CDP-II: What about collective ownership, participatory planning?

CDP evolves through a process of participatory planning with involvement of all stakeholders. It focusses on ensuring that CDP has collective ownership and reflects the voice of all sections of society.
-- Key Features of CDP, page 5, Revised Toolkit for Preparation of City Development Plan, Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission, April 2013.

By Kartik Lokhande
Collective ownership. An absolutely important expression highlighting the need for all sincerity and seriousness required while preparing City Development Plan (CDP). However, in case of Nagpur city, the process for CDP-II or revised CDP is being conducted in a manner that does not reflect that any heed has been paid to the core value of ‘collective ownership’.
In fact, as has been highlighted in ‘The Hitavada’ campaign in previous episodes, the attempt to ‘impose’ the ‘vision’ of a few upon people of Nagpur is quite visible. Part blame for this goes to Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) and part to the consultant agency Crisil Risk and Infrastructure Solutions Limited (CRIS). If one takes a keen look at the procedure ‘followed’ so far, in the ongoing course of preparation of CDP-II, it becomes amply clear that NMC as well as CRIS did not feel it appropriate to attach due importance to the element of ‘participatory planning with involvement of all stakeholders’.
The formulators of toolkit for preparation of CDP are clear that the role of consultants (read, CRIS in case of Nagpur city) is to ‘act as facilitators of the planning process and not as sole drivers of the planning process.’ Stakeholder consultation has been given the highest priority in the planning process. Thus, it is the mandate of NMC to identify stakeholder groups including interest groups for women and citizens, to conduct stakeholder workshops and to give the widest possible media publicity to the stakeholder workshops. Prior to holding stakeholder workshops, municipal corporation is required to hold a pre-launch workshop (CDP Launch Workshop) and a stakeholder orientation and sensitisation workshop. Sadly, NMC has not conducted any of these. The entire laid-down procedure has been by-passed.
Further, of 14 specified stages in formulation of CDP, stakeholders are involved in six. These six stages include -- stakeholder consultation, workshop, city assessment, SWOT analysis, vision formulation, and identification of development goals and strategies. The CDP launch workshop is supposed to be chaired by Mayor and participated by corporators and administration. Prominent citizens, business/trade associations, community-based organisations, NGOs, and even local media are supposed to be invited to the workshop. A specific note has been added to this in the toolkit, “There should be sufficient media publicity for the CDP launch workshop.”
After the launch workshop, the consultants are expected to conduct orientation and sensitisation workshops and CDP planning workshop. In addition to these workshops, the toolkit suggests to undertake an awareness campaign among community-based organisations, citizen groups (youth clubs, senior citizens etc) through meetings, distribution of pamphlets, hoardings, street plays etc. Since the so-called inception of CDP-II process, none of these exercises has been undertaken in Nagpur city. As CRIS mentions in its ‘current status of revised CDP’ in privately circulated power-point presentation, “CRIS team has carried out focussed consultations with select stakeholders of the city.” Thus, an important procedure of involving community-based organisations and citizen groups, has been by-passed.
Further, the city-level assessment prepared by CRIS has skipped various aspects prescribed in the toolkit’s revised version of April 2013. For instance, the toolkit expects to assess demography on the basis of several parameters including trend in population growth, population distribution at zone/ward level, population composition by language etc, age-sex distribution (to assess proportion of economically productive population), and migration. However, the CRIS assessment presents population figures as quoted in Census-2011 and makes general statements viz. declining growth rate since 1971, five per cent of the State’s urban population is living in Nagpur city, in-migration has decreased since 2001 etc. It further includes population forecast of the city.
Thus, the demography assessment itself lacks zone/ward level population distribution, population composition by language etc, age-sex distribution, and details of migration. The CDP-II, if based on such an inadequate data, is not likely to yield desired results for city’s holistic development.
The guidelines also provide for assessment of social and cultural environment on following parameters -- health, education, recreation, social environment, cultural environment. The parameter of health alone encompasses various aspects viz. analysis of healthcare facilities in the city, assessment of key health indicators like disease prevalence, infrastructure for public health management, break-up of public and private facilities, etc. The parameter of recreation implies assessment of options available for recreation and entertainment for different income levels, those with public access and those with paid access, maintenance issues, places of interest for visitors/tourists, implications on urban infrastructure and services etc. CRIS has given a complete go-by to assessment of social and cultural environment in its presentation.
According to sources in the know of things, even the Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) administration never studied the toolkit minutely to notice this aspect. As a result, the basic data on aspects covered under social and cultural environment is not available with NMC. CRIS also did not take a keen interest in collecting the relevant data from multiple agencies and collating the same, to form a solid basis for incorporation of this vital element in revised CDP.
CRIS presentation includes a page on ‘Economic Development’ under which three sub-heads are given -- key economic drivers, industrial development, key issues. The information under all three heads is a vague summary. “Export of oranges one major economic activity, Nagpur is growth centre for Vidarbha region, (it is) transit hub for surrounding states, rich natural resources in the region, presence of State and Central organisations, various manufacturing industries around Nagpur,” these are statements under the sub-head ‘key economic drivers’. Under the sub-head of industrial development, general information about number of operational units in Butibori and Hingna MIDC areas as well as MIHAN project.
Compare this with the parameters prescribed in JNNURM toolkit. Under the title ‘Economic Base’ (not, Economic Development as mentioned in CRIS presentation), there are three broad parameters -- economic structure, sectoral analysis (including informal sectors), and land (land use, public and private ownership, land market). The parameter of economic structure implies data/analysis of type of economic activities that determine the economic base of the city; primary, secondary, and tertiary occupation pattern characterising the economic structure of the city; and proportionate distribution of working population.
The component of sectoral analysis comprises three categories -- primary, secondary, and tertiary. The primary sector includes urban agriculture, dairying, mining and quarrying; secondary includes construction and manufacturing, tertiary sector includes transport, trade, commerce and other services. The sectoral analysis also covers informal activities like weekly markets, street vendors, household industries, traditional arts and crafts, building crafts, and other heritage-related income. “Therefore, it is important to assess the potential for informal sector as well,” states the toolkit document. Sadly, as stated above, the entire exercise of preparing the CDP-II appears to be a casual one.
NMC has been soliciting the people’s participation in so-called campaign to clean Nag river (which turned out to be mere lip-service and PR-driven exercise of vested interests), vector-borne disease awareness etc. But, when it comes to revising CDP, it appears to be purposefully keeping the people of Nagpur out of the loop. Else, how can one explain that even NMC’s own website does not have data/information on a variety of components prescribed in JNNURM toolkit on CDP? When it is not even equipped with solid data that will serve as a firm basis for conducting the exercise of revising the City Development Plan, can one really trust NMC authorities when they say that they want to make Nagpur a ‘lovable’ and ‘liveable’ city?
Think.

(Tomorrow, arbitrary selection of plan sectors)

Key features of a CDP

* Presents current stage of city’s development -- where are we now?

* Projects aspirations of the city -- what/where do we want to be?

* Attempts a resource-based planning -- is city planning incusive of all resources; social, economic, natural, and cultural?

* Sets goals for different sectors -- inter-sectoral and intra-sectoral -- what specific goals should be targeted?

* Suggests alternative routes, strategies -- what are the practical and implementable approaches to achieve the goals?

* Identifies specific interventions and their resource requirements -- what are the specific projects and initiatives to be undertaken, and what will be the investment needs?

* Adopts a transparent and consistent framework and prioritises these interventions -- collectively what do we agree are the priorities?

* Identifies a financial plan that can be operationalised at the institutional level and then as an aggregate at the city level -- how do we balance the resource availability (social, economic, cultural and natural) with the requirements of the plan for the medium term? Can the internal resources finance priority investments? Are there other options for leveraging finances?

* Identifies the actions for developing institutional synergy, drawing on resources from private sector and the civil society, and build the organisational capacity to meet the challenges of implementing these plans -- what are the resources we need to put together to be able to implement these plans?

* Ensures that focussed strategies and plans are evolved to address issues of urban poverty -- how do we ensure that the goals, strategies and plans promote inclusive growth, and provide the environment to alleviate poverty?

* Evolves through a process of participatory planning with involvement of all stakeholders -- how do we ensure that the CDP has collective ownership and reflects the voice of all sections of society.

(Source: Revised Toolkit for Preparation of City Development Plan, Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission, April 2013. The toolkit document is available on http://jnnurm.nic.in/toolkits-report-primers.html) 

Published in The Hitavada CityLine on February 28, 2014