Informal dialogue by Ananya Roy
The author introduces us to – how the planning and infrastructure are related to present scenario and their influence on existing situation which is a big failure in justifying the need for provision of particular infrastructure in terms of future expansion which has been totally neglected and is creating a chaotic situation and proving to be a major demerit in the field of urban planning. Which is explained through best examples of Bangalore and Gurgaon, where all the private developers are ready to invest and pour millions of money for the development of private sector which benefits their capital flow. The lawsuit over acquiring the land and involvement of the government agencies.
The persuasion of planners in the sign of public purpose and its connection to the development of the society. Dr Dwarakanath, who lost his property on the project of road widening at the airport, fumes saying why just sweep out of the way – why not into the sea?
“Can the public interest of the city be left in the hands of private developers?”
The planning of Indian cities is just understood as managing the urban growth and informality of the classes by concentration on the private developers for the rapid growth and development. Here, the author specifies and pinpoints “informality” as deregulation where land ownership, land use and purpose of the land cannot be fixed. She also said that urban planning is all about managing the public resources in relation to the public growth.
But Ghertner addresses it with a present scenario in Delhi where most of the land is owned and constructed as “unauthorised”. He questions why is there no law which regulates it. Whereas in Brazil there is no major difference in legal and illegal which is being misruled of land.
It is assumed that modern state governments operate through unmapping of cities with the simultaneous improvement of urban and industrial development, the state itself is a deeply in formalised entity. There is a great fix in understanding the ultimate definition f what is planning – is it the planning formulated with regulations or is it the published plan with the unmapped territory? This is again related to the Bangalore situation where the land claims is a big question.
Janice Perlman published a famous essay on the six misconceptions about squatter settlements which undermined the “myth of marginality and a common sense of urban marginality. The set of four propositions on informality which conceptualises the study of cities and planning.she also calls for a question of the difference between the law and informality in terms of regulations and legal norms.“ In recent times, planning theorists have sought to take up the idea of informality as a feature of planning.”
She says – The idiom of state power is structural and personal affective ties are concentrated. When she talked in terms of informality related to the megacity, the “Slumdog cities” article too talked about the urban informalities in terms of livelihood, habitation and self-organization.
The Metonymic slum terms the megacity to be an “underdeveloped city.”
She says – that the existing situation of megacity with the existence of slums (filth and sewage etc.,) is being animated by the alchemic ability for the survival.
Example – Dharavi Slums of Mumbai, where a large chunk of people live together in a place with a size of approximately London park, surrounded on all sides with the Asia‟s most expensive real estates and is the largest slums of Asia.it s the most active parts of the industrious city.
It is creating economic miracle of serving food to the whole Mumbai and manufacturing goods to Sweden etc. it is a success story in a global depression. On account of a „planet of slums‟, Mike Davis, expresses anxiety about the political agency of slum dwellers, asking: „To what extent does an informal proletariat possess that most potent of Marxist talismans: “historical agency”?‟. Davis argues that „uprooted rural migrants and informal workers have been largely dispossessed of fungible labour-power, or reduced to domestic service in the houses of the rich‟ and that thus „they have little access to the culture of collective labour or large-scale class struggle‟
If we see,
India has been a driving force behind Asia‟s surging economic growth from the past few years. Moreover, their contribution to the growth economy has been substantial. The title of this article suggests that India cannot plan its cities.
According to me – the economic growth of the city is directly related to the development of the city in terms of urbanisation. The development of the city is majorly focused on the private sectors (i.e) the IT firms etc., where major investments are concentrated neglecting the public need as a whole. The provision of the infrastructural services in not spoken on account of the amount the future expansion would happen for the provision or availability of resources to be allocated and this is not being able to be addressed by the planners is only because of rapid change in the pattern of development and the public purpose as the future proof of the cities.
I accept with her version of saying the monopoly of power in the hands of private developers, and industrial development, where they could talk about the employment generation for the unemployed which could be beneficial for the future proof and public purpose where it does not only talk on land acquisition but also fair distribution.
As mentioned by Harvey, the billed private development which he termed as “geo bribes” happen without any guarantee of employment, which is ultimately highlighting the failure of planning.
But, as she states that the “informality is the key feature of the idiom of urbanisation” I think it was not specified in terms of the interrelationship of the informality onto the society as a whole and as an individual where the urban poor are directly linked with the” informal economy”.
She also mentioned that the informality is an unregulated activity, which is unplanned, yes. But the major factors like – guaranteeing jobs and extending the social protection which are the foundation of the growth of the informal economy and which can be concentrated and converted to a concrete base for regulating their needs which can ultimately create a domain of institutionalised regulations. As informality is defined as an unregulated domain of activities, so it is often understood to be unplanned.
Promoting Social Dialogue which creates a community based development which automatically improves the structure of dependency of the informal on to the formal sector. In cities, the land is used as a resource to generate finances for infrastructure projects; however, it is viewed as a marketable commodity and not a public good.
This can be achieved by the inclusion of the urban land and shelter policies which could have been emphasised.