The original version of the book was inadvertently published with incorrect author's last name in Chapters 1 and 8. The author's last name is corrected from 'X. M. Abad' to 'X. Méndez Abad'. The book has been updated with the changes.
While e-governance is acclaimed as a means to decentralisation, and an efficiency and accountability enhancing mechanism, it can be implemented in different ways. In a strong centralized state like the Indian state, decentralization is often pursued in a centralized manner through top-down interventions. This paper, traces the implementation of two centrally driven e-governance interventions in the state of Karnataka, India i.e. Helpline and Aasthi to argue that while 'centralized decentralization' may be justified on grounds of standardization, it can have divergent outcomes, many of which are often contrary to the objectives of decentralization. The experience of Helpline and Aasthi belies the claim of e-governance being an efficiency and accountability enhancing mechanism. On the contrary, the centralized approach to decentralization in implementing Helpline and Aasthi has weakened the accountability of the state and limited the efficiency gains of urban decentralization.
The 1990s ushered in two parallel changes in India. The first pertains to liberalisation, which meant the opening-up of the country to international trade and foreign investment, and the introduction of tax reforms and inflation control measures. The second, internal to India, albeit linked intrinsically to liberalisation, is decentralisation as initiated through the 74th Constitutional Amendment Act (CAA). The CAA seeks to strengthen urban local bodies as units of local self-government through functional and financial empowerment. Two decades hence, the country continues to suffer from a poorly executed decentralisation agenda. This paper, through the case study of the Bangalore Metropolitan Region (BMR), traces the impact of the decentralisation agenda on the socio-spatial fabric of the region. It highlights how, in the absence of empowered local governments, the state government is increasingly vesting decision-making powers in non-elected task forces, the latter being more or less individuals patronised by ruling parties. The approval of the statutory planning tool for the BMR was stalled on account of the lack of legitimate planning bodies. Consequently, growth continues to be investment-driven, with the metropolitan region emerging as a distorted spatial fabric. The paper argues that the reconciliation of planning scales and capacities renders decentralisation incomplete. In parallel, contending socio-political challenges are an imperative.
The research embarks from the standpoint that unequal geographies of service delivery in the Southern city evidence differentiating practices embedded within dominant rational planning practices. It aligns and responds to the call of Southern urban theorists to develop alternative planning practices by anchoring within the socio- spatial specificities of Southern urbanisms. Foregrounding this objective, the research turns to the collaborative planning model and its pragmatic tradition of resisting the subjugating tendencies of instrumental rationality by admitting new ways of knowing and being from the life-world. Drawing upon a multi-actor collaboration that sought to address the circumstance of water insecurity in the urban poor settlements of Ranchi city, the research uses Healy’s (1997) Forum, Arena and Courts as entry points to frame on-ground recursive and collaborative interventions. These include unpacking the context to frame and implement interventions that sought to enhance water security while operationalising supporting actions that aim to sustain the interventions. Within this framing, the paper draws upon the critiques of the collaborative planning model as standpoints for contextual reinterpretation to foreground a) the importance of empowering strategic actors at the bottom of socio-political hierarchies to lead the process; b) conceptualize consensus as a process rather than an end-point recognizing its intrinsic relationship with conflict; and, c) institutionalizing formalized yet flexible processes for consensus-building. Overall the paper argues that collaborative planning with its focus on the particularities of place and on the human capacity to invent, create, and transform presents a viable starting point for resisting the dominating confines of instrumental rationality in significant ways.
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