COMMENTARY Economic & Political Weekly EPW AUGUST 6, 2016 vol lI no 32 21 Urban Governance and Right to the City Anil Kumar Vaddiraju The right to the city means more than just access to its resources. It suggests that people, particularly the marginalised, not only have the right to inhabit a city, but also the right to design, reshape and transform it. An analysis of urban governance in our country keeping in mind this overlooked human right. Every city is a city of the rich and city of the poor. —Plato U rban governance is a relatively neglected area in governance studies in India. From the point of view of citizenship and rights, it is even less studied. In the following arti- cle, we discuss the urban governance is- sues from the point of view of the con- cept of the right to the city. In the Indian context, there is some urgency to emp- hasise this concept, as in many states of the country, the constitutional provi- sions in regard to urban governance have been inadequately implemented. The right to the city means provision of basic shelter, drinking water, sanitation, and myriad other basic urban facilities, in addition to the larger need to trans- form the city into a citizen-friendly space. In urban studies, governance has received the least importance, and the existing discussion is limited to govern- ance in metropolitan cities. But there is need to apply the “right to the city” con- cept to cities at all levels. This article attempts to elucidate this concept and highlight its significance in context of India’s bustling and burgeoning cities. According to the 2011 Census, there are 377 million urban people in India, who account for 31.6% of the country’s total population (Shaw 2012). India’s 8,000 cities together contributed 62%–63% of the gross domestic product (GDP) in 2007, and this is expected to go up to 75% by 2021 (Zerah et al 2011). In 2011, the number of cities with a population of one million or more was 53, and people living in them accounted for 43% of the total urban pop- ulation of India. With more and more people migrating to urban areas, questions are being raised regarding the position of the marginalised and their right to the city. Urbanisation in the country so far has largely been “exclusionary” (Kundu 2003, 2011), where poor migrants from the rural areas are less welcome, where cit- ies have been captured by the local elite, and urban development is skewed to- wards big cities and mega urban ag- glomerations. Another important aspect of this urbanisation has been the poor implementation of urban decentralisa- tion laws. Cities are crowded with mig- rants, resulting in informal economies, crime, and congestion, causing cities to become dysfunctional. The elite capture results in the “gentri- fication of cities,” and urban governance and policies reflect only the concerns of the gentrified part of the city (Shaw 2012). When urbanisation is skewed towards big cities, the small cities and towns suffer serious neglect. The urbani- sation process in India is largely governed by the 74th Constitutional Amendment Act, enacted in 1993. However, most studies on urban governance have indi- cated that the act is largely ignored in practice. This is due to the reluctance of state governments to implement the law, and as a consequence, urban planning, participation, and urban citizenship have been adversely affected. The non-implementation of 74th Con- stitutional Amendment Act is particularly glaring in small districts and lower tier cities, where planning and governance is largely bureaucratic and oriented towards the “commissioner system” (Vaddiraju 2013; Zerah et al 2011). Elected repre- sentatives are largely dominated by the bureaucracy. In larger cities, the problem is that of coordination between multiple governance bodies and absence of a metropolitan planning committee ( MPC) in addition to the inadequate implemen- tation of community participation law ( CPL ). In both cases, the practice of ur- ban citizenship is largely nominal and limited to voting and at best to juridical litigation. Participation of citizens, par- ticularly in local and urban governance is minimal. A Moral Right In the above context, a discussion on the concept of “right to the city” makes eminent sense. The concept was for- warded by the French social scientist Henri Lefebvre in his book Right to the City, written in 1968. The concept Anil Kumar Vaddiraju (anilvaddiraju@ gmail.com) is with the Centre for Political Institutions, Governance and Development, Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bengaluru.