Rémi de Bercegol

Development on the Urban Fringe: The Prosperity of Kartarpur, a Small Town-Cluster in Punjab

Kartarpur, a small town in the Punjab, is unique in that it consists of a cluster of small, interrelated and mostly informal businesses which has led to the development of a thriving furniture industry. The success of this small industry reflects the vitality of a largely unreported urban India, that of small towns driving development outside the metropolitan paradigm. This chapter looks at the social and historical factors that have facilitated this development by examining the way in which economic and lineage-based networks are embedded in the spatial and social strata of the current town. Analysis of this rapidly changing model, which is halfway between small traditional industry and modern craft industries and localised yet linked to the global economy, reveals a distinct resource which, although imperfect, serves as a reminder that alternatives to the dominant developmental approaches do exist. This, in turn, enables more profound examination of the current governance process and the development model supported by the authorities. The ultimate aim of this chapter is thus to analyse this production method and assess its viability given the current context of growing urbanisation, urban governance reforms and economic openness.

A new waste and energy nexus? Rethinking the modernisation of waste services in Delhi

One important aspect of sustainability involves the flows of materials and energy, extracted, consumed, transformed and disposed of in the functioning of urban societies, which makes it directly linked to the ‘nested’ character of infrastructure that this special issue of Urban Studies on ‘urban nexus’ is keen to address. In particular, the question of urban waste, a sector previously neglected in the field of urban policy, has slowly become a major issue in world urbanisation that can be tackled through its cross-sectorial interactions and its multidimensional effects. Through an analysis of the case of Delhi, this article aims to undertake an exploration of the waste and energy nexus in order to contribute to the current debates on the socio-technical transformations of waste infrastructure and its societal interlinkages. This article studies the effects of waste management policies in Delhi that essentially promote large centralised technical systems such as waste-to-energy plants, which are presented as a ‘modern nexus’ of waste and energy, at the expense of any ‘alternative nexus’ such as the existing traditional recycling sector. Hence, the main objective is not only to question the socio-spatial and political implications of the current reforms of the waste sector but also to discuss the development of other potential decentralised solutions that could complement the overall system in an adapted way.

From Local to Regional Challenges, the Political Profile of the Small Towns’ Municipal Councils

This third chapter sets out the initial findings of the political aspect of the analysis and describes how local responsibilities and authority have changed following implementation of the decentralisation reform in the small towns involved in the study. From a formal perspective, the main elements of the 74th Amendment (regular elections, quotas for the lower castes and for women) appear to have been implemented; however, in reality, the democratic spirit of the reform is essentially being circumvented as, in each of the small towns, municipal powers are being seized by local leaders. On another level, the restructuring of political authority appears to have above all benefitted the regional political parties, which are attempting to gain a foothold in the towns via the local oligarchy that has been made legitimate by the reform. Finally, the local people have benefitted very little from this reorganisation of power, which provides them with few opportunities to participate in urban management.

Building the Town of Tomorrow: The Difficult Development of Small Municipalities

This last chapter concludes the book with a cross-cutting summary of the main findings of the research by responding to all of the questions outlined in the introduction above. The section begins by reviewing the political implications of transferring local governance powers to the small towns studied. This is followed by a review of the way roles and responsibilities have been reallocated between the local institutions and traditional public stakeholders. Together, this information provides an understanding of the municipal set-up whilst highlighting the specific features of small towns in India. Finally, this summary concludes with a call for studies to better take “small towns” into account as this legitimate area of review provides numerous new possibilities for urban research.

From Theory to Practice: Field Research in Four Small Municipalities in Eastern Uttar Pradesh

This chapter outlines the scope of the study, first subjectively through a field note, then at the regional level of Uttar Pradesh, and finally for the small towns selected. The sampling method is based on a reasoned choice that places the research against the backdrop of a poor and highly politicised region. Uttar Pradesh suffers from poor economic and social development (with particularly poor service levels in small towns); yet over the last few years, the state has also seen a rise in the number of political parties from the lower castes (with high numbers in small towns). Rather than using position papers, this chapter draws on a range of statistical data, visual documents and a field note to review the main features of the small towns selected for the study.

Understanding the Changing Urban Space in India

This chapter introduces a book on the effects of decentralisation reforms on small Indian towns. Previously controlled at the State and Central level, responsibility for urban management has been radically redefined since decentralisation reforms were launched in India at the beginning of the 1990s. Most of the attention on this subject has so far focused on metropolitan cities; however, reforms have also been quietly taking place in other, far smaller urban areas where more than half of the urban population is actually living. Therefore, the purpose of this introduction is to present the aim of a survey undertaken in four small municipalities. In order to identify the impacts of the reform in all their complexity, a multi-dimensional approach has been used that reviews not only the local democratic aspects but also the more technical and financial processes being implemented. As the country embarks on this reorganisation, this research will help build a better understanding of the processes underlying the emergence of municipal institutions in India and, more generally, of the future facing rapidly changing small towns in the global South.

From Dependence to Artificial Autonomy: Low Financial Resources of Small Municipalities

This chapter covers the “financial and accounting” aspects of municipal management. It explains where the municipalities’ financial resources come from and reviews their expenditures since the 1990s. The analysis undertaken provides a chronological overview of the changes that have taken place within public services and how small towns’ local governments’ ways of working have changed since decentralisation. As with the roads service, it steadily became apparent that studying this aspect provided an ideal opportunity not only to assess the independence of the municipalities’ budget decisions with a view to quantifying disparities in the support provided to the municipalities by the state but also, and more generally, to better assess the repositioning of the municipalities within the institutional architecture that has been taking place since the 1990s. This comparative perspective thus made it possible to analyse the differences in the municipalities’ financial management and gain an understanding of their relative empowerment since implementation of the reform.

Between Urban Imbalances and Technical Constraints: The Challenges of Managing Local Public Services

This chapter covers the small municipalities’ decentralised technical services, namely roads and water supply, which embody all the transfers of power being implemented. The ‘roads service’ (namely all roads-related public services, such as sanitation, solid waste collection, public lighting and the roads themselves) is included de facto by its predominance at the local level. Public road works is a major issue for all concerned: for the local people, who are eager to see improvements; for elected officials who wish to visibly enhance their public profile; for the local construction companies who want the works’ contracts; and for the regional agencies who want to hold onto their functional responsibilities. The detailed analysis of incentive mechanisms reveals the development of political and economic arrangements that somewhat undermine the municipalities’ supposed independence. Examination of the “water supply service” has highlighted other issues, both technical and institutional, as the study reviewed whether the regional government has displayed any favouritism in its procurement of infrastructure and whether local authorities have limited sovereignty.

Dynamisme et fragilité du développement non-métropolitain en Inde. L’exemple de Kartarpur, une petite ville-cluster d’artisans-menuisiers

Alors que les debats sur l’urbanisation en Inde se focalisent generalement sur les cas des tres grandes metropoles, cet article prend le parti de s’interesser aux cas des petites agglomerations, lesquelles temoignent de dynamiques tout aussi revelatrices des transformations urbaines contemporaines. L’etude de l’une d’entre elles, Kartarpur, une petite ville d’artisans menuisiers, permet de mettre en lumiere le dynamisme et la fragilite de cette urbanisation non-metropolitaine. L’essor remarquable d’une petite industrie de l’ameublement y est issu d’un ensemble de facteurs endogenes ancres dans un territoire particulier et hors des schemas developpementalistes metropolitains. L’analyse montre que l’organisation territoriale en cluster des artisans locaux, en assurant la complementarite des savoir-faire traditionnels, a permis de creer une veritable valeur ajoutee a un systeme qui se retrouve desormais bouleverse par les evolutions liberales actuelles.

Water Regimes Questioned from the ‘Global South’ : Agents, Practices And Knowledge

This working paper presents the proceedings of an international workshop on water policies, held on January 2016 in (Delhi) and brought together 25 participants. It was supported by a number of partners (Centre for Policy Research, Centre de Sciences Humaines, Institut Francais of Pondicherry, UMI i-GLOBES CNRS/University of Arizona, ANR ENGIND, ANR BLUEGRASS, Indo French Water Network et Institut de recherche pour le Developpement). The research focused on comparisons between different case studies in a range of countries (USA, Kenya, South Africa, Morocco, Mexico, France and India), adopting an approach situated at the crossroads of geography and sociology. This international dimension proves particularly appropriate for a study of ‘water regimes’ as is consubstantial to their development: beyond the models often identified as “national’, from the 19th century onwards, we can identify rationales of transfer involving knowledge, expertise, skills and trained agents. From the beginning of the 20th century these models have to be included in the complexity of potential circulations: North-South transfers, as well as South-North and South-South transfers. The workshop covered the following topics: water regime transformations, situations where dominant doxa is challenged, the socio-historic transformations of the ‘Hydrocracies’ with emergence of a new generation of water professionals.