in their beds, drawing their sheets onto themselves.
> > There they were, stepping into the world of dreams and nightmares
> > and desires and hopes and aspirations - some had their TV sets on,
> > some just oblivious of the roadside traffic and preparing to go off
> > to sleep. Are they afraid?
> >
> > Then, we went pass the highway, those big roads that have been
> > created to facilitate the movement of cars (and traffic). On the
> > highway, covered under blue plastic sheets, supported by a few
> > poles, they were also going off to sleep. Perhaps they were
> > construction workers who had settled into a little space on the
> > footpath and called it a night. Perhaps they were contract sweepers,
> > spending their last few days in the city before the rain lashes
> > vehemently. They were almost calling it a night, drifting off (or
> > just about to ...) ... Are they afraid?
> >
> > And then, just a little ahead, three-four men and women, playing
> > hide-and-seek in the bushes by the side of the highway, perhaps some
> > kind of a foreplay. They seemed happy, playful. Are they afraid?
> >
> > Fear - what of?
> >
> > Fear - of what?
> >
> > Fear ... and the city sleeps at night ...
> >
> > Fear ... and we sleep to prepare for another day to come ...
> >
> > Fear ...
> >
> > --
> > Zainab Bawa
> > Ph.D. Student and Independent Researcher
> >
> > Gaining Ground ...
> > http://zainab.freecrow.org
> >
> >
> http://cis-india.org/research/cis-raw/histories-of-the-internet/transparency-and-politics
> > _______________________________________________
> > Urbanstudygroup mailing list
> > Urban Study Group: Reading the South Asian City
> >
> > To subscribe or browse the Urban Study Group archives, please visit
> https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/urbanstudygroup
>
> --
> Sumeet Mhaskar
> Doctoral Candidate in Sociology
> Department of Sociology & St.Antony's College
> University of Oxford
> Mobile: + 44 (0)  77  2610  2847 (U.K)
>                + 91 (0)  98 7042 4140 (India)
>
>
>
>
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> Message: 2
> Date: Wed, 1 Jul 2009 02:32:09 -0700 (PDT)
> From: lalitha kamath <elkamath at yahoo.com>
> Subject: [Urbanstudy] JNNURM II: Failure is its own reward for MoUD by
>        Kalyani Menon-Sen
> To: jnnurm at yahoogroups.com, urbanstudygroup at sarai.net,  reader-list
>        <reader-list at sarai.net>
> Message-ID: <692963.30479.qm at web53601.mail.re2.yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
> http://urbanwatchindia.blogspot.com/
>
>
> Wednesday, July 1, 2009
> JNNURM-II  Failure is its own reward for MoUD
>
> JNNURM-II
> Failure is its own reward for MoUD
> Indian city-dwellers, rejoice! JNNURM Mark Two is coming your way – bigger,
> brighter, bolder than its first avatar – more
> money, more reforms, more public-private partnerships, more contracts,
> more consultancies, more scams, and many many more creative
> reinterpretations of urban reality.
> But
> how has this happened, you ask? Did JNNURM Mark One get where it was
> supposed to go? Did we not hear that it was facing criticism from
> several quarters, not just from chronic dissenters like the activist
> brigade? Did we not see respectable-looking middle-class citizens in
> some cities rubbing shoulders with scruffy activists and working-class
> types in street protests against some of the “reforms”? Wasn't there a
> notice in the papers inviting tenders from individual experts for
> carrying out the mid-term review of the programme? And wasn't there a
> rumour that some cheeky citizens were actually mounting their own
> home-made review? What happened to all of that?
> Good questions. And there are plenty of answers. There's just one problem -
> the answers don't add up.
> Let's
> do a flashback to the Prime Minister's speech at the star-studded
> JNNURM launch in 2005. “Our urban economy has become an important
> driver of economic growth” said the PM. “It is also the bridge between
> the domestic economy and the global economy. It is a bridge we must
> strengthen. The latent creativity and vitality of our cities and the
> people who live in them must be tapped to facilitate higher economic
> growth.”
> JNNURM was unveiled as the miracle makeover that would enable 64 of our
> cities to become candidates in the global swayamvara where corporate
> investors prowl in search of the perfect marriage
> between their capital and the “creativity and vitality” of cities. This
> makeover was to be accomplished in a mere seven years, through a simple
> but brilliant strategy – polishing up and enhancing the physical
> infrastructure to bring it up to global standards, and simultaneously
> getting rid of the ugly evidence of the disorderly and
> less-than-perfect processes of urbanisation of the past.
> JNNURM
> cities, we were told, would be clean, green and beautiful – cleansed of
> the shanty-towns and unauthorised housing colonies, the noisy pavement
> markets, the primitive rickshaws and polluting phat-phattis, the street
> vendors selling unstandardised products at ridiculously low prices, the
> higgledy-piggledy old neighbourhoods,the stinking landfills, the junkyards,
> the unhygienic dhabas. In their place would be multilane highways and toll
> roads, low-floor
> buses and elevated metros, gleaming malls and food courts, huge
> airports, high-rise housing, parks and promenades....in short
> everything gratifyingly like “phoren”.
> Of
> course a lot of the rules would need to be rewritten – after all, it
> would not be appropriate to leave the management of these new global
> cities in the hands of the old guard, especially when the World Bank
> and the ADB were telling us how much better market forces were at
> running cities than anyone else. And no doubt it was entirely in the
> rightness of things to turn to these same old friends, ever ready with
> a loan, to underwrite the programme that would put their advice into
> practice. Needless to say, everything would be done in accordance with
> the best principles of good governance – online consultations, young
> professionals and corporations bringing in energy and initiative to
> design efficient services for the poor, the brightest and best
> bureaucrats given a free hand and a generous kitty to get things
> moving, and an impressivebrains trust of
> experts and luminaries from the NGO world to provide technical advice
> and inject the civil society perspective into implementation.
> Of
> course there were critics and prophets of doom (those self-important
> activists again). The Urban Development Ministry did not waste any time
> in responding to irritating questions from this known bunch of World
> Bank-baiters. The scheme was rolled out in grand style – of the total
> kitty of Rs. 50,000 crores, 463 projects worth Rs. 49743.46 crore were
> approved in three years and Rs. 8253 crore was released from the Centre
> to the States.
> Cut to the present
> 3
> June 2009. Speaking to a reporter from the Wall Street Journal, some
> officials of the Ministry of Urban Development (who refuse to be named)
> come out with an alarming statistic - only 32 of the 463 sanctioned
> projectshave been completed in the three years
> since the scheme was launched. In case anyone should think of using
> this statistic as a stick to beat the Ministry or the scheme itself,
> the informant hurries to add that this dismal performance is entirely
> the fault of the States, which had been far too slow and clumsy in
> acquiring land, shifting existing structures and populations and
> acquiring the professional competence to handle large projects[1].
> Surely,
> you say, regardless of who is responsible, this qualifies as a big-time
> fiasco? Apparently not. Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of a
> meeting on 10 June, the Secretary Urban Development was quoted as
> saying just the opposite."There is definitely
> good progress made under the mission. Many of the projects (like
> drainage and sewerage) would not have been taken up otherwise," said
> Dr. Ramachandran.[2]
> Dr.Ramachandran
> is not alone in his complacence. Vinayak Chatterjee, chairman of the
> National Infrastructure Council of the Confederation of Indian Industry
> and chairman of consultancy firm Feedback Ventures, is quoted in the
> same piece as saying "It is a very well crafted intelligent innovative
> programme. The pity is that the states and city administrators have not
> been proactive in pulling more funds out of the mission."
> All of 32 projects in 64 cities in three years, and they manage to attract
> so much praise? Why are we not impressed?!
> Strangely,
> and most unusually, this is one instance where the statistics shared by
> the unnamed Ministry source are actually endorsed by the folks on the
> other side of the fence.A Citizens' Review of
> the JNNURM, undertaken in 16 cities by a coalition of community groups
> – grassroot activists, workers' organisations, NGOs working in informal
> settlements – found yawning gaps between the issues prioritised in the
> City Development Plans and sanctioned projects, and between the
> sanctioned projects and the real situation on the ground. In the
> overwhelming majority of cities and locations, there was absolutely no
> physical evidence of any kind of developmental activity – not even a
> signboard to mark the fact that this was a JNNURM project site.
> But
> Mr.Ramachandran is unfazed. The judgements of mere citizens regarding
> the success or failure of the programme are neither here nor there if
> the people who count are happy. On 29 June, the Ministry of Urban
> Developmentannounced that a follow-up phase of
> JNNURM was under serious consideration. According to the Ministry
> spokesperson, more investment was required to reach the targeted levels
> of infrastructural growth. The proposed JNNURM Mark II will have a
> seven-year lifespan, a kitty of Rs.100,000 crores – twice the size of
> the present JNNURM. The new scheme will replace the present one, and
> will expand its reach all the way down to the level of mofussil towns with
> populations of 500,000, in addition to providing “top-up funds” to ongoing
> projects.The
> scheme has already been forwarded to the Finance Ministry, and the
> Ministry of Urban Development is hopeful of seeing it incorporated as
> one of the highlights of the Budget 2009-10. The World Bank, it
> appears, has already given its nod to the proposal.
> Of
> course there is the small matter of the mandatory mid-term review
> before the World Bank signs on the dotted line and shells out the
> promised Rs.50,000 crores. Somewhere along the way, the tender for the
> consultants seems to have been dropped off the agenda. We can only
> speculate on the reasons. Maybe it was considered too risky? After all,
> even the best consultants have been known to sometimes bite the hands
> that feed them!
> But
> the Ministry has found the perfect solution – a review by the Prime
> Minister, no less, assisted by a National Review Committee comprising
> that tried and trusted band of experts, the JNNURM Technical Advisory
> Group. In order to bring it up to speed for this onerous task, the TAG
> has been beefed up with the addition of three new members: Professor
> Amitava Kundu of JNU (whose credentials as an urban theorist are
> impeccable); Nandan Nilekani (whose persuasively imagined idea of India
> is completely in tune with the JNNURM ethos); and Roopa Purushottaman,
> described in her official bio as “the chief economist and strategist at
> the Future Group, India’s leading business group that caters to the
> entire Indian consumption space”. In case you are wondering about
> Ms.Purushottaman's qualifications for reviewing an urban development
> programme, we should point out that the Future Group is the corporate
> umbrella for a retail empire that includes Big Bazaar, Home Town,
> Capital and Food Bazaar.
> We can all rest assured that the review process is in safe hands and will
> surely result in a well-argued case for JNNURM-II.
> Buoyed
> up by the assurance of continued largesse in a era where everyone else
> is cutting down on spending, the corporate sector is regaining its
> faltering enthusiasm for urban renewal. Experts and visionaries are
> emerging from unexpected quarters, enthusiastically taking thelead in
> articulating a vision forthe future of our cities.
> Take a look, for instance, at the blurb for a conference organised by CII
> in Delhi on 18 June. “Commonwealth
> Games 2010 is round the corner and the capital is in the midst of a
> make-over as the city prepares for the biggest sporting event in its
> history. Will Delhi seize the
> chances offered by Commonwealth Games 2010 to boost its economic,
> social and cultural development. The time is ripe for the city to be
> transformed into a “World Class City” - what is required is a vision”
> says the CII.
> Apart
> from the usual smattering of ministers and bureaucrats, there were
> several distinguished experts on various panels: Mr. Navin Raheja of
> Raheja Developers and Mr. Sudhir Vohra of Sudhir Vohra Consultants in
> the panel on the Delhi Master Plan; Mr. Sanjay Sharma of Coca Cola in
> the panel on water supply;Mr. Arjun Walia of
> Walsons Security Services in the session on public safety and Mr.Ajay
> Jadeja, sports personality in the session on “action planning for a
> better tomorrow”.
> As for the rest of us, we can hold our tongues and wait for that better
> tomorrow
> KALYANI MENON-SEN
> New Delhi
>
> ________________________________
>
> [1]Rahul Chandran. 3 June 2009. JNNURM projects lag over land, utilities
> and personnel problems. Livemint.com,
> [2]Vandana Gombar. 10 June 2009. Government may double size of JNNURM.
> Business Standard.
> Posted by Urban Watch India  at 9:05 AM  0
> comments
> Labels: India, Infrastructure, Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban renewal
> mission, JNNURM, lobbies, PPP, urban reforms agenda
>
>
>
>
> ________________________________
>
>
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