CITYZEN. India’s urban policy’s ‘globalisation’ dilemma

When those making India’s urban policy look to dealing with the global there is an overwhelming tendency to believe that globalisation has the same influence on all cities. Their response to globalisation is then to build infrastructure similar to what exists in global cities.

In addition to the rush to build world class airports there is a focus on massive expressways not just between cities but also within them. These projects are ostensibly to reduce the time of travel but it is hardly unusual in cities like Bengaluru for the time taken to reach the new airport to exceed the flight time. It would seem that infrastructure is being created for its own sake. This belief in the infrastructure route to globalisation is so strong that governments, both at the Centre and the States, rarely stop to think about the cost. This high-cost, high-end strategy completely ignores the changing perceptions of globalisation. The initial euphoria around the process may have led to the idea of a global village, a world in which everyone lived in the same urban condition. Over time, though, there has been a greater awareness that while the communications revolution may have generated the technology that could connect any part of the world with another, such connections are not always established. The connectivity that brings a Hindi movie viewing audience in London closer to the makers of the movie in Mumbai does not result in a similar connection for Swahili movies. In reality globalisation is more about specific circuits that are enabled by technology but are realised for economic, social, political and other purposes.

Differing impact

The impact of globalisation on a city then depends on which end of a particular global circuit it finds itself in. The city that commands and controls a circuit faces very different conditions than the city that provides the resources to make the global connection economically desirable. Global garment brands are typically seeking to profit through their command and control of the circuit catering to fashions in cities of the Western world. At the other end of the same circuit, manufacturers of garments for exports located in cities in the emerging economies or less developed economies are primarily concerned with mobilising lower cost labour around them to meet the requirements defined by the global garment brands. In information technology circuits too the command and control centres decide the products and services to be produced while the resource centres provide the resources to do so.

The impact of these circuits on Indian firms differ in one very important way from their influence on Indian cities. Firms may begin at the resource end of the circuit but there is always the possibility that they can become the command and control centres of some niche product or service. If this requires moving its activities closer to where other command and control centres are located, say, in the West, the Indian firms can do so. This geographical mobility is obviously not available to cities. Cities have to cater to the interests of those who are located in them.

The urban interests of cities that consist primarily of the command and control centres of globalisation are quite different from the urban interests of cities that mainly house the resource centres of global circuits. Apart from a variety of other differences there is a fundamental economic difference. Cities that are home to the command and control centres of globalisation have to be attractive for those who populate these centres, including catering to some of the most expensive tastes in the world. Cities that house the resource centres, in contrast, have to ensure these centres remain viable. They would have to provide the labour, and other resources, to the global circuits at a cost that is less than what can be provided by competing resources centres in other cities of the world. In other words, cities that cater to command and control centres can celebrate their expensiveness, while those that provide the resources have to advertise their cost effectiveness.

Cost insensitivity

This is a distinction that those making policies for India’s cities do not always recognise. There is a general insensitivity to the cost effectiveness of specific initiatives. In fact, the significance of a specific urban project is often projected in terms of its cost; the higher the cost the more important the project. The narrative about an expressway is usually about its length and its cost. There is little, if any, attempt to accurately estimate the economic benefit the project will generate in a way that can be compared to its cost.

The insensitivity to cost by urban policy makers in India stands in stark contrast to the command and control centres continuously searching for cheaper options. And as cheaper options emerge elsewhere, Indian cities could find their economic engines losing fuel.

The writer is Professor at National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru

COMMENT NOW