The discussion on the collapse of the Punjagutta flyover in Hyderabad some time back had turned into a debate on civic infrastructure in India and on why New Delhi has much better infrastructure than other cities. My argument:
- It is because New Delhi was built by the British.
- The British cared more about civic infrastructure than Indian politicians after independence.
- Yes, I know that they built better civic infrastructure for their selfish reasons, but that does not alter the point. They built better infrastructure. Current Indian politicians do not have any incentive, selfish or selfless, to build cities.
- By and large, all the cities built by the British – Bombay, Calcutta and Madras have held up better than the cities that came up after independence. But Delhi is the best planned of these, because it was the last one that the British built and the only one that was built after the advent of the car. Plus, they had special reason to build, being the capital and all.
- It will be an interesting exercise to compare the cities the British built with the capitals of the better-governed princely states, like Mysore and Hyderabad old city. I’d expect that the British and the princes would face similar incentives.
Discuss.
http://4plus1over2.wordpress.com/2007/10/18/not-the-british-not-directly-anyways/
RaviKiran,
Quite true.
The northern suburbs of Mumbai are more haphazardly planned than the southern part of Mumbai. You can see the difference.
Same with Delhi… the parts of the city built by the British are better planned… eg Lutyens Delhi etc..
An exception might be Chandigarh.
Do you think Navi Mumbai is better planned than South Mumbai?
Good question. For its time, I think that South Bombay was better planned.
The other thread that connects your list of better planned cities is the existence of suburban rail network. That takes off substantial number of people off the roads and local buses.
Clearly most of you seem to mistake constructing impressive sandstone buildings for great town planning. South Mumbai (remember the British Mumbai extended upto Bandra-Kurla and not just Marine Drive) does not show any semblence of planning even for its age. Even at the turn of independence Mumbai was a clutter of imperial bunglows, mills and slums thrown in with nothing to suggest that the colonial masters had any plan for it. Kolkatta, almost the second capital of the empire cannot be said to have world class infrastructure by any stretch of imagination (even for the imperial era, though impresive architecture might make one think it is), it is yet another example of modern urban nightmare despite its limited growth. Much the same for Chennai, just that the gentle pace of its growth and decent administration has saved it from collapsing like Mumbai or Bangalore (or Delhi of the 1980s)
New Delhi,the Luytens city, was planned just to squeeze in the capital and because it has stayed the capital of India it remains beautiful, but thats about it, it wasn’t planned for any growth growth. Much of the improvements that have made Delhi the best city in India happened in the last 25 years post the 82 Asian games. Most of these improvements involve connecting the new urban clusters to South Delhi and New Delhi through metro and flyovers apart from the other beautification programs. That helped Delhi develop from a group of villages that also contained the capital.
I don’t know why most of us are just not willing to believe that it is our very government that did it 🙂
It is ofcourse not that our colonial masters did not have the ability to build great cities, much of London’s infra including the magnificient Tube was built around 1900s, it is just that they did not have any incentive to do the same in its colonies
You really got to be historically challenged to call Hyderabad state a “better governed state”. Mysore along with Baroda and Travancore were the best, but of these only Mysore focussed industrial and higher education developments, the others focussing on social reforms and literacy. Bangalore was the capital of the Mysore state, which explains why it was among the better cities in the country till the late 80s when it simply overgrew itself
About Hyderabad.. I was not sure, so I wanted to put a question mark after it, but I forgot.
I mean, I knew that the Nizam exploited his kingdom, but I was guessing that maybe he ruled his capital city better…
Actually, SRK, a lot of the work done by the British in Mumbai is largely invisible today. This includes land reclamation, draining swamps to prevent malaria and tuberculosis, and construction of the chawls (which at the time were a remarkable improvement on the existing shanties, and were meant for one person to a room).
It is true that they did not plan for the explosive influx of immigrants to Bombay post-independence, but but then Bombay was designed in years when rural dwellers would likely die in a famine before making it to Bombay.
One other point. A reason for the success of the infrastructure development projects in Delhi is that political support in Delhi tends to depend on trader associations rather than contractors. This reduces the scope for doling out construction contracts to political heavyweights. Also, many of the Delhi flyovers were given to private sector companies like Tandon and Simplex rather than the PWD or UP State Bridge Corporation.
Aadisht, first on Mumbai… all that bit contributed to building Mumbai out of seven islands in the first instance… which is not the point, this is not a discussion on whether British built Mumbai, or what they did for it. The point of discussion was whether Mumbai was built to plan by the British or did they contribute to the mess that it is in today. Industrialization of Mumbai began early 1900s with textile mills… none of them under any impetus from the goverment, all clustered in south central mumbai for no reason other than the proximity to the port. Most of the chawls/ slums in that zone (inc. Dharavi) date back to that era, and note they were built when almost all the vast stretches of land just outside the boundries of the city were empty. None of this shows any semblence of planning for the city. Obviously it got worse post-independence, thanks to government’s apathy for urban planning but the point is that we should not taken by those magnificent Gothic buildings in Churchgate area and say that British government had planned the city better (a very common statement)
BTW on Delhi, I don’t get your point… are you saying in other cities contractors form a bigger political lobby than traders? why is that so?… I thought Delhi’s better efficiency is because one it is the capital and two it being a city state the state government gets all its votes from the city whereas for Mumbai and Bangalore the city is just a part of the state and the city always votes against the dominant party in the rest of the state 🙂
Ps… Do you know for a fact that chawls were built by British goverment?, I would be terribly surprised if they were… I believe all of them are private :D, Also the EPC for many infra projects across the country is given to private cos, don’t what is special about Delhi in this regard
SRK,
the chawls were built to the plan of one of the British administrators of Mumbai. I don’t recall which one, I read this last year in a rush. They were the first ‘slum rehabilitation’ scheme in Mumbai, I suppose.
Yes, that is what I am saying. I am not denying the points about it being the capital and the city-state-factor, but contractors being less dominant is also a factor. This means any subcontracting from the private party doing it is less likely to go to a totally corrupt or incompetent contractor.
In 1898, in response to the plague of 1896 which was caused by squalid living conditions in Mumbai the (British) parliament passed Bombay City Improvement Trust which made several efforts to open up new spaces and build some hygenic acco including new chawls. But it seems chawls existed even before that, modelled mainly on low cost housing in London’s industrial districts. Clearly it seems problems of Mumbai have been endemic and its treatment sporadic, a legacy from the builders of the city which we have faithfully lived up to 🙂
http://theory.tifr.res.in/bombay/history/plague.html
I think you are talking about New Delhi. Even I am impressed by New Delhi everytime I visit it. But New Delhi is a controlled housing locality. It is mostly inhabited by powerful government functionaries who actually have the incentive to keep it “planned”. A proposal to do away with the huge vacant spaces allotted to official bungalows and build condos was shot down several years ago.
The main question is between planned development and organic development. Organic development is haphazard but happens by the will of the users. Planned needn’t always be good. The best solution is something of a mix between organic and planned. Delhi is definitely not a good example. The large number of people that are living in the satellite towns of NOIDA, Gurgaon etc have to make the long commute only because the powerful government functionaries want to keep their pristine lawns and large bungalows.
Colonial development has been no better than those by the princely states. On balance, colonialism has been very detrimental to India. But I will not dwell on this point by repeating a litany of grouses and then detailing them. Instead I could better explain why some princely states invested in public infrastructure and education and some did not. A good example is the Travancore King raiding temple funds to build a rail link connecting the railway of south Kerala to the rest of India. The British were not interested in building this link as it didn’t serve their economic needs but King decided to build it to serve his people. Similarly, Travancore and Mysore invested in higher education and social reforms. The reason that these princely states engaged in these is that firstly the kings had a stake in the administration secondly political power was much more diffused in these states with some power resting in various classes and castes in the wider society. In order to maintain their hold on power, it was imperative for the Kings to server the class/caste interests of these powerful groups. This is quite similar to how the Industrial Revolution got its initial start in England (check out ‘Wealth and Poverty of Nations’ by David Landes). If the British were defeated like the Dutch were before them, who knows what the country would have looked like.
Here is Sheila Dikshit’s take on why Delhi is doing better.
She calls for city states. While it’s not going to happen, it’s a fast way to clean up messed up cities.
Yeah city-states are cool as long as a huge part of the revenue collected from the rest of the country is spent on them. Would Delhi survive on its own? Maybe because all that gas coming out of politicians mouths could potentially fuel the next boom.
Umm. what? I am pretty sure that Delhi can survive on its own by collecting sales tax and property tax. I have heard many objections to city states and I share some of the misgivings, but this is the first time I am hearing anyone questioning them on grounds of financial viability.
HiAgain, I don’t have the break down, but because agriculture is not taxed, I’d suspect most tax collected comes from ventures and people in cities. Mumbai claims to pay something like 40%(?) of all taxes of the country. I actually think taxes would be the reason why states won’t let big cities go.
Mumbai, Delhi (and some states) are beneficiaries of many kinds of subsidies.
One of them is the subsidized rates at which raw materials are provided in states like Maharashtra, Punjab etc in the misguided attempt to equate the prices between the source (Bihar, Orissa etc) and those without resources.
These “city-states” have denizens who depend on ownership of assets in the hinterlands. Those industrialists driven around in shiny cars might spend a good amount of their money in Delhi and Mumbai but earn much of their income in the factories of the hinterland.
Once these “city-states” come into existence, they are not going to get resources at subsidized rates, no electricity at subsidized rates, no income-earning people etc. The whole game changes. Anyway this is just an academic exercise. But still its amazing how people believe in these pie-in-the-sky notions.
Delhi (and central government establishments) get huge amounts of money. Anybody who has worked in a central government entity and a state government entity would know how different the budget-management is. Delhi gets a lot of advantage in housing the central government that pulls in revenue from all over India.
Also, taxes are not the only biggest source of government investment. India has a huge government debt though thankfully its internal. All that money is not just raised from the cities. A lot of it is raised from money coming from expatriates. All that money gets spent and a disproportionate amount in big cities, especially Delhi.
Once these “city-states” come into existence, they are not going to get resources at subsidized rates, no electricity at subsidized rates, no income-earning people etc. The whole game changes. Anyway this is just an academic exercise. But still its amazing how people believe in these pie-in-the-sky notions.
Delhi (and central government establishments) get huge amounts of money. Anybody who has worked in a central government entity and a state government entity would know how different the budget-management is. Delhi gets a lot of advantage in housing the central government that pulls in revenue from all over India.
Also, taxes are not the only biggest source of government investment. India has a huge government debt though thankfully its internal. All that money is not just raised from the cities. A lot of it is raised from money coming from expatriates. All that money gets spent and a disproportionate amount in big cities, especially Delhi.
Apologies for the double-post. For some reason I got the message “duplicate comment detected” when I had only submitted once. So I went back and submitted again. I wish I could delete the second one.
Wait a minute. We are not talking of making them separate countries. We are only talking of separate states. Most of the things that you are talking of will continue to happen, unless you think that it is not possible right now to own a factory in Uttar Pradesh and live in Delhi, or own a factory in Gujarat and live in Maharashtra… both of which happens right now.
When we are talking of financial viability, we are talking only of how we will finance the government. In that respect, the cities are a lot more viable than the villages. Obviously, both the cities and the villages are economically dependent on each other. Obviously, if by making them separate states, we are talking of cutting off all economic links between them, then we are talking of something entirely different.
I guess I mistook the word. I thought city-state a la Singapore. Yes a smaller states within the union might flourish better. I agree with that.
Hello! Ravi Kiran Sir
I am BILIGIRI RANGA, from Hyderabad, INDIA, doing a write up dealing with civic problems in Hyderabad for a city based magazine PRISM, (10+ year old mag).
My write up deals with civic problems in city, why it remains dirty and authorities turn a blind eye to people’s problems, and your suggestions to transform city people’s mindset and improve the look of the city. It gives u a good opportunity to present your views about your stay in Hyd.
Kindly e mail me back soon, so that i can send in my questions to u
waiting for your early e mail reply