Kirtee Shah
ASAG / HIC / INHAF, Ahmedabad
Moving the Habitat Process Forward
A brief submission to ACHR
In the context of the special situation in
Asia, especially south Asia --- size of population, massive poverty,
colonial past, rural base, etc --- and its inherent potential
ingenious and hard working people, vast domestic market, cultural
heritage-- the region needs to search for new approaches and
solutions, if it wants to avoid nightmarish cities, degraded and impoverished
villages and perpetually at war-- with nature, with environment,
communities and people. What has been tried elsewhere, especially in
the west, is unlikely to work here. The context is so vastly
different.
Mine is a five point remedy.
1. Questioning inevitability of
urbanization
Questioning inevitability of
urbanization---especially inevitability of resource depleting,
polluting, exploitative, dehumanizing and unsustainable urbanization--
is the first part of the remedy. It is essential to recognize that the
urbanization we experience and the cities we live in are product of
the economic policies we pursue and the development model they
promote. It is result of conscious choices we have made, not divinely
ordained. If the policies and the model change, the urbanization
trends and cities will also change. There is nothing inevitable about
it.
2. Reassessing growth and rethinking
development
Cities, we are told, are engines of economic
growth. We have now learnt that they not only produce growth, they are
also produced by growth. The quality of growth (not only
quantity), the means by which we achieve growth (whether in
ecological harmony or in a polluting manner), the nature of
growth (whether exploitative or just, whether creative or
destructive), the texture of growth (whether equitious or
imbalanced) and substance of growth (whether leading to
contentment, durable happiness and peace or greed, strife and
violence) will determine, to a great extent, the nature and quality of
our cities.
It needs recognizing - earlier the better -
that the economic growth by itself is not development, nor are higher
standards of living as measured by material goods. Catching up with
the West, and therefore the Westernization of Asia, is also not
development. The new paradigm must be based on a more moderate demands
on the earth's resources and their more equitable distribution. Moving
to a simpler lifestyle; evolving development strategies and processes
that express local conditions, aspirations and control over resources;
according women their rightful place in society; weighing religious
and spiritual factors when formulating the new paradigm and changing
the existing institutional structure are some of the key
recommendations.
3. Revitalizing Rural Sector.
Recent discovery that the world is majority
urban, perceptions on urban productivity (no matter ecological and
human cost), economy of scale based industrialization, export lead
growth, technology driven globalization, relative backwardness of
agriculture, and burden of mass poverty all these working in tandem,
result in neglect and backwardness of rural sector where majority of
Asia's people still live. Even in India, with a billion people, 74
percent of them in half a million villages, of which Mahatma Gandhi
said, "my India lives in its villages"; the rural neglect
and urban bias are almost co-terminus. The inherent advantage of rural
living in the sustainability context-- lower energy consumption, lower
waste production, lower pollution, small size, cyclic metabolism and
harmonious co-existence with the nature --combined with urban
environmental backlash, should lead to reassessment of our priorities.
Viable and sustainable rural development strategies, therefore, should
form an integral part of fashioning a new urban future. Improving
agricultural productivity (without sacrificing its `innocence' and
`nature' base), agro based industrialization, investment in human
resource development, introduction of new technologies, support to
rural craft and small-scale manufacturing, poverty alleviation, and
capacitating local governments are some of the possible routes.
Gandhi's concept of Gram Swaraj, the village republic, assumes a new
meaning in this context.
4. Restructuring Institutions
Restructuring and repositioning the existing
institutions, at the regional, national and local level, is a
precondition to ordering healthy, livable and sustainable habitats. As
they are and the way they function these institutions simply cannot
usher in a new dawn. Their resistance to change is formidable. It must
be overcome, they must change. Democratization, decentralization,
devolution, empowerment to people and sustainability are the basic
principles and efficiency, transparency, accountability and
performance are operational norms to guide this institutional change
process.
Creating new institutions, especially
pro-poor institutions, is equally important. Grameen Bank of
Bangladesh, UCDO of Thailand, SEWA of India are highly promising
examples. They are well known and have shown their viability on a
larger scale. A large number of innovative but mostly unknown
experiments with great potential for scaling up, show that search for
new institutions is not a day-- dream. It is eminently realizable.
5. Putting poverty alleviation high on
development agenda
If Asia fails to deal with poverty in a
reasonable time span, its future is bleak. A combination of approaches
for poverty alleviation / reduction-- the indirect route approach that
emphasizes the trickle down effect of rapid economic growth and the
direct route approach which emphasizes a specific target group focused
strategy of investment, assets and employment creation and provision
of infrastructural and social services--- must be tried out
imaginatively.
This is not and can t be an NGO agenda alone.
To be effective its ownership must be global and local, by the
governments and the people alike.
