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Published: May 20, 2020 8:33:25 pm

Written by Bhanu Joshi and Shamindra Nath Roy

An urban-centred pandemic, stranded migrants, a stalled economy across cities have laid bare the perils of Indias urban transformation. An event like this forces us to ask: What happens to a society, its networks and power, when a transformation refuses to acknowledge politics and participation?

Famines, plagues and displacement have ravaged Indian cities in the past. Yet, what makes the current moment unique is that it forces us to confront how in the face of informality and demands for social protection in the urban as a distinct category is posing serious questions for the state and society.

These questions manifest in three ways. First, our politics refuses to recognise the urban. India is the only country in the world with an intersection of discrete criteria population density, economic and/or administrative to declare an urban area fit for a municipal government. Research suggests that this arbitrary threshold creates perverse incentives for development trajectories leading to unacknowledged urbanisation and prejudiced funding for cities. For example, in 2001-11, more than one-third of the urban population growth happened in census towns, which are urban settlements in all characteristics but are governed by panchayats. Tamil Nadu, the most urbanised state, for instance, reclassified 566 town panchayats as village panchayats so that it could receive more funding from the Union and state governments. This fluidity of Indias urban transformation highlights the need for imaginative thinking which moves beyond bureaucratic processes.

Second, this unimaginative thinking is an outcome of a non-politicised urban sphere. Beginning the 1990s, power was decentralised for both urban and rural governments. Today, panchayats not only do stuff but also have a significant political and financial domain. An excellent reflection is how competitive panchayat elections have become. One of the present authors work provides evidence to higher competitiveness of panchayat elections over city elections as measured by narrow margins of victory, the parties mobilisation efforts, campaign expenditures and turnouts. To compound the problem, even after the last delimitation process of 2008, urban areas did not have enough representation in the vidhan sabhas and the Lok Sabha. For instance, in the case of Maharashtra, where the level of official urbanisation is 45.2 per cent, the share of urban constituencies in the state assembly is only 35 per cent.

Third, at its core, a good city is a coordinated city. From everyday activities of designing an efficient public transport or garbage collection roster, to complicated matters like dealing with a pandemic or coordinating migrant relief requires coordination across line departments. COVID hotspot districts consisted of 87 per cent of the countrys urban population (as per the list released by May 1), with many of the cities accounting high mortality. Yet, from quarantine facilities to stranded migrant relief, most city governments have shown little capacity to articulate a coordinated vision on the pandemic.

The three challenges to the state are complemented by a transformation of society in urban India. Indian cities are a hodgepodge of rich and poor neighbourhoods located next to each other. This spatial fluidity reflects in the economic activity, its scale and co-location of formal and informal activities. In Mumbai, for instance, the share of the workforce engaged in regular salaried activities in slum areas is 61 per cent, which is not too dissimilar than non-slum areas (68 per cent according to the NSSO, 2018). However, about 40 per cent of the salaried employment in slums is personal and domestic care work or elementary occupations, which are structurally different from non-slum areas. What this means is that both the rich and poor though engaged in different occupations, live in various types of city neighbourhoods but have deep interlinks that run through the city. Cities controlled by bureaucratic minds often overlook these interlinkages, where the prosperity of the upmarket, planned areas is mistaken for the broader wellbeing of the whole city.

These interlinkages are missed because there is a gap between the form and the practice of democracy citizens do elect their representatives but cannot be part of the effective citizenship, creating what is often referred to as a principal-agent problem. Preferences of the principal (citizens) are aggregated by the agents (councillors), who have no power since the true agent in a city is a bureaucrat or the state government. Political parties, local councillors, party workers, middlemen all operate in a world which aggregates voter preferences and set the agenda.

If a pipeline is to be laid in a neighbourhood, a political actor has the incentive to coordinate across line departments and intervenes when mundane but necessary negotiations between rich and poor interests clash. In contrast, the city bureaucrat has no capacity and little incentive to do that. The functional domain of the local political representative is limited in terms of service delivery, even when his ability and incentive to work around various line-departments is high. This results in the disruption of the crucial formal-informal linkage that drives the Indian city and veils the productive nature of the informal.

These limitations create weak forms of participation where the rich and the aspiring middle classes secede from the public sphere and see the poor and their demands as a nuisance. For the poor, these limitations create a situation of permanent disarray. The poor, who cannot afford to provide all of these public goods privately, must raise grievances with the state for basic civic service but in doing so reproduce dependency and vulnerability, and an absence of trust that drives the solid foundation for a city.

Fundamentally, therefore, by not allowing politics to operate in Indian cities, a major transformative challenge is being reduced to technocratic solutions. The challenge, therefore, demands an imaginative architecture which genuinely envisions citizenship-based governance and this pandemic provides that opportunity.

Democracy is messy but is the only way to answer demands that this transition will put on the state and society. Urban India, like anywhere else, needs more, not less of it.

(Joshi is a PhD candidate in Politics at Brown University and Roy is a researcher at the Centre for Policy Research)

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Dealing with Covid-19 requires more democracy, less bureaucracy - The Indian Express

ASEAN Beat|Politics|Southeast Asia

The countrys political upheaval reinforces the continued importance of paying attention to structural dynamics and the more contingent and contested nature of outcomes in domestic politics.

This week, Malaysias troubled transition was on full display again with an unprecedented one-day parliamentary session that put off a no-confidence vote and left the countrys politics in flux.

While these developments are notable for their own sake, it is also worth reflecting on a broader question that has lingered in recent months amid all this: what Malaysias troubled transition says and does not say about the state of democracy in the region.

As I have observed before, though Southeast Asia is often subject to country- or event-focused accounts about whether democracy is rising or declining, the region has in fact long been home to a hybrid of regime types and varying societal pressures beyond the state, which makes it even more difficult to extrapolate from perceived litmus tests. A case in point is Myanmars opening in 2011 and the victory of Aung San Suu Kyi in 2015 elections, which was initially met with international euphoria, but quickly gave way to disappointment as governance challenges were exposed beyond that litmus test and below the state level. Meanwhile, beyond that single case, democracy in the region has seen a much more mixed and murkier outlook than the dramatic rise and falls often portrayed with the initial progress seen in Myanmars transition existing alongside other stories such as the suppression of the Cambodian opposition, worries about democratic rollback and decline in the Philippines, Thailand, and even Indonesia, and the endurance of one-party communist governments in mainland Southeast Asia.

Perceptions with respect to Malaysias experience with democracy also reinforce this point. Viewed more superficially, over the past few decades, the country has been through a series of dramatic pendulum swings from dashed hopes of reform during the Reformasi period to kleptocracy under the government of Najib Razak; and, more recently, from the shock election victory Pakatan Harapan (PH) recorded in the May 2018 elections to the dramatic collapse of the coalition and hope for a New Malaysia this February. But that superficial treatment belies a more complex reality: that enduring structural challenges to democratization that scholars have long pointed to such as the personalization of politics and politicization of institutions have remained and that small margins or sudden developments be it Mahathir Mohamads surprise return to politics or the narrow, contested majority the current Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin was able to secure can quickly reverse perceived gains or losses.

Seen from this perspective, Malaysias troubled transition represents just the latest case in point where these broader realities are once again manifesting. Analogous to the case of Myanmar, expectations that a single election could help power reform and democratization have unsurprisingly proven to be unrealistic. Variables such as the personalization of politics and the dominance of UMNO have been at play in several senses, be it in the continued rivalry between Mahathir and Anwar, which had complicated any handover of power following PHs victory, or the demonstration of UMNOs staying power in fluid party politics through a mix of realignment, factionalization and absorption. And, once again, contrary to notions of a dramatic swing or clear trend, prospects for democratization or even reform now hang by a thread, with the Perikatan Nasional commanding a razor-thin and contested majority, which could easily be reversed once again in the coming months.

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While the story of Malaysias troubled transition is still playing out, what, then, does this say (and, equally if not more importantly, not say) about democracy and Southeast Asia? For one, Malaysias experience should reinforce caution about too hastily attributing a change in one country to a diverse region as a whole, particularly given how fragile gains can be and how quickly they can be reversed. For another, the continued influence of structural dynamics should serve as an important reminder that they will continue to be powerful shapers of politics, even though agency whether in the form of the influence of individual leaders or the actions they take or do not take also obviously matters greatly. And the narrow margins also point to the importance of paying attention to the intricacies of domestic politics down to the role of individual members of parliament or the powers of the monarchy.

The lessons Malaysias troubled transition offers may not seem that grand or groundbreaking. But sticking to the basics including recognizing the enduring realities and narrow margins at play and paying close attention to short and long-term state-society dynamics as well as unexpected developments that could be just around the corner and reverse previously perceived linear trajectories may also be exactly the right lessons to learn from one of the more remarkable recent cases in the evolution of regime dynamics in Southeast Asia.

Link:
What Does Malaysia's Troubled Transition Mean for Democracy in Southeast Asia? - The Diplomat

Neoliberal, authoritarian and fundamentalist politics haveall been consolidated in response to the pandemic to further attack the rights of womxn, migrants, informal workers, people of colour, indigenous communities, trans and gender non-conforming persons, among many others. Yet at the same time, we are witnessing widespread and deep community organizing and solidarity initiatives flourishing, led by womxn. When the system fails, people show up.

This webinar will explore feminist analyses of the crisis and the way the pandemic intersects with patriarchy, corporate power and a global division of labour that is both gendered and racialised. It will askhow the rise and collision of fascisms, fundamentalisms and capitalism has limited and predetermined our understanding and practices of democracy and governance. And whether it could also provide a window of opportunity to re-organize and shift power on an unprecedented scale. Whatcan we learn from the feminist practices and measures that are already being deployed to build radical democratic systems that genuinely care for the environment and our collective well-being?

Register to receive more details.

4pm CET, 27 May 2020

(French and Spanish interpretation will be available)

Panellists

This webinar is co-organised by Transnational Institute and AWID, and co-sponsored by Focus on the Global South, AIDC and DAWN.

More here:
Feminist Realities: Transforming Democracy in Times of Crisis - Transnational Institute

Dear Editor,

In a letter published in both SN and KN on May 20, 2020, authored by David Hinds, he accused the western powers to have openly chosen a side in the current standoff- they have taken the PPPs side. He graciously cites me as an authority for his supposition.Speaking on a Globespan24/7programme, on Monday, May 18, Anil Nandlall boasted that the PPP has all the Diplomatic Community, including CARICOM, on its side,he, poignantly, wrote.

While I am humbled by the reference, I am impelled to posit that Mr. Hinds yanked that singular assertion of mine from a one-hour live-streamed discourse, without any reference, whatsoever, to the conversational context in which it was proffered, but situates it, conveniently, in support of a hypothesis which he narrates. In the result, he attributes to my statement, a purport which I never intended.

In that discussion, immediately prior to the statement to which Hinds made reference, I said words to the effect:this is not a fight of the PPP or a fight for the PPP. This is a fight for democracy, a fight for righteousness, a fight for the rule of law, a fight for the future of Guyana. In this fight, all of the Opposition parties, every major local organization, including, the private sector, the religious organizations, the labour movement, the diplomatic community and the governments that they represent, CARICOM, the Commonwealth and the OAS, are all on the same side.

So Mr. Hinds, when I said subsequently on the programme that.they are all on the side with (not on) the PPP, it is the aforesaid to which I was referring.

In the circumstances, to hijack that lone contention of mine from the conversational cradle in which it was birthed to aid your postulation that the western powers are in collusion with the PPP, is as misconceived as the postulation itself.

Mr Hinds, at the risk of being presumptuous, perhaps a more beneficial use of your academic energy would be to analytically examine how and why, in the current electoral impasse, all of the local and international forces engaged, including, the political parties, are currently aligned one one side and only the APNU+AFC , in solitude, is on the other side.

Yours faithfully,

Mohabir Anil Nandlall

Attorney-at- law

See the article here:
A fight for democracy and the rule of law - Stabroek News

Justice Abdul Quddhose of the Madras High Court on Thursday expressed concern over the decay in every sphere of democracy, including the media, for quite a number of years and impressed upon the need for media houses to introspect. After quashing many criminal defamation cases lodged by the State government against media houses, the judge said he, as an ordinary citizen of the country, would like to remind the media of the great role it had to play in nation-building by acting as a watchdog.

Our national motto is Satyameva Jayate which means truth alone triumphs. We respect the national anthem, flag and emblem but we sometimes forget to respect the motto which is equally important for the survival of our democracy.

He added, I am confident all media houses will take this humble request from an ordinary citizen in the right spirit and carry it forward in the best interest of this great nation.

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Every sphere of democracy, including media, is decaying, says HC judge - The Hindu