Citizen Participation In Development

Cities have been drivers of growth since ages be it the Indus Valley or the Greek Civilization. Today also cities continue to fuel growth but are our cities infrastructure-wise sound enough to withstand the pressure on them? Cities are the centers for secondary and tertiary sector industries which ensure high per capita income but with inflow of population in cities from rural areas the pressure on cities is rising. If the city is not able to scale up the amenities to match the demand it starts to degradation of civic amenities.

The Central as well as State government bodies have initiated various programs and have been successful in their own right. Though a general assessment of civic amenities in most cities leaves a lot to be desired. Today government agencies seem to be more forthcoming in seeking public cooperation to craft sustainable cities. The initiative started by Ministry of Urban Development, GoI under the aegis of Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JnNURM) is one of the most recognized and ambitious plans launched till date. The plan is good initiative and banks heavily on citizen participation. It promotes Public-Private Partnership (PPP) model to execute plan. It also pushes cities to grow up as sustainable systems rather than become reliant on central grants. The two main missions of the initiative are:

• Improving Urban Infrastructure and Governance
  
• Basic Services to Urban Poor

Many private sector agencies especially Non-Profit agencies are today working along with urban development agencies like municipal corporations to provide and leverage the combined skills of individuals with expertise in relevant areas like Solid Waste Management (SWM), Capacity Building, Urban Planning, Executing plans on Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) basis. One of the pioneer cities in this respect is Hyderabad which has been able to secure a major chunk of fundings and successfully executed a lot of plans.

The success of Hyderabad was not the effort of a single agency. In fact it was the combined efforts of various government and non-government agencies like Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC), Administrative Staff College of India (ASCI), Foundation for Futuristic Cities (FFC) among others.

The involvement of organizations like FFC is a fresh breath of air for government agencies too as such organizations not only bring a new perspective to the field but also leverage their experience from similar work done world over. Such sharing of best practices is a welcome move. Today most of the cities covered under JnNURM have involved external experts and secured funding to implement projects.

The need of the day for India today is active citizen participation. The involvement of citizens in development ensures the commitment and support needed to implement and keep the projects moving ahead. Realizing this need today almost all government agencies encourage active stakeholder participation. Whether it be citizen's forums run by municipal corporations or User's Consultative Committees run by an agency like Indian Railways all such formal or informal bodies are crafted around the basic premise of citizen's participation.

Today Hyderabad has in fact set a new example of citizen participation. FFC has come up with a pioneer plan to organize a competition seeking ideas from citizen's to develop the city of Hyderabad. The initiative has been named: Citizens For City (more details at http://www.citizensforcity.org/) being backed up by a Core Committee of prominent citizens like Padamshree Pullela Gopichand, Karuna Gopal (President FFC), Y Harishchandra Prasad (Chairman, CII-AP Chapter) as well as industry bodies and agencies like the ASCI.

The official press release which described the initiative sounded a fresh and innovative way to secure citizen participation. A section of the release described the approach:

"Entries are invited ‘To prepare implementable strategies on 30 different topics’ listed in the website of the foundation. Citizens can also add new ideas in addition to the topics mentioned in the website. Top three winners will be given CITY STRATEGIST AWARDS along with cash prizes. In addition to top 3 prizes, 10 Best teams will be presented Citation and Memento and 30 Best Teams strategy will find a place in a special publication titled ‘Sculpt your City’ which will be knowledge resource for Indian Cities."

It's time other cities and agencies involved in urban development buckle up and seek participation of citizens. With the failure of many ambitious plans in the past it has been well-proved that a silo-approach fails most of the time to attract citizens. With today's citizens being more aware of their rights and ready to participate only a more comprehensive and engaging approach can succeed.

Hopefully government agencies and citizens are listening.