Rapid urbanisation and the burgeoning proportion of people living in urban areas are both great achievements and challenges. Achievements, because they indicate rising wealth?the correlation between per capita income and urbanisation is well established. Challenges, because urbanisation in India so far has been unplanned, chaotic, with inefficient development?and it looks like it will be no different going forward.
It was, therefore, heartening that in 2005 the government launched the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM), not as a mere central government scheme or programme, but as a reform-linked investment mission. Even though it has been barely four years since it was started, it is a good idea to step back and take a hard look at its achievements since there will soon be a new government and new ministers overseeing the urban affairs portfolio.
Essentially, the mission aimed to influence states and cities to reform themselves by showing them the carrot of investment support for urban infrastructure like water, sewage, transport, etc. That there is a backlog of badly-needed investment in these areas has been established by many experts and committees from time to time. And that the cities and states don?t have the money has also been well established.
Looking back, it is clear that the JNNURM has sustained the interest of the states and cities. Although the mission has just crossed the mid-way mark, most of the overall allocation of funds has already been committed to various projects. Though one can?t say the same thing of progress on committed reforms, where only some cities have made significant progress and others have significantly lagged, the situation can still be regarded as not too bad.
As always, the overall progress and averages mask the big problems. Poorly managed cities and states–the ones that need reforms the most–continue to lag behind on both reform and investment. The implementation of sanctioned projects moves at a snail?s pace on the ground. Barring a few states like Maharashtra, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu, the low institutional capacity to implement reforms and investments is a big hindrance.
The linkage between what the cities envisioned in their development plans and the projects they are actually implementing continues to be weak. Citizens? involvement in city governance and management hasn?t changed much, though there is far more awareness now, more a result of the efforts by some NGOs than city managements.
While it is very difficult, therefore, to rate the JNNURM on its progress or achievements, one can definitely say that the mission is a good thing and given a further political and managerial push can make a significant impact. What, therefore, are the things that can make the mission even more effective?
Firstly, it is important for the new government to realise that people burdened with other responsibilities cannot run such an important mission. It requires a solid managerial and administrative set-up on a permanent basis with full-time public servants. Perhaps a secretary-level person to head the mission with adequate and capable people?perhaps a mix of government professionals, private managers with backgrounds in running utilities or city transport networks, NGO professionals who have reached out to communities and people well versed in urban capacity building. The mission should also be given more autonomy, say by making it an authority or a board (of course, after avoiding the danger of asking such an authority to get government approval for every decision).
Secondly, the performance metrics of the mission should be solely linked to reform indicators rather than how much money has been sanctioned or disbursed, or how many projects have been cleared. The priority of the mission people must be clearly driven by what there are assessed on. The JNNURM has already clearly identified the key reforms and got cities and states to commit to implementing them. Another important point is to ensure that the budget available in a year is rolled over to the next without lapsing so that the incentive to somehow achieve number targets is reduced.
Finally, it is important to remember that the urban management is all at the city level and not at the country level. The Centre can only enable the cities to do better; they can?t really force them to do what it takes to become a good city. Unfortunately, state governments continue to control the cities in many ways, strangling them financially as also through offering the so-called ?services? of the various parastatal agencies.
This, too, needs to change. Cities have to be made financially stronger and made to shoulder their own responsibilities (with the attached accountability). The mission, therefore, should be redesigned?with new carrots and sticks?to force states to release their stranglehold on cities.
Many experts will tell us that city managers don?t have the capacity and cannot be given the responsibility to manage. The best way for a child to learn swimming is to throw the child into the deep-end. Given good financial support and training, when forced to take on responsibilities, city managers will definitely learn quickly and, hopefully, we will see better cities.
?The writer is leader-transportation & infrastructure practice, PricewaterhouseCoopers