What is the impact of economic liberalization and politico-administrative decentralization on the supply and demand of a series of collective goods and services with respect to which the State had hitherto played (and keeps playing, in some cases) a major role? We have chosen to raise this question in the context of Indian metropolises, because decentralization and liberalization have brought about a new policy space at the level of states, which makes their capital-cities privileged observation sites concerning the political economy of urban development. Decentralization and liberalization manifest themselves first and foremost by the introduction of new actors (or by the newly acquired importance of actors present before) in urban management, particularly municipalities and private companies, and more generally, by a redistribution of roles and resources, both material and symbolic, between the concerned actors (municipalities, the private sector, but also states, sectorial agencies, metropolitan development agencies, associations).
Urban Governance In India: The State Of The Question
Whereas the urbanization of Indian society is progressing at a relatively fast pace (it concerns 30% of the Indian population in 2001), Indian urban studies continue to be dominated by writings of architects and town planners on one hand, and on the other hand, by economics works comprising mainly sectorial studies (on water, energy...) The decentralization policy has been studied mostly in its rural dimension, and even there, the approaches that have been adopted have been rather compartmentalized: most of the studies deal exclusively with one or the other dimension of decentralization (fiscal, administrative, political), and more general studies are lacking. In short, the specificity and complexity of the urban issue have so far not been much studied.
However, in India as elsewhere, we are witnessing the emergence of the city as a key actor in the current political, social and economic recompositions. While globalization, which introduces a competition for international investments amongst cities as such, makes the cities economical actors, decentralization makes them political actors having some clout on the regional level. Finally, the policy of liberalization of the economy, which in India slightly preceded decentralization, brings about the entry of the private sector in the management of urban affairs, thus contributing further to the "fragmentation of urban government" [1] .
The notion of governance enables one to embrace both the complexity of this reality, and the various levels of analysis that are needed to understand it. A key concept of institutional economics, governance, as per this scientific origin, refers to the nature of co-ordinations in the functioning of a given sector. Popularized since the '90s by the World Bank, which has made a mantra of its normative extension - good governance -, the concept has been much utilized by development economics before finding its way into political discourse. Even though its ubiquity renders the notion of governance rather suspect today, it does not for that matter remain any less useful. Studying urban governance implies taking into account both institutional and non-institutional actors, the public and the private, formal as well as informal relations; it implies differentiating between theory and practices.
The production and consumption of physical and social infrastructures are both a stake and an object of urban governance. As we have already mentioned, liberalization and decentralization have changed the situation: whereas the supply of infrastructure now associates (and often opposes) public and private actors, the demand is supposed to be more differentiated in nature. We can therefore wonder as to what extent water, health, education, for instance, are still public goods and services, and also as to the signification, today, of the « public » dimension of one or the other of these infrastructures. Lastly, it is important to measure the impact of the ongoing renewal of sectorial policies on the access of the various socio-economic groups to essential goods and services, which development economics has shown to be a crucial issue (particularly the works of Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen [2]).
In this respect, an increasing literature, based on empirical studies, shows that political decentralization (as opposed to administrative decentralization) tends to be unfavorable vis-à-vis the economically weakest sections of the population (local bodies generally collect less than the State, and spend less on social policies). In India, it is well known that the decentralization process is far from being complete, both because of the resistance from certain political actors (particularly from elected representatives at the states level) and because of the insufficiency of financial transfers to local authorities, who are in charge of the maintenance and functioning of basic infrastructures in urban areas [3]. But very few are the studies that question, in a wider perspective, the social impact of this policy. How can a democracy of proximity favor the matching of urban infrastructure supply to the demand? Does the new-found political clout of municipal corporations favor the emergence of new "demand groups" [4] at the local level? The multidimensional nature of governance thus calls for an approach "in terms of a "sociologized" political economy" [5]. Such is the approach that our multidisciplinary team proposes to adopt.
[1] P. LE GALES, "Du gouvernement des villes à la gouvernance urbaine", Revue Française de Science Politique , Vol.45, n°1, Février 1995, p.60.
[2] DREZE, Jean et SEN, Amartya, India, Development and Participation , Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2002.
[3] A.KUNDU, S. BAGCHI, D. KUNDU, "Distribution of Infrastructure and Basic Amenities in Urban India: Issues Concerning Empowerment of Local Bodies", Economic and Political Weekly , Vol. 34, n°8, 1999.
[4] L.I.RUDOLPH, S.HOEBER RUDOLPH, In Pursuit of Lakshmi. The Political Economy of the Indian State . Delhi, Orient Longman, 1987, p. 247.
[5] P. LE GALES, op.cit ., p.58. |
