Cities cannot just be about infrastructure. The infrastructure has to be for the people and according to a noted urban sociologist Robert Park, “the city is man’s most consistent and on the whole, his most successful attempt to remake the world he lives in more after his heart’s desire. But, if the city is the world which man created, it is the world in which he is henceforth condemned to live. Thus, indirectly, and without any clear sense of the nature of his task, in making the city man has remade himself.”
Recently the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA), New Delhi has released a list of 111 cities, which were ranked in a competition on a new criteria called the ‘ease of living index’ (EoLI). According to the list, Pune tops the cities in the country, which is supposedly easiest to live and of the 111 cities Rampur in UP is the most difficult. Well, this is just for the given number of 111, those which do not figure in the list are worse than the present lot and this means that living a decent life is a serious challenge in such cities! In the top 10 include cities like Navi Mumbai and Mumbai that are at number two and three respectively followed by Tirupati at the fourth position whereas Chandigarh finds itself ranked at five. If one goes at the geographical space of the country 6six cities in the first ten are from the south and just one from the north. Big cities like Bengaluru, Chennai and Delhi lag behind in the list.
The World Bank guided data driven methodology for measuring data in the cities and quantifying either by ‘ease of doing business’ phraseology or ‘ease of living’ is in a way top-bottom approach of planning and strategizing the city. The ease of living matrix may sound quite affirmative but unfortunately instead of measuring the livability in the cities is driven more by the agenda of data handling corporates.
The present logic propounded by the ruling establishment that the cities must be competitive and must have a competition amongst themselves is the present neo-liberal paradigm shift in urbanization. The cities which are screaming for investments find their roles changed and have metamorphosised from just being managers in governance to real entrepreneurs (which is not the role of the city). For that, the land use plans are being changed and the cities are asked to work like a business unit. The SPVs in the smart cities are registered under the companies act and are not answerable to the city governments to ensure that the speed of the projects is enhanced. There is nothing much substantive rather it is an exercise where the secondary data collected from the cities is in contradiction to the ground realities. The data driven index is far away from the real index
of the people.
In concise, the way cities are being shaped in the country can be summarized into
- Privatization of cities–not just governance but land which is seen as a major instrument to attract investment.
- Cities being governed more through data which is being handled by large companies like IBM, Cisco etc to ensure that the data is utilized for the furtherance of privatization of cities and
- The utilities and other responsibilities of the cities are either shed to private players or the PPP model of governance is developed.
The matrix of the ‘ease of living’ is in conjunction to the above three requirements. The four pillars on which the entire exercise of EoLI has been based include: Institutional, Social, Economic and Physical.
There are 15 categories in which the cities through their available data have been quantified. These are governance; education; identity and culture; health; safety and security; economy and employment; housing and inclusiveness; public open spaces; mixed land use and compactness; power supply; transportation and mobility; assured water supply; waste water management; solid waste management; reduced pollution.
In the governance model the cities are being developed in a way that a central command and control centre is set up so that such a centre can monitor everything in the city. There is no difference of opinion as to whether such centres should be there or not. Who would not like to have governance where from one office everything gets monitored at a click of the mouse? But the point is who owns these command centres. These centres are developed by mega giant data operators and earn phenomenal profit from the city. The smart city is a classic example of it. The smart city is an urban development plan that uses data points to automate citywide responsibilities such as policing, traffic, and energy. These plans transfer key decisions from local governments to multinational corporations, while privatizing many urban services traditionally governed by municipal officials. Bloomberg reported that the Internet of Things (IoT) represents a $19 trillion opportunity. Forbes estimated that the Smart City industry is expected to become an over 1.5 trillion dollar market by 2020. This new industry signals the privatization and financialization of public service provisions, and will accelerate the growth of inequality in our societies by bringing increased convenience and services to the wealthy few at the cost to the public as a whole. The technocratic Smart City is curtailing individual freedoms and rights and leading us to an Orwellian future. Orwellian future cannot be the ease of living dictum.
Now coming to the actual data and how subjectively it has been read.
We have seen reports from various newspapers where cities are not just ridiculing the EoLI but are screaming and accusing that the data
punched is fudged.
Take for example Trivandrum which till 2017 was the best city for two consecutive years. Janagraha; mapping cities under the Annual Survey of India’s City-Systems (ASICS), developed a matrix of mapping the cities in the country that included; “annual health check up of quality of laws, policies, institutions and institutional processes underlying quality of life in our cities.” Trivandrum the best in the country is at 71 rank in the EoLI. Similarly, cities of Chennai and Kochi have expressed shock at the way in which this report has been prepared.
Another glaring fact that has been overlooked is the contemporary condition of slums in the urban areas. The matrix does not qualify those cities which have shown remarkable progress in addressing some of the important issues in slums. These include the delivery of service utilities like tap water, electricity etc. A census report states that 64 million people live in India’s slums. Over 70 per cent of slum households get their water from a tap, but just half of them get water in their homes. But the efforts in slums do not find a mention in the appraisal. Take for example a city in North India where irrespective of the fact that the land entitlement is not with the slum holders, but they have been provided with metered water and electricity connections. This has not only eased the life of the people (who earlier either had to fetch from long distance or steal water), but has also reduced the non revenue water. This does not even figure in their (consultants of EoLI) imagination. Similarly, those cities which were unable to provide the data owing to the large number of agencies involved in the city management have got a blank in the scoring. This method is erroneous.
The mountain cities have another complaint regarding the ranking method. For the mountain cities the parameters of the plains cannot be applied. The mountain cities require additional resources to ensure water and manage their solid waste management. One of the important areas of mobility–pedestrianisation and its promotion is also missing in the matrix designed to EoLI. Mobility does not only mean construction of flyovers and widening the roads. This is not inclusive form of mobility.
Let us also closely examine some of the cities that have topped in the different categories and how difficult it is to believe that what has been reported is true. In the category of identity and culture; Chandigarh gets the highest score of 4.39, whereas the city is newly built and there are cities which are more than 300 years old and have a far richer heritage and culture, but do not quantify high. In the category of governance Navi Mumbai tops with 16.7/25. There will be many cities which are far better governed like Gangtok where the city has not just banned polythene, but non-organic vegetables are not allowed to enter the city and this decision is being enforced strongly. In housing and inclusiveness Ghaziabad is at the top with a score of 2.82. It seems the city that got the best award in social housing i.e., Sholapur with over 10000 houses constructed by the Beedi workers federation is not even considered. There are errors on the face of it whence one goes through the list.
The EoLI is another precursor at the data driven model of city and it is believed that larger the data easier it is to live in. Here I get reminded to the anecdotal dialogue in between a Park Won Son, the Metropolitan Mayor of Seoul and a friend of mine and myself. During a world cities congress in Seoul as both of us were discussing the challenges being faced in our cities; I pointed out at one of them and said that we are in urgent need of opening rehabilitation centres for the youth in our cities because of the menace of drug addiction. Some how Park did not comprehend the word ‘drug’ (though he is good at English) and said “yeah yeah even we are opening de-addiction centers in Seoul.” To my astonishment I enquired but I did not see the young addicted to drugs in South Korea. He laughed and said “oh no-no, not centres of rehabilitation for drug addicts but these high data usage addicts who are getting psychological problems.”
I believe our cities are not following the same path! Ease of living for us as defined by Harvey is also a right to the city to live with dignity!
[The views expressed are the author’s own. They do not purport to reflect the views of Urban Update.]