Cities Should Have More Power, Says Urban Planning Expert Raj Cherubal

Raj Cherubal is director, projects, at Chennai City Connect, a platform that works toward creating world-class living standards, infrastructure and services in Indian cities. Cherubal has written extensively on urban governance and economic freedom. Before he joined Chennai City Connect, he worked in the software industry for long, and holds a Master in Science (MS) degree in Physics from the University of Louisville and another MS degree in Nuclear Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. In an interview with Shanu Athiparambath, Cherubal shares his views on decentralisation, parking systems and urban planning. Edited excerpts:

Athiparambath: Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has been arguing for long that city mayors should be empowered. You seem to agree.

Cherubal: We in India followed a centralised system for a long time. For example, when Indira Gandhi was the prime minister, one person sitting in Delhi had the power to decide whether we needed a storm water drain system in Chennai. This gradually changed when states became more powerful and chief ministers started competing with one another to do better. Further, about 98 per cent of the problems in a system are local in nature, whether it is water, garbage or sewage. Authorities are responsible for solving these problems but the question at which level should such problems be addressed, city, state or central? The answer to this is that thinking that one person sitting at one level can fix all problems is wrong. Even if a mayor is the most brilliant man on earth, he will not be able to do everything on his own. A minister may be an expert on one subject but not on another. So, the idea is not to give more power to mayors, but to cities. It is more about institutions than about individuals in power. We need accountability and all kinds of capabilities, including data collection skills.

Athiparambath: For cities to grow better, we need a combination of localised knowledge and technical expertise. There should be more interaction between policy thinkers and people who have localised knowledge.

Cherubal: Many Indians are mentally in a village and physically in a city. In a village, you can sit across the table or under a tree and decide what to do. But in mega cities such as Chennai or Mumbai, individuals do not have the resources to single-handedly decide things. This is why we need an arrangement like the city government.

Athiparambath: One can't say how much government's data collection helps. Much of urban planning in India is done without paying much attention to housing prices and other real estate values.

Cherubal: This may work and cities such as Singapore, New York and Paris are shining examples of that. In fact, Singapore is an exceptionally well-run city, and in that sense, an outlier. But, if you take cities like Hong Kong, everything is well-integrated. Even when they plant a tree, this is not done with great foresight on how to deal with it when floodwater comes in. They look at high quality data. When there is no understanding of how things need to be done, they bring in experts. When there is no co-ordination between two apartment complexes, the ward has a role to play. Sometimes, we need expertise, but we need local knowledge, too.

Athiparambath: Even if people who live in a city have localised knowledge, they probably do not know what needs to be done.

Cherubal: As an individual, it is difficult to understand the gravity of a problem. When there is congestion in my area, for example, I would probably think that we need a flyover here. However, building a flyover in the area may not be the best possible solution from a larger perspective. We need to find out the source of the congestion. State and central governments will also find such localised problems difficult to handle. Providing more autonomy to cities may be better, as even the smallest state cannot solve every problem faced by each of its cities. I would rather have millions of experiments happening in different cities than one large experiment happening at the central level.

Athiparambath: Why is it difficult for a city government to co-ordinate with state and central governments?

Cherubal: Co-ordination among authorities is a Herculean task and pretty much impossible even in simple matters. For instance, the most a city mayor can suggest that the area needs a flyover, when a locality is crowded. City mayors do not have the power to suggest building metro rail or suburban networks. Financing is also important. If a municipal corporation, for example, wants to float bonds, the plan would have become pretty much useless by the time the union government gives its clearance. While cities are engines of wealth creation, the money goes to the Central government.

Athiparambath: Is it true that voters make mayors accountable?

Cherubal: Voters do make mayors accountable. Look at the history of the world. In New York, if the mayor does not get the snow cleared during winters, people almost put a gun to his head. Ultimately, somebody has to be accountable. Do we want the prime minister or the chief minister to be accountable for our local problems or do you want the city mayor or the ward councilor to be accountable?

Athiparambath: An argument is that mayors will do what lies easiest to their hands, like removing garbage. They do not have much of an incentive to invest in large infrastructure projects that have a 20-30 year time horizon.

Cherubal: Why do we assume that people at the state and the Centre are doing the right thing, and thinking in the long term? The local guy may think short-term, but he is at least accountable to people. There are examples of major cities having powerful mayors who were promoted for national roles. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the mayor of Tehran; Jacques Chirac, the former president of France, was once the mayor of Paris. When mayors have power over time, things fall into place because local governments have no choice but to perform. That is how things happened in the best cities in the world.

Athiparambath: Many believe that if house ownership is higher in Indian cities, people will have a greater stake in urban governance.

Cherubal: Every house in Chennai is owned by somebody. Houses are not floating around. Even if a house is rented out, it has an owner. It is not as if people who live in rented houses do not care about flooding or sewage. You cannot argue that people don't care.

Athiparambath: Institute for Transportation and Development Policy in Chennai published a very good study on parking policy recently.

Cherubal: Yes. Things are improving here. There has to be an integrated planning in every city on parking and bus management system. Buses are the fundamental mode of transportation in Indian cities. Why do we ask state or central governments and sometimes even the World Bank to run buses in a city? Are we saying that we don't have enough money to build basic amenities? In Chennai, the implementation of the parking management system is done by private agencies. But somebody has to sit and think.

Athiparambath: When Chennai was flooded, many argued that this happened because of construction activity and high density building?

Cherubal: Do they expect everyone in Chennai to have a PhD in hydrology? I can hardly put storm water drain in my property. This is a typical coordination problem.

Athiparambath: Many economists argue that property tax should be levied according to the highest use value of the property.

Cherubal: Exactly. We need transit-oriented development, like in Hong Kong. The value private real estate generates contributes to building public infrastructure. Private real estate subsidises civic infrastructure and transportation networks. The planning is done by the local government. Property tax norms should be designed in a way that people are not forced to pay a large amount right away. When the government builds infrastructure and when property values rise, you gain something out of it and ends up paying more.

Athiparambath: The current government wants to tax fuel instead of making people pay more for driving through roads and parking.

Cherubal: This is absolutely ridiculous. People who own cars do not want to pay for driving through roads, for parking or for emitting pollutants. But, everybody else is paying for it. It is alright to prate about individual rights and freedom when you are paying for it.

Athiparambath: The Delhi government wants cars with odd and even numbers to drive through roads on alternate days.

Cherubal: Social changes do not happen in a day. Singapore, for example, still struggles with congestion pricing. There should be an alternative. The problem is that they are implementing policies in bits and pieces. In Chennai, parking management systems will take a year to be implemented. Chennai City connect and partners have been discussing this for eight years. We are the best in the country to push and pull, but it still took us a very long time.

Athiparambath: Why can't governments charge people for driving?

Cherubal: I am a big fan of congestion pricing. But, it takes an incredible amount of analysis. In New York, for example, some boroughs were badly affected by congestion pricing. When we drive through roads in a car, the world we see is very different from the world we see when we walk through roads.

Athiparambath: In New York, a parked car occupies 300 square feet, which is almost the size of a studio apartment.

Cherubal: Laws are such that street hawkers are punished, but the guy who parks his expensive car is not. When you park your car in Delhi's Connaught Place, you are occupying some of the most valuable real estate in the world. People who own stores pay millions for it. But, cars are not charged much for parking. Do we allow a vendor to build a shop for free in Connaught Place?