Given that this was the second successive year of the Covid pandemic, and urban areaswere the worst hit, there were a lot of expectations from this year’s Budget for cities. There is a growing recognition of mega cities’ importance for the economy as well as that of middle and third tier cities and towns.

However, for this to happen, urban planning cannot continue with a business-as-usual approach. As part of a paradigm change, five academic institutions in various regions of the country are to be identified and developed as centres of excellence with a corpus of ₹250 crore each. The creation of a “high-level committee of reputed urban planners, urban economists and institutions .. to make recommendations on urban sector policies, capacity building, planning, implementation and governance” was emphasised.

These are noteworthy initiatives and are consistent with the long-term approach needed for a sector whose importance is increasing for the economy. However even after more than a couple of months since the policy pronouncement, there is no news on the initiatives.

India-centric approach

Given their importance in creating jobs in cities, urban mass transport projects like the metro rail are commendable, with a focus on Indian requirements. This is welcome as we understand that ideas of the West are not suitable for us, and we need a desi jugalbandi.

However, there is no widely accepted notion of India-centric planning which is conducive for a good quality of living. The desi jugalbandi should not be used to reject all ideas from the West as they could have favourable effects on our quality of living.

With its focus on mass transport systems in cities, it is not clear is how the public will be incentivised to use them in the post-pandemic world. Mere investment in mass transport will not persuade commuters who are now inclined towards personal modes of transport. Rather the emphasis on electric vehicles and battery swapping is a strategy that will work with personal transport.

What is also not clear is how our cities get to the next point of a “paradigm change” from their current state of poor service delivery, congestion, pollution and inadequate liveability. If we were to take basic sanitation such as access to toilet facilities even in the most urbanised State, Tamil Nadu, for instance, as of 2011, the extent of open defecation in slums was 23 per cent. In Karnataka, which has higher urbanisation than the all India average, this was 25 per cent. These factors should alarm us as these are services denied to the urban poor. But the Budget was silent about such basic services.

In past research, we found that the urban poor in Bengaluru and Chennai did not vote in the most recent municipal elections, when they were beneficiaries of government programmes, which reflected the poor implementation of these programmes. With respect to public housing for the masses, in this Budget, 80 lakh houses are planned to be built for the identified eligible beneficiaries of the PM Awas Yojana, both rural and urban, with ₹48,000 crore being allocated for this purpose.

The affordability of housing is determined by a variety of factors that do not depend merely on financial allocation. Housing should be made more affordable by relaxing regulations pertaining to the floor area ratio/floor space index, land use conversion restrictions and numerous bureaucratic red tape procedures to be completed by developers.

The introduction of programmes and allocations instead of relaxing red tape and regulations to free up the supply of housing is tantamount to replacing the market with administrative solutions.

Given that urban development is a State subject, it is welcome that the Finance Minister offered support to the States for urban capacity building, as they need help.

The ‘modernisation of building by-laws,’ town planning schemes (TPS), and transit-oriented development (TOD) are all welcome initiatives. Hopefully, these reforms persuade people to live and work closer to mass transit systems. A study of the Delhi metro found that the metro had increased women’s labour force participation rates significantly.

A paradigmatic, long-term change is advocated towards urban development rather than a piece meal approach. However, as Charles Lindblom pointed out in his Science of Muddling Through, a sound policy is incremental. An incremental policy has higher likelihood of making a significant impact on lives in a pandemic era.

The more ‘paradigmatic’ or radical the policy pronouncements are, the more things tend to remain the same due to the resistance to change.

In addition to the paradigm change, immediate benefits are necessary in the form of infrastructure and basic services for our cities which are still reeling from the pandemic to protect both lives and livelihoods.

Both in war and pandemics, cities are important and need to be protected.

The writer is Professor, Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bengaluru, and visiting Fulbright Nehru fellow, UCLA. Views expressed are personal