Scaling up Citizen Engagement for Inclusive Urban Governance

Improving urban governance is urgent for India. A rapid urbanisation has necessitated the Union and State Governments to increase public investments in the cities. The industries have been called upon to accelerate their investments for bridging the infrastructure gaps in Indian cities. Following the legacies set by the Jawaharlal Nehru Urban Renewal Mission (JnNURM), in the past few years a host of new national flagship missions and programmes have been established to accelerate urban development.
 
Despite many of these programmes mandate ‘putting citizen at the centre’, citizen engagement in city’s policy development and decision making remains absent. The euphoria created through Swachh Bharat Mission and Smart Cities Mission to involve people in visioning, planning, implementing and monitoring these programmes prematurely died down, primarily because cities could not create a viable ‘civic infrastructure’ that fosters robust citizen engagement in a continuous and sustainable manner. The provision of Ward Committees and Area Sabhas have largely been ignored. In the absence of any universalised institutional space, citizen engagement in planning (spatial as well as programmatic), implementation and monitoring of development programmes as well as in city governance (other than voting to elect Mayors and councillors) is largely missing in Indian cities. The capacities of ULBs to meaningfully engage with citizens, particularly the cities’ informals, is abysmally low. This has been discernible at the time of COVID-19 pandemic. A handful civil society groups in mega and metro cities have created some spaces for engagement with limited, outreach, sustainability and success.
 
As Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA) completed 40 years, a Samvad – Conversation on “Scaling-up Citizen Engagement for Inclusive Urban Governance” was held on 20th October 2021. This Conversation was organised in partnership with Janaagrha and Bridgespan India to seek answers to the following key questions:
 

• What innovations have been fostered to promote citizen engagement in urban governance and how these innovations can be institutionalised and scaled up?
• What form(s) of collaborative learning will help achieve increased capacities of civil society to scale up citizen engagement?

Click here for the webinar recording