URBAN REFORMS

UPA-II faces a bigger urban agenda

The urban agenda cannot be delivered with a business-as-usual pace or strategy. What is done in the first 100 days will determine whether or not the JNNURM will be able to attain its goals, says Om Prakash Mathur.


THE Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM ) represented the urban face of UPA-I ; indications are that the JNNURM will continue to be the urban hallmark of UPA-II . If the objective of UPA-II is to achieve the JNNURM goals as set at its launch in December 2005, then, there is no alternative but to change the pace and strategy of implementation of the JNNURM.
The JNNURM has served, in the first half of the tenure, an important purpose: it has brought much of the country on its platform. Many states and cities have responded enthusiastically to the JNNURM, taking advantage of its uniquely crafted reform-linked grant system for augmenting the city-based infrastructure. Some states and cities have lagged behind, but they are on the move. A few have backtracked , but unfortunately, continue to be fed with the JNNURM largesse.
From now on, i.e., in the second half of its tenure, the agenda of the Mission has to be different, and guided by just one single consideration: in what way should the JNNURM activities be reworked and reorganised in order that these are able to achieve the Mission goals and objectives and deliver the expected outcomes What strategy, what pace, and what more, to achieve the expected outcomes these are the sole mantras for the next three and a half years. Nothing less will deliver.
Let me elaborate first on the urban reforms which form the centrepiece of the JNNURM and, second on the JNNURM projects which are the Missions visible manifestations. In the main, there are four outcomes expected from the reforms: Empowered urban local bodies (ULBS): Empowering the ULBs is an integral and a sought-after objective of the Constitution (seventy-fourth ) Amendment , 1992 and now of the JNNURM. The ULBs in India have been an inferior tier: JNNURM seeks to dismantle this historical legacy. As we see the ground, we find the state of the ULBs in respect of functions, powers, and fiscal base is unmoved by the events of the past 17 years. The same dithering about the role of the ULBs in economic and social development , urban planning, poverty alleviation can the ULBs be trusted with these higher-order responsibilities, do they have the capacity, etc. Seldom have we recognised that the implementation of the 12th Schedule will impart to ULBs a role that has eluded them for more than a century, and put our ULBs at par with the Shanghai Municipal Corporation that we keep citing every time we discuss the economic role of cities. It is essential to take on this agenda upfront. Functioning land and property market: An important goal of the JNNURM is to set the land and property market right, and make it efficient and equitable. It is common knowledge that land does not enter urban markets; transactions in land and property are so inextricably bound in rules and procedures that most prefer not the formal but the informal routes for completing transactions; lands lie unused or used sub-optimally in the midst of a huge demand-supply gap. The JNNURM makes the boldest ever attempt to address the ills of the land and property market, and has put up a carefully-chosen reform agenda comprising (i) repealing of the Urban Land (Ceilings and Regulation) Act, 1976, (ii) reform of the rent control laws, (iii) reduction of stamp duties, (iv) streamlining the procedural frameworks for conversion of agricultural lands for urban usage, (v) introduction of property title certification system, (iv) revision of building bye laws, and (vii) simplifying the process of registration of land and property. At no time has such a comprehensive attempt been made to correct the land market inefficiencies and inequities. It is essential to push it hard: the potential gains are too high to be thrown away.
INCLUSIVE cities: Few initiatives of the Union government have addressed the issue of urban poverty with as much tenacity as the JNNURM. Years of experience with implementing urban poverty alleviation programmes show that reaching the urban poor is highly complex. The JNNURM aims to reach them with tenurial security, universalisation of services, and a land pool these being the high points of inclusive cities strategy. Tenurial security in the JNNURM protocol is an economic and not a political instrument for creating an asset base for the urban poor. Improved urban governance: An allembracing term for participation, transparency , and accountability, urban governance runs deep into the Mission. The JNNURM aims to bring in deepened democracy via the ward and area sabhas, and transparency and accountability via the reformed accounting system, e-governance , and disclosure laws. For the JNNURM , improved governance is a prerequisite to sustaining urban transformation.
Let me turn to projects the other activity under the JNNURM. The JNNURM projects require them to be JNNURM compatible, and projects to be so structured as to be able to attract private capital and management. Projects have come in, often with amazing speed, but with little regard to what the JNNURM mandates compatibility with JNNURM and ability to leverage private capital. A challenge thus lies ahead: a pool of quality projects that are able to open up to private capital and management.
The UPA thus faces an agenda that cannot be delivered with a business-asusual pace or strategy. What is needed is a fresh strategy and it is this that needs to occupy the UPA-II over the 100 days i.e., what must be done for generating quality projects with private capital or for fixing the land market or for making cities inclusive; what capacities should be in place and what alternatives, if the needed capacities are not available; can another form of management structure run JNNURM more effectively; how should we do away with the artificial divide between infrastructure, housing, and poverty alleviation ; what advance work should be undertaken for thinking about the second-generation reforms for which a demand has already surfaced
What is done in these 100 days will determine whether or not the JNNURM will be able to attain its goals.