Spatial plans in post-liberalization India: Who’s making the plans for fast-growing Indian urban regions?

ABSTRACT

This article asks who is making the plans for India’s fast-growing urban regions? It begins with the adopted conceptual framework illustrating how the perception of plans within the planning discipline has begun to change with an increasing recognition that a more diverse mix of efforts pursued by different planning players, rather than a singular state-sponsored master plan, shapes contemporary cities and urban regions. Employing a careful analysis of spatial plans and interviews with planners and officials, the article next explains the 4 main kinds of planning efforts I found in India’s National Capital Region (NCR): a growing number of state-led plans at different spatial scales; sectoral plans made by public sector agencies like the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI); project-specific plans, such as those sponsored by private developers and emerging entrepreneurs; and tacit and spontaneous plans, including those pursued by local actors, that often leverage unforeseen opportunities, contesting and transforming the preceding plans. The article concludes by calling upon scholars to pay attention to the interplay between these different kinds of plans that are beginning to shape urban India in an unprecedented manner.

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to the participants at the symposium titled “New Urban Forms, New Fields of Inquiry: China and India” organized by the India China Institute at The New School, New York City, on April 17–18, 2015, for constructive feedback. I thank Partha Mukhopadhyay, Mukta Naik, and Christine Ithurbide for thoughtful comments on the interim work presented in the CPR-CSH Urban Workshop Series jointly organized by the Centre for Policy Research and Centre de Sciences Humaines at the Centre for Policy Research, Chankyapuri, New Delhi, on May 31, 2016. Ratoola Kundu, Lalitha Kamath, and Himanshu Burte provided meaningful advice during the presentation of a draft essay at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, on June 17, 2017. Thanks are also due to the anonymous reviewers for useful advice.

Notes

1. By drawing this distinction, however, I do not seek to diminish the important role that legal frameworks regulating property ownership, local and higher-level politics, and the state and its instruments such as legislative mandates and official rules play in shaping place-based planning efforts even if they remain beyond the scope of this study. After all, contextual particularities deeply influence how local people and decision makers make judgments about cities and their futures, distributing public resources and siting civic amenities at specific locations (or not), seriously affecting the quality of residents’ life. The object of study in this aricle, however, includes the many different kinds of spatial and urban plans (irrespective of their scale, sponsor, or purported legality) shaping Indian metropolitan regions.

2. During the same time period, the area of NCR increased marginally from 30,241 km² (or 11,673 mi²) to 34,144 km² (or about 13,000 mi²) due to expansion of its notified boundary.

3. For example, Brent Ryan (2012) argues how, notwithstanding the purpose and values of sponsors, all plans are cultural artifacts ultimately signifying the political dynamic and social climate of opinion prevalent at the time of their creation. Not only do they embody the priorities and aspirations of their makers shaped in the context of a larger social sphere and the prevailing system of political economy but they also encapsulate the thinking and working of the larger society that produced these artifacts. In this sense, studying spatial and urban plans not only helps make sense of the larger social, political, economic, and physical settings that collectively shaped these efforts but also helps comprehend the manner in which their makers understood the existing city and imagined their own place in its future.

4. This view recognizes that although everyone possesses the capacity to make plans, many poor and socially marginalized people fail to pursue plans for the future because they lack sufficient security beyond the daily rounds of a survival routine. Some cultures complicate this subordination as people embrace ideas and beliefs that encourage submission and compliance rather than resistance and innovation. Empowering ordinary people, in line with the concept of capability introduced by Amartya Sen (1999), helps people not only make their own plans but also participate in larger planning efforts aimed at securing a better collective future.

5. In addition to the three statutory regional plans published by the NCRPB in 1973, 1989, and 2005, I collected and studied the pertinent downstream plans prepared by the state town planning departments and public-sector agencies like the Rajasthan Industrial Investment Corporation. I also analyzed relevant planning and policy reports published by national agencies like the NHAI and the Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor Development Corporation. The main purpose of this exercise was to comprehend the plan-makers’ understandings of existing situations in the area, their review of past planning efforts, and the nature and scope of planning interventions that they recommend for the future.

6. Urban development and housing is a state (and not central) subject per the Indian constitution. Thus, state governments typically formulate urban plans and policies for these sectors. However, similar to federal involvement in the United States, India’s central government seeks to shape the overall policy environment through a host of measures like prioritizing development focus, laying out supporting programs, and issuing norms and conditions to access substantial central funds that animate state plans in significant ways. Moreover, by virtue of its control over strategic statutory agencies, such as the NHAI, the central government exercises a major influence on land use planning and policy issues across spatial scales.

7. NCR’s regional plan, mandated by the national parliament with concurrence of the constituent states, not only exemplifies the central government’s priority for the NCR but also represents a one-of-a-kind exception to state governments’ constitutional jurisdiction over urban development and housing issues. The authority over downstream plans and project development, however, rests with the respective state governments.

8. Notable examples include fast-expanding sectors like telecom, electrical supply, and industrial infrastructure in which the national telecom carrier (BSNL), Power Grid Corporation of India Limited, and Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor Development Corporation are leading public investment efforts.

9. Financed through a mix of state budgetary support and foreign and domestic aid, the National Health Mission exemplifies the common sectoral mission of participating organizations.

10. See volumes 1 and 2 of India’s 12th 5-year plan (2012–2017) that describes in detail the scope and nature of public works in the urban and social sectors.

11. For a concise overview, see the report of Committee of Experts, constituted by the Ministry of Urban Development, Government of India in 2006, under the chairmanship of Tejendra Khanna (2006) (former lieutenant-governor of Delhi) to look into various aspects of unauthorized construction and misuse of premises in Delhi. See References for details.

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Sanjeev Vidyarthi

Sanjeev Vidyarthi is an Associate Professor of Urban Planning and a Senior Fellow of the Great Cities Institute at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Exploring planning and design efforts in a wide variety of urban settings, he studies who does (and should do) the planning work for places. Sanjeev has lived, worked, and studied in the Middle East, Western Europe, and the United States while examining the case of spatial planning and urban development in post-independence India.