Urban India is at various stages of malfunction and disrepair. An esti-mated 30% of India’s 1.3 billion people currently reside in cities. The rate of urbanization is a rapid 2.4% per year, thereby making it imperative that cities are equipped to handle the steadily growing influx of people. Currently, however, cities in India are found lacking in terms of adequate planning, infrastructure, public services and sustainable development. Most of urban India is overburdened and grappling with the consistent growth in population.

There can, therefore, be no disagreement that our cities need urgent atten-tion – roads, traffic, garbage, power, water-supply, environment, crime, safety and the whole gamut of Quality of Life aspects that frustrate us daily as city-residents. But these are only the symptoms. They are visible elements of a systemic failure in the governance and management of our cities. Any number of band-aids cannot prevent the malaise from spread-ing, unless the underlying structural deficiencies are treated. Figuring out a way by which the challenges of cities can be distilled into a frame of reference, will align action towards coherent change.

DYSFUNCTIONALCITY-SYSTEMS

THE CHALLENGE

for Urban India

We call this our City-Systems framework and view the challenges of our cities through the lens of its four defining aspects. These four interrelated aspects are the building blocks for transforming our cities and creating a more sustainable future for growth.

1) Well-structured Urban Planning and Design 2) High levels of Urban Capacities and Resources 3) Empowered and Legitimate Political Representatives 4) Transparent, Accountable, and Participatory Cities

Quality of life is a direct result of the City-Systems that underlie each of the four themes – invisible, complex and interrelated elements of laws, policies, institutional frameworks, and processes. To fix the quality of life in our cities and towns, we need to therefore fix our City-Systems.

Indian cities today are perched precariously on the precipice of rigidly regulated master plans on the one hand, and completely uncoordinated free-for-all market determined growth on the other. The result is visible in the chaotic expansion of our cities and in the discordant, makeshift nature of public infrastructure being built.

This atrophied approach to spatial planning results in master plans that play no meaningful part in shaping the form and future of our cities, relegating them to regulatory references that merely dictate, ‘what can you use this piece of land for, and how much can you build’.

Similarly, the current development pace has promoted haphazard infrastructure which has not taken into account social science or aesthetics. Ownership and neighbourhood community is built on a sense of place and identity. Investment in the details of urban design is an investment in nurturing ownership and building communities. We believe that most existing Indian cities require large-scale investment in rejuvenation of public spaces and up-gradation of neighbourhoods and key centres of activity.

Most importantly, we need to realise that the whole spectrum of robust macro spatial planning and detailed local design must be the bedrock of the world-class cities we want.

Urban Planning and Design

Empowered and Legitimate Political

Representation

Transparency, Accountability

and Participation

Urban Capacities and Resources

Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) are the ‘last mile’ connection between government and citizens. They are responsible for providing the infrastructure and services that affect our daily quality of life as city residents. Yet, this crucial final arm of government is failing due to a lack of capacities and resources.

There is a critical shortage of manpower in ULBs especially at the senior management level. This is compounded by the fact the Urban Management is yet to emerge as a specialised professional domain in India. Municipal Corporations in India therefore do not have a compre-

hensive, standardized and well-defined set of roles and job descrip-tions across urban services and functions, which would ensure that they are right-staffed. Further, a pool of appropriately and adequately

skilled and trained manpower is not available for urban services and functions due to the same reason (E.g. personnel specifically trained in

municipal financial management, in municipal solid waste management, in municipal revenue mobilisation etc. are not available in the Indian job

market).

Only by addressing these twin challenges of sufficient specialization and adequate staffing, will UBLs be able to deliver a better quality of life and service delivery for

our cities and towns.

The edifice of a democratic society is built on having elected representatives that are both empowered and legitimate. Today in urban India there remain insti-

tutional impediments that prevent the realisation of this democratic ideal.

Predominant challenges include: inadequate power of elected representa-tives in the city council despite efforts to decentralise power nationally through the 74th Constitutional amendment; the persistent influence of crime and money in electoral politics; the lack of institutionalised engagement between elected representatives and citizens, which leads to a sense of disenfranchisement on the part of citizens, and

places serious doubts over the representative legitimacy of elected officials; the lack of an objective reporting system for performance of elected representatives in assemblies and parliamentary sessions; and persistent low voter turnout in urban areas due to apparent ‘urban apathy’.

Other less obvious impediments also remain, such as the inaccuracy of voter lists – which even have the power to influence election results in closely fought constituencies. With urban migration causing transience rates of 20% per annum, the Election Commission finds itself unable to keep electoral rolls up to date (especially as the maintenance system it uses was built around the needs of low-mobility, rural communities). Because of this, many citizens find themselves unable to vote on election day even if they want to. How can we build realise the democratic ideals we deserve with urban electoral turnout at just 40%?

Transparency and Accountability are the founding stones of any good govern-ment, and citizen participation is key to a strong, representative democracy. Unfortunately, the current situation in India’s cities and towns does not reflect this. There remains a wall of opacity between the Government and the citizen, with average city residents unaware of the workings inside the ‘black box’ of the administration. Most tax payers do not know where their money is spent, nor what, if anything, the government plans to do to improve their quality of life. Often, the government itself is unaware of citizens’ chief pain points, or even the true state of its own finances and service provision, due to a lack of rigorous data. The compounding lack of pre-agreed service delivery benchmarks, and mandatory performance disclosures, also make it hard for government and citizen to identify which reform efforts are needed most pressingly. From the safety of this opacity, corrupt practices, leakages, pilfering, preferential contracting and cronyism are able to flourish, to the detriment of us all.

Due to the above, urban citizens are often relegated to passive bystanders rather than engaged stakeholders. They are unable to voice their concerns, take ownership over their neighbourhoods, and work together with government for a better quality of life. This directly translates a poor quality of life and along with it, the commonly misunderstood sense of ‘urban apathy’ witnesses in India’s cities. With this current reality, how can we expect our cities to be the world-class habitats in which we all wish to live?

URBAN PLANNING AND DESIGN URBAN CAPACITIES AND RESOURCES

EMPOWERED AND LEGITIMATE POLITICAL REPRESENTATION

Now let’s take a closer look and the dysfunctionality of India’s City-Systems from the perspective of the City-Systems Framework.

A CLOSER LOOK AT THE CURRENT SCENARIO IN URBAN INDIA A health check against the City-Systems Framework

TRANSPARENCY, ACCOUNTABILITY, AND PARTICIPATION

Urban Planning and Design

Empowered and Legitimate Political

Representation

Transparency, Accountability

and Participation

Urban Capacities and Resources

At the Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy, we have been working relentlessly over the past decade to improve the ‘Quality of Life’ in Indian cities and towns.

We believe that cities cannot deliver sustainable improvements in Qual-ity of Life unless they have robust City-Systems with the following 4 components:

1. Well-structured Urban Planning and Design 2. High levels of Urban Capacities and Resources 3. Empowered and also Legitimate Political Representatives4. Transparent, Accountable and Participatory Cities

These themes are interdependent components and underpinning each of them is a detailed set of institutions, laws, policies and processes.

Given that fixing all the problems that plague urban India is a herculean task and we have limited resources, our strategic aim is to build scalable programs that create a significant multiplier effect. Our approach involves working with our primary stakeholders, Government and Citizens, to devise solutions that are easily to scale and replicate via 3Ps .

PoliciesPlatformsPartnerships

While each of the dimensions of the City-Systems framework comprises of a whole gamut of issues and challenges facing Indian cities, our efforts are focused on programmes that we pilot extensively and prove to be sustainable, scalable models for coherent change.

Janaagraha’s City-Systems Framework has over 100 specific points of meas-urement. Each year through our Annual Survey of City-Systems we highlight the enormous and urgent challenges that confront Indian cities, in fixing our upstream institutional and governance processes to solve urban challenges. Our framework can be a universal city-strategy for politicians and bureau-crats to adopt - the ASICS scorecard gives them clear indicators of key gaps in their city’s governance. It also helps in building consensus among stakehold-ers outside government, catalyzing a unified voice to demand change from decision-makers.

TARGETINGOUR INTERVENTIONS

THE CITY-SYSTEMSFRAMEWORK

As a Roadmap

CITY-SYSTEMSFRAMEWORK

URBAN PLANNING & DESIGN POLICYFostering sustainable urban development through robust planning and design policies that respond to contemporary demands and respect federal structures / democratic principles.

URBAN PLANNING PRACTICEBuilding spatial plans that anchor the long-term political, social, economic and environmental vision for a city and its region / guide all public agencies towards delivering on that vision.

URBAN DESIGN PRACTICEFixing India’s urban roads networks – life blood of the city and chief pain point for citizens.

URBAN CAPACITY BUILDING (UCB)Training better Bureaucrats/Administrators to strengthen the ‘steel frame’ of India,

while ensuring Urban Local Governments are adequately resources to meet the demands of India’s Urbanisation.

BALA JANAAGRAHABuilding tomorrow’s active citizens through local level civic education.

PUBLIC RECORD OF OPERATIONS AND FINANCE (PROOF)Creating Transparent and Accountable Urban Local Government through reporting and disclosure. Building a growing constituency of citizens who are engaged in their cities’ budgets.

COMMUNITY POLICINGImproving the safety of our neighbourhoods and bridging the gap between citizens and police through citizen participation.

ICHANGEMYCITY.COMFostering the urban civic ‘community’ - Allowing citizens to connect with one another, and with their civic agencies / local governments.

IPAIDABRIBE.COMUsing the voice of citizens to tackle ‘retail’ corruption in government services.

JAAGTE RAHO!Empowering urban voters through clean voter lists, leading to higher turnout and

higher quality elected representatives.

All Janaagraha and JanaUSP programmes are guided by a long term vision of scale and impact on the City-Systems dimension under which they work. This page outlines these ‘big picture’ visions that drive our programmes at a macro-level.

Bala Janaagraha

Community Policing

Public Record of Operations and Finance (PROOF)

IPaidaBribe.com

IChangeMyCity.com

Planning &Design

URBAN

TRANSPARENCY, ACCOUNTABILITY

& ParticipationA Truly pan-India programme by 2020. Acceptance in State and Union Syllabus of Bala Janaagraha Civic Educa-tion Modules. Inform a generation of civically active and engaged urban citizens.

Community Policing accepted and instituted pan-India as an effective neighbourhood safety and community integration tool. Institution of community policing within various state Police Acts. Raising the functioning and resourcing of police stations to meet world-class benchmarks.

Urban Local Government made transparent and accountable to citizens through suo moto quarterly disclosures of operations and finance, pan-India. Creation of a robust, enforceable, Performance Reporting Framework at the national policy level. Acceptance and institution of Participatory Budgeting concepts across state governments.

Citizens themselves reduce corruption related to government services India-wide, by reporting via their computers and mobile devices. A world-wide network of crowd-sourced IPaidaBribe.com websites built, to harness the power of citizen voices and reduce retail corruption globally.

IChangeMyCity.com becomes the ‘one-stop-shop’ for civic networking in Bangalore and beyond. It empowers citi-zens to engage and make a difference in their local communities – fostering a sense of ownership and civic pride from the grassroots up. ‘Quality of citizenship’ is improved in India, bringing a richer, truer democracy.

Uban Planning and Design Policy

Urban Planning Practice

Urban Design Practice

Through advocacy based around our policy documents, India achieves ongoing clarity on property rights, heritage protection, spatial planning, and procurement processes for urban roads, etc.

Robust spatial plans developed by JanaUSP across multiple localities in India (based on the three E’s principal – Environment, Equity, and Economy), establishing a tangible ‘proof of concept’ for the NUSPD framework.

Tender SURE roads designed and executed in multiple states, pan-India, establishing visible ‘proof of concept’ for the two-volume Tender SURE document. Tender SURE accepted as blueprint for urban road execution by state and union governments going forward.

Human Resources and Volunteer Management (HRVM)Janaagraha is established as a world-class institution through recruitment and volunteering. Through harnessing technology platforms it expands and deepens its connection /embededness within society, and attracts / retains engaged staff, volunteers and alumni. Janaagraha has the Human Resources to launch in new cities throughout India.

Planning and Development (P&D)The organisation meets its increasing budget year-on-year, through a consistent and diversified donation stream. The organisation is perceived by its donors and ecosystem as a best-in-class institution. The organisation has strong internal planning and review processes that allow it to grow and flourish.

TechnologyJanaagraha’s online platforms are built on a cutting-edge IT architecture, resulting in maximum utility and user-friendliness for citizens, and an ability to scale within India and beyond as required. Janaagraha’s internal IT infrastructure is first rate – helping the organisation and its staff stay at the forefront of the development field.

Janaagraha Applied Research Programme (J-ARP)Janaagraha is respected as a source of world-class applied research. Through horizontal support for J-ARP, Janaa-graha programmes and interventions are well informed, targeted and data-driven.

URBANCapacities &

Resources

Urban Capacity BuildingAll future urban administrators are adequately trained to meet the demands of running India’s Cities. Urban Lo-cal Bodies are adequately staffed, resourced, and organised to world’s best practice standards.

SUPPORTProgrammes

Jaagte Raho!EMPOWERED & LEGITIMATE

Political Representation

Proper Urban Electoral (PURE) Roll Management Process adopted across cities and states. Permanent solution to inaccurate voter lists. Greater voter turnout. Less urban ‘apathy’. Higher quality and more legitimate elected repre-sentatives.

PROGRAMMATIC GOALS UNDER THE City Systems Framework Dimensions

Urban Planning and Design

Empowered and Legitimate Political

Representation

Transparency, Accountability

and Participation

Urban Capacities and Resources

HUSKUR ROADELECTRONIC CITYMUMBAI MILE

TenderSURE PHASE 01

TenderSURE PUBLIC PARTICIPATION EVENT

GLOBAL IMPACT AWARD

UCB ADVISORY GROUP ORGANISATIONAL CHARTS

NEW FORMS40000

37 VOLUNTEERS

Janaagraha TEAM SITE

7 roads under development in central Bangalore with Rs. 68 Cr of Government support.

held with distinguished guests and engaged citizens on TenderSURE Phase 01 project.

Projects Commenced

JANA SURAKSHA SAMITHISAWARENESS PROGRAMMES18STREET PLAYS16RALLIES3

for www.ichangemycity.com at the Google Impact Challenge for India.

engaged in the quarter from over 20 colleges.

held to transform our neighbourhood.

REAL LIFE CIVIC ISSUES3000

Crossed

resolved on www.ichangemycity.com at a resolution rate of over 50%.

NEW DONOR PARTNERSHIPS 4

Rs. 3.5 Cr.formed totalling

MINI CIVIC FEST

BALA JANAAGRAHA PARTNER SCHOOLS 175

rolled out for

in Bangalore.

held by Community Policing programme in Q3.

REGISTEREDUSERS17000

Crossed

4 MILLION USERS10 PARTNER COUNTRIESon www.ipaidabribe.com in Q3.

Crossed

constituted. for Urban Local Bodies

submittedtranslating to 35,000 new voters come Lok Sabha Elections, 2014

NASSCOM BIG TECH FOUNDATION

Rs. 30 Lakh donation of Microsoft and Adobe product from Janaagraha

Document Management System – Sharepoint

Migration of

to Microsoft 365 Cloud.

World Class New thrust into producing

2 CASESESSIONS

on Slum improvement and Tender SURE held

at LBSNAA

ASSEMBLYCONSTITUENCIES27

of Bangalore

Jaagte Raho! now in all

8000AREA VOTER MITRAStrained and on the ground in preparation for Lok Sabha elections.

Completion of CROWD-SOURCED RETAIL BRIBERY INDEX (C-RBI).

BUDGET BRIEFS

VANARPET CORPORATOR

referenced by

in appeal to Commissioner for higher allocation.

CITY-SYSTEMS ACHIEVEMENTS

Q32013-14

URBAN DESIGN PRACTICE

COMMUNITY POLICING

IChangeMyCity.com

PROOF

URBAN CAPACITY BUILDING

JAAGTE RAHO!

TECHNOLOGY

HRVMAPPLIED RESEARCHPROGRAMME

PLANNING & DEVELOPMENTIPaidaBribe.com

BALA JANAAGRAHA

CITY-SYSTEMSFRAMEWORK