Interview : Dr. Gautam Bhan (IIHS)
Dr. Bhan is a professor at the Indian Institute of Human Settlements (IIHS), Bangalore India. He anchors the role of IIHS as a National Resource Centre, with the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation and is part of IIHS’ work in affordable housing policy and practice. His previous research has focused on displacement and resettlement of the urban poor in Delhi and his new work engages with regimes of urban welfare and social security, including work on urban health. He has been an active part of urban social movements on sexuality as well as housing rights and currently advises and trains governmental agencies at local, state and national levels on housing policy.
In order to better understand the context within which my project is to take shape, the interview was targeted at the social, political and economic factors that effect my site and Delhi in general, and the possible trajectory urban development in India should take at this crucial junction of technology driven urbanism. Prior to the interview, I read the following works by Dr. Bhan to better familiarize myself with his broader arguments:
1) Bhan, G (2019) Notes on a Southern urban practice.
2) Bhan, G (2016) Asking the Wrong Question: Smart Cities in Contemporary India
3) Bhan, G (2014)Â The Real Lives of African Urban Fantasies.
4) Bhan, G (2009) Evictions, the urban poor, and the right to the city in millennial Delhi
5) Bhan, G (2019) Stalling: How to save the global city
Following are the questions I asked and excerpts of answers provided by Dr. Bhan:
1) How would legitimacy and legality be negotiated at the scale of entire urban villages and unauthorized colonies?
(When asked about the example of Aam Aadmi Party violating regulations to build public health clinics on footpaths - Notes on Southern Urban Practice )"Think about it a little differently. These are diagnostic concepts. What do you want to think of negotiation in – How come some settlements grow gradually, get regularized and become legal and some don’t? When you think of an urban village – what kind of legitimacy do urban villages have? They are rarely under risk of eviction, but are at risk of regulations... For example, Hauz Khas, Shahpurjat cannot gradually commercialize and rent out now. UAC’s (Unauthorized colonies) currently have high rates of legitimacy as they are usually agreed upon to be improved"
"What is the end to which you want these categories for? It is to get a sense of what kind of power a certain settlement has? UAC’s have always acted as powerful actors – stating demands and asking for what they want....Don’t look at law in planning, look at layers of power and differing levels of legitimacy. When the state does squat, the state never uses that term – it’s an act of power. I call it squatting personally. The question isn’t what the state is doing different – we as practitioners have to realize that even the state has to break the rules some times. We know it breaks the rules for larger corporations (Vasant Kunj mall forest reserve land, common wealth games facilities along the river bank) –
"here is an interesting example of it violating it to build a public health clinic – even makers of the law sometimes cannot play by the laws."
"If you were to think that our southern cities are formed by complex different layers of legality, our practices have to respond to that diagnose it – everyone is dealing with how to handle the law"
2) Do you imagine a scenario where various legs of governance such as NDMC, MCD, DDA, DUAC etc. could work together – Just like governments in Barcelona, Medellin etc. To run collaborative development projects?
(When asked about why India hasn't managed successful large scale collaborative government initiatives to tackle urban poverty)
"There’s organizational dissonance – the government structure makes it harder. Even though the NDMC, DDA (funded by MoUD) and the MCD (local elections won by BJP) are currently under the central government-
- they could theoretically work together, but once you bring in the Delhi Government and DUSIB into picture, that’s where dissonance comes in."
"Unlike European city states, our urban tier of governance is deeply dis-empowered. Barcelona government is empowered at city council level – the mayor is most powerful, whereas in India, the Chief Minister. Our power is focused at the level of the state."
"Our city governments are not financially or jurisdictionally empowered. This is the result of the idea of a gram swaraj self-federated structure that never thought cities need to be empowered. It is the result of the history of urban governance."
"The 74th amendment tried to empower city governments. Even if everyone worked in tandem, there's little they can do – Even Delhi government gets fixed money transfer, limited revenue based for state. The big fight about urban convergence in governance is about institutional pluralism, and overlap – the main problem is fiscally in terms of jurisdiction, we have no powerful third tier municipal governance."
"Only places like Bombay does the municipal government makes master planning, whereas in Delhi, non - elected bodies like the DDA are in charge of development. What does the MCD really do?"
"In Delhi you have the DDA, Municipal Authority, On Ground legalities, parallel PMAY – multiple layers because there is no singular concentration of urban power at an elected level. Power is concentrated at state – that’s why we needed the 74th amendment."
- Pradan Mantri Awas Yojana
3) Do you think the COVID-19 crisis makes it harder to justify small-scale incremental repair as opposed to transformative redevelopment?
Continuing the discussion of the shortage of urban improvement initiatives and the impact of the current pandemic on urbanist attitude in India"I think it will be easier (to justify small-scale repair). Places like Dharavi (Mumbai), Kanaginagar (Chennai) have emerged as best practice places- Slums have not gotten in trouble. Delhi containment zones are mostly gated communities. It isn’t the epidemic of the poor, it isn’t water based etc. – rich people got it first, came from big cities to the poor."
"However, The argument that you need better housing conditions to prevent epidemics has become strong. COVID-19 has pushed the central government to announce housing for low income rental migrants –Effectiveness aside, It is the shift in attitude that must be recognized."
" Our economy is going to tank, this makes it harder for the government to provide high rise redevelopment housing – makes more sense to push for small scale upgrades."
Discussing the dichotomy of rural and urban in India" Till the 60’s we didn’t have a ministry for urban development, urban development has historically been an afterthought. JNURM 2005 was the first big national urban move (Post liberalization) – it came at an important GDP focused development era. 2005 is when our GDP shifted as a majority source from urban, whereas votes come from the rural. That’s why redevelopment is oriented towards building capital generating structures such as stadiums as opposed to addressing issues of slums – "
"The urban feeds in the money that goes into improving the rural. "
"We aren't telling the urban poor you don't have rights - we are saying go to the village and collect your rights, urban is for the market.."
"Our agriculture is landless subsistence small holding. Europe is agro-business collectivized large holding. Our urban is an emergent capital phenomenon. No one can be from a city – we are the first generation of urban born Indians. Every Indian can reach a village in one generation – We are not an urban polity; we are just becoming that. "
"The point is about the the leverage trade-off between urban as capitalist growth and rural as welfare development. Two categories get left out, rural capitalism and urban poverty. The urban poor are not supposed to EXIST in the spectrum of current trends. They are just becoming an entity. The generation of city born individuals has started shifting the lens towards focusing on urban poverty, with examples like a city born political part like AAP. AAP is exactly the type of party that can follow the example of Medellin – the scale of governance can become deeply urban"
"Delhi is constantly trying to become a state - to get more powers in decision making. They move faster in sectors under their control, like education - and slower in sectors not in their control, like housing" (80% of land under the DDA)
4) Is there any role for Private Enterprise moving forward?
In discussion about the potential impact of large private investment and Neo-liberal urbanization on the future of the urban poor"I think they will certainly play the game. The question is what will they do. You should look at both small private and large private. There’s a lot of interesting small privates like design collectives, micro-finance companies, vernacular building technology. There has to be a role for small scale private enterprise, but when you go to large scale, there are difficult questions. Small local private developers would really play a powerful role in housing equity, but it is unexplored."
"There is a lot of potential in private enterprise when it comes to contractors – some level of enterprise and entrepreneurship. It may be difficult for them to enter repair and consolidation, but they could play a good role in innovation of affordable building material – supply chins thinking of affordable, climate appropriate available building material is possible. Trust people to build it themselves."
"Quality of second hand material really helps with auto construction – second use supply chains could be very financially viable. In the case of Mexico – a cement company called CEMEX played an important role in aiding auto construction. As part of it’s CSR it provided low cost supply of cement with partnership with govt - It’s weird that government never talks about materials as an avenue for housing – "
"It (Private Enterprise) should be brought in how we finance and material supply and innovation around it. Why we don’t use more laterite in east India, or stone in deccan plateau? People who build with local material know how to fix it – no notion of local repair exists right now; models of public housing are the same throughout. One place we are seeing improvement is flow of affordable housing finance."
"We have to be careful to think about what schemes and scales we should allow private enterprise to get involved in."
5) Could the growing trend towards de-centralized governance and citizen participation actually be detrimental to the urban poor’s right to the city?
In discussion about how increased avenues for citizen participation get claimed first by the privileged groups of society -[ Evictions, the urban poor and the right to millennial Delhi (2009) ]"Eventually participation and decentralization will be equity enhancing, but not immediately. First people who grab it are the elite, they are convinced they are the middle-class common man. This middle class thinks of themselves as people who need to be involved."
"The first to claim citizenship of the city are the rich, not the poor. Most social movements claim to participation is national – we always quote the constitution. We never had the urban citizenship concept. American newspapers are Washington post, New York times, whereas in India it is Times of India. The elite have now started saying we are Delhiites; they have started claiming urban citizenship discursively. It will eventually neutralize. It isn’t an automatically progressive move, it can be – in the long term it settles down to be. But context matters."
"In Urban India, the discourse of vulnerability is claimed by the elite."
"This narrative that if you are very rich or poor you get attention; everyone believes they are the common man."
6) Considering the detrimental effect of missions and projects towards acknowledging the
informal, should there be a subsequent Master Plan, following MPD 2021?
In discussion regarding Dr. Bhan's work with NIUA, the "Meh Bhi Dilli" campaign and the 2041 master plan - basing it on the theory of his writing in Stalling how to save the global city, Real Lives of Urban Fantasies"Master plan is a statutory document, it will be made. I don’t think we can give up on planning. It will be very naive to think it doesn’t matter what the plan says – in court it does matter. It would be lovely if we did plan differently. Our plans are outdated single layer land-use plans. We don’t put water, terrain, slope any sort of extra information on the plan. There is no integration with ecological layers, infrastructure layers, transport layers, economy layers etc."
"One of the things important about the campaign (Meh Bhi Dilli) is it took outsiders from the plan and involved them in the process. This process with NIUA drafting the plan is a first, this master plan has a chapter on informal economy – another first. There is a focus on informality, focus on street vendors and homeless workers. NIUA asked for 5 detailed proposals:"
i. Vending zones in master plan
ii. Home Based Workers
iii. Multi-Purpose community centers
iv. Migrant rental hostels
v. Built heritage
vi. Gendered readings of the master plan
"These will go into the master plan next month. We asked for DDA to do consulting workshops – If the DDA tries to push the plan through during COVID, the committee holds rights to take DDA to court. We want to say – right now, you can’t do public consults, so finish the plan, and six months later hold public consultations."
7) In your opinion, should the set of stakeholders driving Delhi towards becoming a smart global city, be the same as the ones who would address the isolation of informal settlements?
In discussion regarding how planning processes and public participation could and should be executed"I’m not worried about stakeholders; I’m worried about the processes. I don’t mind DDA being at the table, as long as they change their process. The process should be such that it doesn’t matter who’s at the table. People at the table keep moving in and out."
"The business that the right people at the table will get it right is an ideological and political belief. We should instead ask about the processes of planning."
"As long as these processes are democratically insulated, its no use who you put at the table – no committee or task force can fix it."
"You have to take planning away from the DDA and return it to elected bodies. One good thing JNURM did was that you were supposed to make integrated chapters- imperfect instruments that were at least integrated– needed diff departments working together. Even if we agree to work together, there is nothing to work together on. We need our plans to be more integrated in order to do so."
"The process has to be one where different expert advisors and public consultations take place – Participation over presence."
"You don’t want a high table, who sits on it is irrelevant."
Links to Dr. Bhan's full papers: