An outlay of Rs 98,000 crore to transform urban India is, by far, the highest for a five-year period by the government. It underscores the government’s intent to transform living conditions for millions of urban dwellers.
But these intentions would deliver far superior outcomes if the programmes are designed to tackle the practical realities of India’s urban challenges.
A glaring capacity deficit is perhaps the most daunting challenge facing urban rejuvenation and development. In India, working for the city is hardly seen as a career choice by the 10-million-odd persons joining the workforce annually. Political parties are yet to attach enough credence to the office of the mayor, and the situation on the administrative side is no different. Contrast this with New York, London and Shanghai. Senior professionals from the private sector cross over to work for the city, such as billionaire Michael Bloomberg. In China, a mayoral job is the route to rise within party ranks. Unfortunately, Indians barely know city mayors by name, leave alone wanting to serve fellow citizens.
Thanks to this anomaly, urban-focused academic programmes are often missing at premier Indian institutions and, when taught, such courses lack coverage across institutions. For example, urban economics is barely taught as a discipline in India, while the world’s leading institutions such MIT, Harvard, Oxford and Stanford offer PhD programmes in this discipline. India has only two schools of planning—the Centre for Environmental Planning & Technology and the School of Planning & Architecture—which graduate about 60% of India’s 400 urban planners annually. On the other hand, the US, with an urban population of over 260 million, graduates about 2,000 planners annually. This vacuum is visible through India’s paltry research output. According to a National Transport Policy Development Committee report, the number of academic articles on road safety originating in India during 2006-10 were a mere 120 compared to 911 from China.
Fortunately, this conundrum was recognised by the CAG Report No 15, on JNNURM, presented to Parliament on November 29, 2012. The first recommendation of the report reads: “Capacity building in terms of finance and human resources may be enhanced so the state may achieve pending reforms.”
Data from the ministry of urban development (MoUD) in 2013 showed that only 105 expert professionals are employed across institutes established by the government—National Institute of Urban Affairs, Institute of Urban Transport, Human Settlement Management Institute, and Regional Centres for Urban and Environmental Studies in Lucknow, Mumbai and Hyderabad. Further break up shows that the number of administrative professionals employed by just three of these six institutions is 72. The governance models of these institutes are questionable. For instance, the National Institute of Urban Affairs, deemed to be autonomous, depends on grants from the government to meet its expenses. It functions at the behest of MoUD, the board has limited decision-making power without financial control, and the institute is unable to provide meaningful career paths to professionals. It has not even had a governing council in place for the past year, as is evident from its website.
The ministry of housing & urban poverty alleviation set up National Network of Resource Centres comprising 23 institutions to assist with developing and professionalising municipal cadres. But not much on the ground has changed. For example, a January 2014 assessment shows that Odisha requires 7,157 municipal staff (compared to 1,551 today) working across eight functional areas—administrative service, revenue & finance, engineering services, public health & habitat service, community development, e-governance, town planning & transport and municipal subordinate ministerial service.
It is no surprise that the 12th Five-Year Plan (FYP), the mid-term appraisal of which is being conducted by the Niti Aayog, stated putting in place a strategy for capacity building. The cornerstones of the strategy are: (1) reorienting activities of Indian Institute of Public Administration, National Institute of Urban Affairs, and Regional Centres for Urban and Environmental Studies; (2) bolstering existing institutions and establishing new ones to assist with policy research, design and implementation as well as training municipal officials and elected representatives, and ensuring involvement from the private sector; (3) leveraging the existing infrastructure of the government’s 1,817 ITIs and 3,338 of those run by the private sector to up-skill and re-skill municipal personnel; (4) launching five Indian Institutes of Urban Management in partnership with the state government and the private sector; and (5) institutionalising and professionalising municipal cadre.
The government has outlined building municipal cadres under the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation of 500 cities (AMRUT), but it is silent on the four other fronts outlined by the 12th FYP. Neither does the announcement of the two missions nor does the demand for grant number 104 explicitly make a reference to the term ‘capacity’. This is perhaps reflective of capacity not being important enough to warrant an independent budget head or be a thrust area in the missions.
The government must undertake a structural shift in its approach to capacity building to help make quality of life better for its 380-million-plus urban citizens. A needs assessment is required to estimate the number of specialised professionals for efficient governance and service delivery for the next 20-40 years. More important is the need to professionalise municipal cadres in terms of career path, compensation and the prestige associated with them so that the next generation is motivated to apply for city jobs. A plan to craft the municipal cadre design and rules working in collaboration with experts from the private sector, civil society and other countries could be one way to approach this. Inducting lateral hires into senior positions could be another quick win. Municipal corporations in Bhopal and Indore have done the latter successfully, and there is no reason why this cannot be replicated. So that municipal cadres are established professionally, the government should have some oversight. One way to achieve this is to not have AMRUT fall into the bucket of centrally-sponsored schemes whereby the funds are disbursed to states by the ministry in the absence of a performance review by the Centre. Political parties also need to reorient their approach to and staffing of the mayor’s office, and invest in grooming younger generation of leaders. Urban India elects about 180 of the 543 MPs, and this number is set to rise.
We have to create a thriving set of academic and independent institutions that graduate thousands of students each year, who are absorbed by state and city governments and the private sector. Introducing taught courses in urban transport, urban economics, urban planning, urban governance, sustainable urban development and urban finance are imperative for India to build its brains trust. Establishing accreditation standards for these programmes is necessary to ensure quality standards. Institution building is not a three- or five-year journey but the precincts for it must be laid now. While doing so, it is important to depart from the culture of institutional jobs as sinecures, typically the case in India. In the interim, MoUD should put in place a sizeable number of scholarships for degree programmes and research professionals to begin building its bench strength. After all, it is the people who make and manage cities—without them no amount of funds, technology or mortar can be utilised, leave alone optimally.
Underestimating the magnitude of this capacity conundrum is fraught with the risk of inaction.
Rohra is an expert who co-leads McKinsey’s work on urbanisation in India. Maitra is a partner who leads McKinsey’s Corporate Finance and Strategy practices in India
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