Sweat, Drown, Parch: Why India’s megacities can’t handle extreme weather? | ft. Jaya Dhindaw

[Podcast intro]

Welcome to the season four of the India Energy Hour podcast. This podcast explores the most pressing hurdles and promising opportunities of India’s energy transition through an in depth discussion on policies, financial markets, social movements and science. Your host for this episode is Shreya Jai, Delhi based energy and climate journalist. The show is produced by 101 reporters, a pan India network of grassroots reporters that produces original stories from rural India. Every year between May to September, the same images make the rounds. The national capital first sweats and then drowns with even a few millimeters of rain. The city that never sleeps braces water logging every year. Without fail, the silicon valley of India, while facing traffic snarls. The whole year dreads the monsoon months, which make it worse. Why is it that Indias megacities crumble under the slightest variation in weather? Why are our national financial capitals and metro cities not built to adapt to extreme weather conditions? Is the weather extreme or the planning poor? As climate change related impacts intensify, cities have to prepare a long term plan to adapt to changing climatic conditions. To discuss the same, we talked with Jaya Dhindaw, executive program director, Sustainable Cities and director, India Ross Centre. Jaya is an urban development professional and researcher with over two decades of global experience in sustainable development, urban resilience and natural resource management. Jaya has in the past worked for the Centre for Infrastructure, Sustainable Transport and Urban planning at the Indian Institute of Science. She has also worked with the city of Charlotte for over eight years, first with the transit system and then with the planning department.

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[Podcast interview]

Shreya Jai: Hello and welcome to the indian RGR. thank you so much, Jaya, for joining us here today. we are absolutely delighted to have you with us. you are in a very sweet spot of urban planning, climate change, and you deal with a lot of issues that are coming to fore now. You have been into this area for decades, if I can say so. This has been your area of research, area of interest, and I will not mince my words when I say that some of your work, actually, most of your work, inspires me to write so much about urban planning, which is missing in the public dialogue. So thank you again, and we are honored to have you at our podcast.

Jaya Dhindaw: thank you so much, shreya, for inviting me and for those kind words. I’m not sure if I’m in a sweet spot or a bittersweet spot in this whole space of urban planning and climate change, but, I think that’s the challenge and that’s what we’re up to here. Yes, thank you so much.

Shreya Jai: Yes, I think that’s the word. Bittersweet before we delve into this topic, which is I’m sure going on in the minds of everyone in this country, especially those living in the metro cities, when it’s hot, it’s so hot. When it rains we drown,but before we get into that Jaya, I want our listeners to know a little bit about you. Only you can do justice to that. You have decades of experience. You have worked with various organizations, you have worked across cities, across the globe. Can you tell us about your journey? Where are you from? What did you study? How did you enter this sector and then what led you specifically towards sustainability?

Jaya Dhindaw: Yes, absolutely Shreya. So yes, across cities, across the globe, many experiences spanning many places. But just to start with and because you asked, I grew up in a small town called Kharagpur in West Bengal, where my parents were academics. So I often traveled and lived in different places across the world as a school kid because my dad would often take assignments to work in foreign, you know, universities all over the place. So despite of hailing from a small quaint yet cosmopolitan campus down, these sort of interesting and rich life experiences from all over the world shaped me as a person and the career choices I made. So when I was in high school and you know, experiencing all the big cities and the, you know, different kinds of cities in the world, buildings and especially skyscrapers fascinated me. So I studied architecture in my undergraduate and really enjoyed the subject of urban design and what was called town and country planning back in the day the most. Because to me life in the public commons seemed to be more or equally important to that in the public realm because I noticed that design of spaces and the outside physical world, the places people come from had a lot to do with how they behaved, their lived experiences, outcomes and so on. And so I pursued graduate studies and city planning with a focus on urban design which opened up a whole new world and perspective. So during that time I interned with the regional Remote Sensing center which was on campus working with geospatial and satellite data to solve problems with sort of larger regional contexts like food systems. And this data at the time was not very easily accessible. It was actually pretty well guarded, it was confidential and all of that. And around the same time I also read Rachel Carson’s book, called the Silent Spring. And so as the resource implications of development became clear, I went on to focus my m, further studies on environmental policy and planning in the US. during my studies there, I interned with a metropolitan agency, working on economic development and environmental preservation along the Ohio river, which was interfacing with a tri state regional council of government. So the river flowed through, like, six states. There was an entity formed to kind of manage, the areas along the river, and it focused on improving sort of regional mobility for job creation and growth as well. And so the importance of the regional context in terms of resource planning management became very apparent to me at that point. after that, my first, job out of graduate school was with a consulting firm developing local area plans and urban design guidelines, actually for streets and public spaces in deeply racially segregated neighborhoods. So the learning I took away from that very intense experience was that the design of physical environments and policies can increase or reduce inequities, and that it is always a conscious, deliberate choice. It’s a policy choice. And I realized that, you know, the change really needs to come from within, and not just from within human sort of consciousness, but also from within systems. And so when the opportunity arose, I went to work for the government, the transit agency in Charlotte, North Carolina. While working on studying various mass transit systems in the country, I realized that if the ultimate goal is to get people out of their cars, it’s crucial for the system itself to be worth the experience. And so in addition to sort of seamless access, it should also provide a sense of ease and delight. So, in addition to kind of the technical work around sort of environmental impact assessments, transit oriented development, enabling public private partnerships for land development around transit, the stuff that I was involved in, I went back to my design routes and worked on art and design enablers to improve transit station and transit corridor experiences. Now, after the first transit line became functional in the city, I then went on to work for the planning department, in the city for several years on many, many interesting initiatives. Charlotte, then, back in the day, was in the throes of private sector, enabled growth. And this was also a time when the private sector realized that in order to attract and retain talent in the city and make it competitive, you had to create not just jobs, but physical and social development and infrastructure in a way that a banker from New York would find attractive and would want to relocate. So I worked on strategic plans, capital improvement plans, land development frameworks, economic development plans, and looking at zoning regulations and modernizing them. And just for context, Charit was a city of over eight lakh people, and the department of Planning had about 60 planners. So that was the population to planner, ratio. And I must say that working there was one of the most fulfilling professional experiences with, an exponential learning curve. But it was wonderful. after over a decade in the US, I returned to India, started working with the center of Infrastructure Transportation urban planning at, the Indian Institute of Science. Again, wanting to work as closely as I could with government. and at CIS Tup, I led the urban Planning and infrastructure development team, leveraging my past experience working primarily with the Department of Urban Land Transport in Bangalore on modernizing sort of development codes, formulating sustainability indices, transit oriented development policies, own plan formulations. Then the work did not move very much while I was there, but then later on, it fructified in various forms and policies that are now factor in the city. Now, after testing what is in Bangalore, I was also looking for avenues to see how good policy imperatives could be scaled and how cross sectoral and multiscaler capacities can be built across cities in India. So, especially with the shockingly low planning professional to population ratios that exist here. And that’s when I moved to head the urban development and eventually the city’s work at Wri India. this was also when urbanization imperatives, which were already really wicked and complex problems, were confronted with the climate crisis. And we had to find a way to address that. So it was an opportunity to create transformative change and leverage the ripple effect, to kind of transition cities to become low carbon, equitable and resilient. So basically, that good growth is possible and we just need to find the right levers. And so now, solving for systems, change that tackle these complex problems and deliver positive outcomes for people, nature and planet is what I do. And, where I am in my journey today.

Shreya Jai: What a fantastic journey it is. Jaya. And, this is what I meant when I said that your work is an inspiration. And also now you have given me so many threads to talk about. I just quickly wanted to talk about this transit oriented development. You have worked in the city of Charlotte, you came back to India. India has tried to develop this. Delhi is one example. I leave it to you, whether it is a fine example or not, where public transport system was supposed to herald a new era of change in the country, how people go from point a to point b and reduce the load of cars on the. In the national capital. But it seems to have not happened. comparing with your experience to what you did in Charlotte, what is happening in India, where is the gap? Why do such models seem not to work here in India?

Jaya Dhindaw: So, you know, I don’t think it’s about the model not working. So first, basically the national DoD policy came up. I think around the 20 1615 timeframe. And then subsequently the Delhi DoD policy also came about. interestingly, I was at wri then, and we were involved in some way in supporting the creation and the sort of manifestation of both of these policies. I think what really happened, in India and, this is that whole gap between intentions and how things play out on the ground. Oftentimes, I think the intention was to create compact cities, walkable cities and cities which kind of can enable sort of natural resource protection in a way that you don’t spend a sprawl, you don’t make the same mistakes that the west had made in sprawling out. And the difference being that in terms of the size us is multiple, many times the size of India, India is very land constrained. And so the goal there was basically, how can you make land efficient? How can you do that so that you’re also able to preserve natural resources. A lot of those assets, they exist in sort of, outside of municipal area boundaries. but what it got caught up in was this whole density narrative where it started talking about, well, it’s about increasing densities. And then the argument was, but, you know, indian cities are already dense. Why do we need to densify them further? That will require sort of augmentation of, you know, capacities and resources, infrastructure, resources, a lot of money, which we don’t have, population living in close proximity, which may or may not be healthy. And so it got caught up in this whole density narrative and the narrative of how compact cities are bad. Then what happened is when it was kind of moving along, and finally, the national Tod policy was there. Then the mass transit policy, the metrorail policy came about, which talked about, if you’re building a metro rail in your city, you have to create transit oriented development plans or, you know, you have to have a policy. So it was moving along in that direction. And then, you know, Covid hit. And then again, the whole, Tod narrative took a big hit because, you know, density was vilified, proximity was vilified, and it was like, you know, no, you shouldn’t live in two flows of approximity. Density is not good, it is not healthy, does not lead to good outcomes. And so, you know, tod basically does not work in our cities. the other thing about DoD, and this is sort of this western notion, and the reason it worked in the west and in the US and where it was conceptualized was because in the US there are very strong sort of zoning regulations which are adhere, to, to a great extent. And they are very strictly, sort of segregated. So typically you will find housing on the one side, commercial somewhere else and industrial somewhere else, green parks and the green places, some intermingled between these, but mixed use as a concept is not very prevalent there. So the way the tod, narrative was framed in the US and in the west was that mixed use is good and we should enable mixed use development, mixed use, not just from the standpoint of the kind of uses, but also, in terms of equity. So basically affordability and different types of housing types and other things which cater to different sort of population segments. And that’s a good thing. In India, again, the beating that that took was that, but we already have mixed use everywhere. What are we trying to create and why are we trying to induce certain kinds of shifts which may not be needed? So I think it was all of this sort of back and forth where Dod has been construed as something which it may not be. And the way I see it, shares that. You know, Dod, it’s not a one size fits all, you know, what works or what is needed in the context of the west or in the US, where they need to induce mixed uses, where they need to induce sort of population density and living in closer proximities. all of that might not be true in India, but what is true in India is that you do need walkable, livable neighborhoods, you need walkable, livable environments, you do need to be able to go out and in close proximity, find the services, find the facilities, find the amenities you need. And I don’t think there’s any argument about that. You would want your children to be able to cycle outside. You would want your elderly parents or grandparents to be able to take a walk, find a park in close proximity, to sit in and come back. And I think, for us, really, that kind of needs to be the focus when it comes to Tod. And, in terms of this whole, what is happening and why is the city still congested? Well, it has to do with many things, right? So it has to do with, first thing, you know, the NUTP policy, the national urban transportation policy of 2014. You know, the policy was very good. It called for basically non motorized transport, first type of development. It already had some of these components of DoD. It talked about equitable allocation of road space. It talked about buses being the workhorses in cities. Then it talked about you reach a certain population, you reach a certain, infrastructure requirement threshold. And that’s when systems, fixed line systems like metros, make sense in indian cities. Well, that policy, as we know, is ignored. You have the smallest of cities in India vying for metro systems where they don’t need them or don’t have the capacity to fill them or run them or for them to be financially even viable. But it’s just simply become, a cultural preference, sort of a thing about aspiration. And, that’s where that whole thing falls apart. Because what we need to focus on our cities, the pyramid, that we need to build is ground up. We need to look at non motorized transport first. We need to look at walkable streets, sidewalks, pedestrian realm. We need to look at that first. Then we need to look at buses and public transport systems. we need to look at equitable allocation for road space so cyclists can use it in a safe manner. And then comes other things in metros and mass transit. But I think because we have that lopsided, Tod. And in general, indian cities continue to be plagued with all of our transportation and congestion goals.

Shreya Jai: Thank you. thank you for this very detailed answer. I would like to come back to this, on the socioeconomic impact that Tod does. but before we get into that, I want to touch upon this point that you raised and which also is our topic of discussion today, that how these urbanization imperatives are now in conflict with climate change and global warming. This is again the time of the year when the infrastructure lacunas across our biggest cities are exposed. First is the heat, and then it is followed by monsoon. I start with heat. It was unbearably hot this year, raising questions on how our cities are built. Not just cities, how our house level planning, lane level planning is being done, or as we call it, the municipal level planning is being done. And I, you have two communities, the civic bodies will say, oh, it’s hot because of its global warming, climate change, etcetera. This section of scientists who said that you should have been prepared because it is bound to happen. So is it the ambient heat? Is it bad planning? Just explain us all that.

Jaya Dhindaw: Yeah. So it’s basically a combination of factors, right? The global warming being only one part of the equation. So, you know, global warming is definitely contributing to more frequent and intense sort of these climate events that happen, you know, heat waves and all of that. but there are other things, right? Like land use, land cover changes that have happened over the last couple of decades. Indian cities have grown in completely unplanned manner outside of their administrative boundaries, and their jurisdictions with very little, you know, control in terms of the kind of development. So it is about what we have built, where we have built it, the materials with which we have built, and therefore the complex interaction between climate change and where the pattern also plays into it. So this whole thing about concretization now, the way in which cities have expanded in the last couple of decades, and now we’re learning it’s untenable, essentially. So urbanization patterns, the materiality, the concretization, and then the non physical factors also like poor planning, governance, which is very fragmented, has led to sort of climate hazards having compounding effects. So this year itself, we saw places like Bangalore that experienced floods and water scarcity at the same time. Right. The same week, same time. You had both of these things going on. Delhi experienced deadly heat waves, drought like conditions and floods all in the same month. You know, like, how. How weird is that? How strange is that? But then it’s, you know, the compounding effects of, for example, in urban heat island that we talk about a lot. The fact that we have concretized that our, you know, urban areas tend to be significantly warmer than sort of the peri urban areas or areas where, you know, greenery is preserved. and this is basically because of where we are putting in concrete and asphalt. It’s going everywhere. These materials, they absorb, they retain heat. There’s lack of vegetation, because when you’re building, rampantly, there’s growth happening. There’s, built environment which is being created. There’s vegetation which is getting taken away. There’s natural infrastructure, whether it’s blue or it’s green, it’s getting taken away. and then in urban areas, especially because of the number of vehicles that are there in the cities, private vehicles, the air conditioning that runs commercial and industrial activities that are happening, there’s all this waste heat, which is generated. So you have these urban heat island impacts now, changes in land use. I mean, when we’re talking about, just turning sort of green areas, into concretized areas, there’s reduction in green cover. There’s changes in agricultural practice, also in the peri urban areas of the city. And that can affect local climate. So when we are talking about replacing natural landscapes with built environments, it reduces the natural cooling ability, which is provided by trees and other vegetation. And then there’s climate change and monsoons, because climate change is also impacting the monsoon patterns in India, and it’s making them very erratic. You can walk out of the house right now and have no idea whether you need to carry an umbrella or not, or what’s going to happen. It’s very erratic. And while the total amount of, rainfall may not change drastically, the distribution and the intensity is definitely becoming less predictable. So suddenly you can have, you know, 140 to 300 mm of rainfall in a couple of hours. And then that, because you have concretized, can lead to flooding and sort of flash flooding in some areas, you know, basically exacerbating the challenges and especially so for vulnerable communities. And then there’s the, you know, infrastructure question as well. When it comes to things like heat and floods, the infrastructure in most indian cities was built, what, 70, 75 years ago, pre independence, and is not adequately equipped to handle the stresses of extreme weather conditions. So there’s poor maintenance. On the one side, you have inadequate legacy drainage systems, for example, in cities which have not been upgraded for a long, long time, we don’t even know what condition they are in. We don’t even have maps of these drainage systems in many cases, in most cases. And then you have this whole insufficient green and shaded spaces which contribute to the adverse effects of heat waves and heavy rains and so on. So, yes, the frequency and intensity of climate events has gone up, and its effects on people, but also biodiversity. Also infrastructure are being fed more significantly. But I also do want to say that a lot of what happened this year, especially with heat, was quite avoidable in terms of mortality. So with the right use of granular data for decision making, with the right amount of sort of raising awareness and capacities of local institutions and health infrastructure to deal with it, the mortality rates, the loss of productivity and livelihoods, that was experienced, that could have been reduced a lot. Right. and we already knew this early on in April itself, 80% of India’s urban population was under extreme heat stress. We also know that 80% of India’s urban population live in districts with high climate risks. We do know that half of these urban population lives in informal and precarious settlements. And we know that there’s going to be much, much more that is going to be built up. According to certain projections, there’s about 35 billion space that’s going to come up in the coming decades. And, you know, this all points to the fact that we can’t leave things status quo. You know, we definitely have to solve for this.

Shreya Jai: I completely agree. And, on this, it brings me to the whole point of how infrastructure is being built in the country. We are seeing bridges being collapsed, airport troops are falling, tunnels are flooded in the national capital, the financial capital, and everything you said that obviously all of this can be foreseen, the kind of climate that we are seeing. It can be foreseen, but what do infrastructure developers, let me rephrase, how can infrastructure developers weigh in this particular situation into their planning? Why, I ask, is that very few infrastructure players currently that we speak with talk about climate as a big variable in their plan, though they would be in the first line of attack whenever any kind of extreme weather happens. I was part of this very interesting conversation that I happened to check out at a conference done by CDRI where one of the person from Bangalore airport was talking about how they’re planning ahead, how they’re building their runways, which to be resilient to any kind of rains and flooding because it might not happen today, but it might happen ten years later. But I don’t see that happening across some of the biggest names in the India’s infrastructure sector. Can you tell us the why and also how it can be weaved in, in their planning?

Jaya Dhindaw: Yes, I think, you know, this is, again it’s, I mean, I, again it’s like the perfect storm really. and neither our infrastructure nor large parts of our communities are climate prepared or resilient for that matter. And big cities, or cities in general have gotten bigger in haphazard ways. The governance structures that you need at the regional city and subsidy levels simply do not exist or they’re not functional or empowered. And also cities are resource constrained. So I mean, if you think about it, 75% of our 2050 infrastructure is yet to be built and yet city revenues account for only 1% of the GDP. that’s some of the lowest, really. So cities are strapped for capacity and resources. And when you say developers and infrastructure providers, service providers don’t seem to be taking this into account. I think it’s a bunch of things. It’s not that they don’t know this is happening. they’re aware, they do get impacted. in certain cases there is insurance which covers the losses. In certain cases, especially in the cases of sort of informality, insurance doesn’t cover losses. So again, the people who are actually suffering the most are the ones who live in informal settlements or who are, informal workers, migrant workers who have actually done the least to contribute to this problem but are facing the biggest front of it, right. the bigger sort of infrastructure providers, developers, so on and so forth are still going about their business as usual because there’s insurance, for example, to cover any loss and damage that they might experience. So it’s really, something that I think people are. But on the other hand, I will also say that, there is a section or a large section of those infrastructure providers, developers, real estate, folks who are understanding that this is now an imperator. So, the reasons why some of our cities are prone to disasters is not just about how this infrastructure is being built, necessarily. It’s not just about construction practices, because in many cases, it is about not just the construction that is happening, but also the enforcement. So when you look at zoning codes, construction practices don’t adhere to safety regulations or standards. You know, there are structurally weak buildings and infrastructure that exist. there’s this, again, no enforcement. There is unauthorized expansion and construction, happening, compromising the safety and resilience of urban areas. and so evacuation and relief efforts as a result become more challenging in these areas, leading to higher casualties, more significant economic losses. But there’s also the other part of it where we are seeing, you know, just this whole thing about rapid unplanned urbanization, construction of buildings and infrastructure that are not designed to withstand extreme weather conditions. some of that has to do with capacities and skills needed to design such buildings. There’s also the question of once you design these buildings, there’s also the maintenance and operations and, you know, you need to kind of continue to do that so. So that you don’t remain vulnerable. But old and poorly maintained infrastructure, whether they are bridges or whether they are buildings, are most likely to fail during these heavy rains and floods and instances like that. when we’re talking about drainage, water management, again, we don’t have the infrastructure capacities that are capable of handling the kind of events, the kind of seasonalities, that we’re seeing right now. there’s a huge amount of encroachment on natural water bodies, on, green areas which are supposed to be acting as buffers, but just end up exacerbating the problem. because when it rains or there are heavy rains, for example, in Bangalore, the blue green spaces, 85% of the blue green spaces of the natural infrastructure in the city are built upon. So it’s an enforcement problem, you know, it’s a governance problem, really. It’s not. So not just about what we are building, but, you know, that whole thing about where we are building and, also just, you know, again, environmental degradation, when we’re talking about sort of soil erosion, you’re taking away the green spaces. It contributes to the instability of urban environments where, you know, landslides become more frequent. Everything, you know, just becomes all concomitant. And basically things which, reduce vegetation, for example, increases the runoff, and it leads to more severe flooding during monsoon seasons. So this is all sort of what’s happening in the built environment and largely, again, governance and planning issue, because at the end of the day, there’s inadequate urban planning, inadequate governance mechanisms, including unempowered city authorities who don’t have the funds, who don’t have the functions and functionaries. And that is a problem. Right. So there’s also a need now, for example, for more comprehensive disaster management, planning and investment and resilient infrastructure, and also setting up things like a, disaster management fund at the city level to prepare for and cope with the fallouts of such events. And these mechanisms simply don’t exist. So it’s as much a building and construction practice and sort of urbanization problem and a mess as it is a governance and planning mess.

Shreya Jai: Jaya, it was either one of your lectures or one of your news articles, I can’t seem to recall where you said something very interesting, which was that, are we building cities for those who are building our cities? And I think that kind of summarizes this whole problem of city planning. We are not building our cities for that segment of our population which needs it most, which needs the, urban public transport system the most, which needs to be safeguarded from climate vulnerabilities, etcetera. I will divide the question into first part. One is the problem and other is the solution part. let me focus on the problem part a little bit more. You have, in our discussions, I’ll be honest here, have mentioned about how municipal bodies are financially and operationally crunched. there is a lack of budget. Even if there is a good budget, it is not. It is disproportionately spread across different segments. It does not focus on the real issues. So first, can you give us a brief about the municipal bodies in the country? Why do you think so? Are there some good examples to follow, in the country?

Jaya Dhindaw: No. Absolutely. So, you know, financial, constraints. Yes, there are a lot. You know, it’s a two sort of two pronged problem. First, the fact that there are financial constraints. In fact, indian cities have some of the lowest per capita municipal budgets of any cities in the world. Right? So that is one issue it’s also about. Therefore, you know, what do you prioritize? So, do you prioritize that which is urgent, or do you prioritize that which is important? and that. And sort of this whole governance system that we have, which is not sort of fully functional at the city level, does not give it much autonomy. And therefore, there are a lot of problems. So, just to talk about the financial constraints, there are many, right? So, one, you start with sort of inadequate revenue sources for cities. So municipal bodies, most often are heavily reliant on state and central government grants, intergovernmental transfers. And these can be highly inconsistent and insufficient. So what I got last year may not be maybe, And what I get this year, maybe more, maybe less. I don’t know. I can’t plan for it. There’s also limited autonomy to generate revenue through sort of local taxes and fees. Property taxes, which are a primary revenue source, are often sort of underutilized due to outdated property assessments and efficient collection mechanism. All of that is going on. So property taxes, are a challenge. And then there’s also this whole thing about land value capture mechanisms, which have not been fully explored or utilized, like, say, around metrorail and mass trap transit systems. There is the ability to leverage these large infrastructure inserts in the city to generate about eight to ten times the economic value, in the surrounding areas. We have not bothered to kind of, you know, look at this deeply, in a. In a contextual framework and do this well. So that is one sort of set of problems in terms of revenue. The other is in terms of sort of inefficiency and things like tax collection. So, you know, there’s low compliance rate when we’re talking about tax administration, and it leads to, you know, good amount of revenue loss, because of, you know, lack of a property records, updation, and suboptimal property tax collection. Bangalore, for example, I remember one year they had talked about, the collection rate being 40% and that being actually quite good compared to previous years and so on. So that is kind of the collection rates that we’re looking at. and there are many sort of underlying problems for why that is. But there’s inefficient sort of a tax collection system as well. Then there is sort of, when it comes to cities, there is sort of this dependence on grants. So this whole over reliance on state and central government grants, over reliance on sort of multinational banks, you know, those development entities and grants which come from them, limit the financial independence of municipal bodies in terms of what they can, can’t do or what they can and cannot prioritize. a lot of these grants are also tied to specific projects and schemes, and so there isn’t flexibility. And, you know, they cannot. Municipal bodies are not, you know, allowed to, in a way. They’re not, able to allocate funds to things which might be local priorities. And then there’s this whole expenditure pressure. You know, we just talked about how we need resilient infrastructure, but we also need urban services. you know, especially in areas which are far flung, you know, decentralized services. In inner city areas, which are, you know, informal settlements, you do need services. Services. Providing urban services, basic services such as water, sanitation, good housing is basically building resilience in cities. But we don’t have the ability or the fund to do this. And then there’s this whole debt burden. a lot of municipal bodies carry significant debt burdens and that just exacerbates their financial instability. the inability to then service debts can lead to sort of reduced creditworthiness and then difficulty in assessing further funding, accessing further funding. So it’s like this vicious circle. So, yes, there are financial constraints, but a lot of this also stems from governance failures. So on the operational, side of things, we are looking at administrative inefficiency, or just lack of skills and capacitated personnel to be able to manage urban governance effectively. There’s fragmented governance, you know, just the water sector, for example, in Bangalore, the, water cycle is, you know, there’s 25 agencies that kind of are responsible for some or the other aspect of it. Overlapping jurisdictions. Lack of coordination amongst all of these agencies just complicates urban management a great deal. And then there’s also this whole frequent change in, you know, leadership, which disrupts continuity and the ability to even do long term planning. And then there’s this whole service delivery challenges. Like I said, municipal bodies, they just struggle to provide basic services, and their resources are limited and so is their capacity. And then there’s also, in terms of governance, there’s a lack of this tiered planning system, which we so desperately need, and sort of a, combined or holistic vision for the city, which can be translated through a strategic plan which all departments can work towards. But we just don’t have the kind of tiered planning system. For example, a three tier planning system where you look at the regional scale, the city level and the local area scale, and then you devise long term strategies, ah, which take into account sort of developmental environment and urban economic perspectives. And all of this basically results in inefficient resource allocation. And I think at the bottom of all of this, really is this whole, data, just not having access to good, solid, disaggregated data. and just the failure to adopt modern technologies. Look at open data sources to make data more public. Take data driven approaches, look at what you have, look at the trends, the kind of projections you’re getting, and then to be able to plan and manage and make decisions accordingly. We just don’t have that kind of grounding when it comes to our public agencies. And that is what, therefore, then just trickles down and leads to multiple levels of, failure in terms of how do we manage our finances, the limited sort of financial capacities that we have, how do we manage it, and how do we make it go the farthest mile?

Shreya Jai: Right. from what I understand as a layman, and put it out as a layman, is that the cities are being built for the Karwalas, but they are not being taxed enough to help build a city for those who want to travel by metro and bus. another problem, I think the municipal. sorry, you were saying something?

Jaya Dhindaw: No, no, absolutely. I mean, just to give you a quick example, you know, in Mumbai, you know, 3% of people use cars, right? And then 75% of the city’s investment goes towards, you know, improving infrastructure for car owners. So there’s that dichotomy. Right. And like you, said, very rightly, the cities are being built for Karwalas and not. Not for the. For the people that need them.

Shreya Jai: right. Another challenge that I think municipal corporations are now facing, and I. And not just municipal corporations, I think all state authorities. Is this rampant and unchecked growth in metro towns. We’re looking at NCR Noida, greater Noida. There have been so many series of discussions on how they are outside the administrative boundaries you just mentioned. You’re looking at Bangalore, a city collapsing on itself. how can it be managed better and which all agencies should step up and take some action, do you think? Just policy intervention help, or do we need to, you know, rejig the whole urban planning framework, in the country, especially in our metro towns?

Jaya Dhindaw: No. absolutely. I think, you know, one is that, yes, I mean, local planning systems in India need significant, you know, reformation, and both, you know, at the city level, at sort of the regional levels, just because to address the challenges posed by climate change, rapid urbanization, infrastructural deficiencies, we need a comprehensive approach to urban planning that can enhance resilience, sustainability, quality of life and equity all at once. And we don’t have that. a big reason for that is that very simply put, we have ignored the 74th constitutional amendment which really called for a tiered system of governance, an empowered local authority. so the idea was that, you know, you should empower local authorities with funds, functions and functionaries. we should build horizontal and vertical integration and not just take sort of sectoral approaches. Because, you know, right now the problems of water don’t just impact the water utility, they impact a large cross section of other agencies and citizens and stakeholders that interface with them. So we need to go beyond these kind of very siloed sectoral approaches. the challenges of climate urbanization will not have linear pathways and solutions and we need to think about it in systems and integrated planning frames and those frames just don’t exist. So, also looking at local, city, regional, but also environmental, economic, and equitable sort of concerns in the city, systems that basically favor people, nature and climate. So that’s the kind of, you know, revamping basically of the planning systems that we need. and there are, you know, there are semblances of that which exist. For example, if, you know, if you’re looking at integrated urban planning, your master plan does not speak to the comprehensive mobility plan, does not speak to the climate action plan, does not speak to any other plan in the city. Some of those might not even be statutory plans. Right. So how do you kind of, in that, in that sort of a fragmented status, how do you bring all of this together? there are other things which are happening, like green building codes for example, that are looking to enforce green building standards to promote say energy efficiency or use of sustainable materials, reuse of construction, demolition, waste and things. So there are these things which are happening in small silos. We are looking at, for example, now regional transportation systems. We are going beyond something that China and many other cities in the world have. And Europe, they’ve done really well. We have looked at it from the silo of administrative authority boundaries, what can happen here? But we really need to take regional approaches over there. So, I think part of it is that how do we get out of that dichotomy, and basically start looking at these three tiered, ways of various ways of planning in cities. So, yes, I think the challenge is that, you know, there are governance and policy reforms needed. There’s sustainable development prerogatives. we also need to build in citizen participation and awareness because plans which are not which are not co developed or owned, through community involvement, they just don’t work. We need feedback mechanisms. We need to establish those feedback mechanisms for citizens to provide feedback on urban services, on infrastructure projects, and then use that feedback to make data driven decisions and improve service delivery. and yes, in a country like India, when we’re talking about community involvement, when we’re talking about feedback, mechanisms, the numbers are huge, and very diverse in terms of the cross section of society that they represent. But this is, you know, this is one of the things that we absolutely need to do. And then there are this whole, you know, what do we do with infrastructure? How do we upgrade? How do we go about doing that? through policy and planning frames, but also how do we ensure that the enforcement mechanisms, the monitoring, the monitoring mechanisms are, working adequately to feed back and improve sort of the, you know, the three tier planning process, whether it is master planning, which needs to be, again, data and evidence based, which needs community inputs, integrated, but also at the level of zoning regulations, that’s where the metal hits the road, because that’s how plants translate what gets built on the ground. How do you update, how do you modernize zoning regulations that also will matter in terms of the kind of outcomes that we will see? And how can places like NCR, but also other places that are growing rapidly, be managed better? So basically, an approach that encompasses better urban planning, integrated infrastructure development and effective governance. Now, plans like the climate action plans have embedded this in their approach, but they are not statutory. So now we have cities which are working with the climate action plans, kind of, standing in and being proxy for strategic plans. Places like Mumbai, places like Bangalore, even smaller cities like Nashik, Orangabad and so on and so forth, they’re doing this. And so to me, that is sort of, a way in which we are going towards the positive direction and the way in which that whole unchecked growth can, be put into perspective, and can be managed better.

Shreya Jai: Very interesting. thank you for this very thorough answer, and I think we have scared the audience a lot with all these problems. So I’ll just quickly ask you, you keep studying all these models across the country, you working on some of the, some of such projects. Can you cite some examples of some ongoing project or recently completed projects which are showing way, in terms of a, climate adaptability, urban planning that is happening in the country, some examples to look up to, for other cities to follow.

Jaya Dhindaw: So, you know, there are many positive examples, right. And that is what is encouraging. and, you know, just to cite a few. Right. So, for example, Ahmedabad after the 2012 sort of heat wave and the kind of mortality, that it caused. City came up with a heat action plan. It was one of the first cities in South Asia to implement that, you know, as early as in 2013. So this included sort of early warning systems, public awareness campaigns, training for healthcare professionals, providing sort of infrastructure cooling spaces to reduce sort of heat related incidences and, illnesses. And so, you know, Ahmedabad came up with this whole thing way back in the day when other cities had not started thinking about it. And they’ve done a great job of sort of implementation of the climate, sorry, the heat action plan. So that is one great example. Another great example is basically looking at Surat and their climate resilience strategy. So they have now there’s a whole thing around air quality that they’re now looking at. They are looking at a, manual around clean construction practices. So they’re looking at sort of this next generation of what needs to be done in the city. So how do you focus on improving urban infrastructure itself, but also the kind of outcomes that it has while it’s getting built and in surrounding communities and people? And so they’re looking, you know, Surat is looking at some of this. There is the example of Aurangabad and, you know, the Kham river restoration, which incidentally is one of the wri, Ross Prize, you know, finalists this year. And the way that that river restoration has been done by involving the community, by embedding sort of natural infrastructure, natural systems, nature based solutions. There’s a beautiful example of river restoration, although in a very small city. there’s the example of, I would say Jaga mission in Orissa, which is looking at housing and informal settlements, and how to give that legitimacy and ensure that urban basic services reach even the people who are living in informal settlements. So that’s a wonderful example of policy convergence and how that can enable better sort of, quality of life outcomes, whether it relates to health, whether it relates to, you know, housing conditions, livelihoods and so on. there is a, you know, I can go on and on. There’s also the example of Indore, which basically keeps getting recognized for its, you know, efficient, solid waste management, you know, system. Year after year, it gets those awards. It has done a great job of enabling waste segregation, recycling programs, contributing to the cleanliness and environmental sustainability. then there is the example of Kochi, which is looking at resilience very closely. They suffered a, really bad flood in 2017. And although in our mind, Kerala, Kochi, it’s very green, but the same thing had happened there, rampant urbanization in spaces which shouldn’t have been concretized and built. And now they have mainstream, they’re looking at urban nature based solutions. They have made it part of their municipal budgets, part of their policies, part of their programs to enhance nature based, solutions. Porosity, permeability in the city, and they’re doing a great job of it. And also, last but not the least, I would say cities like Mumbai, cities like Bangalore, Chennai cities, which are kind of coming up with climate action plans and using these as sort of, sort of strategies, strategic tools to kind of look at not just mitigation prerogatives in terms of how do you reduce ghg emissions in cities, but also looking at resilience and adaptation and how to enable that for communities which might be differentially vulnerable. not all communities are vulnerable to climate risks in the same way. And identifying that knowing who is impacted where, how, and how can therefore you frame recommendations in a very contextual manner is something that these cities are looking at very seriously and doing really well. So really, I mean, a plethora of examples and I can keep going, but this is just to give you a cross section of the ones that come to mind.

Shreya Jai: No, absolutely. And it’s heartening to note that there are so many positive examples to, look up to. And as you said, you can go on and on and so can I. because this is such an interesting discussion or topic that we don’t touch upon, but should be touched upon, discussed across forums, civic bodies, general rwas, everyone should be talking about it, but I will quickly close this conversation with a very broad question. if you look at, across several social sectors, if we can say so, be it sarsaksha, bion, skill development, even solar, if I can include it in that, Sachibharata, Bihan, etcetera, they all became a talk of the town or a, success among general public is because there was a central mission machinery that was at work. Do you think urban planning requires something like that? Maybe through our ndcs or climate goals, or maybe through a mission statement or something innovative, that can be done from the central level, which know, gives kind of an, if not an incentive, gives some kind of inspiration to the general public and to the city planners to have that kind of outlook towards their plans.

Jaya Dhindaw: Yeah, anus, I think this is that whole question of, you know, how much do you centralize versus decentralized? What are sort of the pros and cons and benefits of some of these? You know, national level policies, program schemes, and whether there needs to be some kind of an institutional or sort of policy framework that needs to be kind of orchestrated and built over there and crafted there, which then helps cities kind of develop their own legs, on some of this thing. And it’s interesting that you mentioned some of these, the Abhiyans, the smart cities mission, all of that. And when I look back, it’s like the smart cities mission, and I was just hearing someone who had actually, created, was part of the creation of this whole smart cities missions came talk about how it was intended to basically make, resource distribution efficient in cities, right? So when they talked about deploying things like technology, for monitoring sensors, this and the other, the ultimate underlying goal really was how do you make the resource, how do you drive resource efficiency in cities? The second objective really was to drive accountability, and something that universities are fairly low on is accountability. Where has taxpayer money gone? What has it been utilized for? are citizens part of the budget conversation at the local level, at the city level? And usually they are not. So how do you drive participatory budget exercise? And also this was meant to be a tool. And there are mixed responses. If you ask somebody whether it worked or whether it didn’t, these missions, were they useful? in my opinion, some of the missions, for example, amrut, which is coming up and looking at water infrastructure, infrastructure in a big way. And the investments in just the last ten years in AmRut have gone up some ten times. So basically, in terms of what we were spending on infrastructure ten years ago versus what we are now, is it adequate still? It’s not, but it is a huge leap towards recognizing that we do need to work on those problems. To me, these kind of programs and schemes are presenting opportunities whereby all of these things that we’re talking about from basically the physical sort of infrastructure standpoint of say, building in nature based solutions in water related projects, down to basically using these programs and schemes to, drive better integrated planning in cities or instituting governance frameworks which are responsive, I think it’s an opportunity. To me, it is a huge opportunity, underutilized, but a big opportunity. So I feel like these are necessary, these are very important. But at the same time, one of the things that we don’t have and that we desperately need is a national level, sort of a, national urbanization policy framework. two things that we need to kind of really recognize. One is that India has a long sort of tail of urbanization. You have sort of, you know, your 10 million plus cities and then you have your 50,000 plus, urban areas as well. And they are not alike. So you definitely need an urbanization policy which speaks to this different sort of archetypes and typologies of urban areas that you have. How do they grow? How can they use shared resources? how can the already large cities put better governance frames to be able to function better? So the requirements at each level are very different. And we need a national urbanization policy to address that. What we also need is a policy for some of these neglected interstitial areas. So when we talk about growth, for example, which has happened a lot in peripheral areas, you know, outside city administrative boundaries, it has happened. There is no framework, there’s no master plan that even addresses that growth, that talks about how can you make planning in these areas better. there aren’t master plans that talk about urban villages, informal settlements, lump settlements, which are inside the city. So you have these lal dora areas in Delhi, for example. And they’re just kind of, when you make those master plans, you just kind of put a, boundary around that to say, well, this is excluded from the. So you have these interstitial areas where a lot of this unplanned growth is happening, which are going to ultimately become resources intensive. And we definitely need sort of, you know, a policy to kind of understand and figure out how will growth, you know, happen and how will this be managed in these interstitial areas. So I do fully do believe that national level frameworks are very important. And I also believe that some of these national level programs and schemes are very useful and they can actually be used to not just, you know, drive better sort of developmental outcomes, but also better planning and governance outcomes.

Shreya Jai: Great. thank you for this answer. we are recording before the budget, this episode most likely would be out after the budget. But let’s see, if some of the wish list that you have given makes it to the union budget. I hope the policymakers are listening, if not the budget, but some kind of plan is required at the central level, at the state level, and even at the most micromanagerial level that there is in the city planning. fingers crossed. Let’s hope our cities are planned better for our future generations. thank you so much, Jaya. This was a fantastic conversation. I wish we could have talked for hours, but your time is limited. You have cities to plan and let me not stop you in doing that. But thank you yet again for joining us here at the Indian Rgr.

Jaya Dhindaw: Thank you Shreya very much for inviting me to this conversation. I enjoyed speaking to you.

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