1st Edition
Urban Governance and Local Democracy in South India
This book examines the issues of urban governance and local democracy in South India. It is the first comprehensive volume that offers comparative frameworks on urban governance across all states in the region: Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. The book focuses on governance in small district-level cities and raises crucial questions such as the nature of urban planning, major outstanding issues for urban local governance, conditions of civic amenities such as drinking water and sanitation and problems of social capital in making urban governance work in these states. It emphasizes on both efficient urban governance and effective local democracy to meet the challenges of fast-paced urbanization in these states while presenting policy lessons from their urbanization processes.
Rich in empirical data, this book will be useful to scholars and researchers of political studies, public administration, governance, public policy, development studies and urban studies, as well as practitioners and non-governmental organizations.
Foreword by Amitabh Kundu
Preface
Acknowledgements
1. Introduction
2. Why Urban Governance? Why not Rural?
3. Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh: Urban Primacy and Urban Centralization
4. Kerala and Tamil Nadu: Rapid Urbanization and Dispersed Urban Growth
5. Urban Governance, Local Democracy and the Future
Index
Biography
Anil Kumar Vaddiraju is Associate Professor of Political Science at the Centre for Political Institutions, Governance and Development, Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bengaluru, India. He pursued his education from Kakatiya University, Jawaharlal Nehru University and the University of Delhi and is the author of several books, including Federalism and Local Government in India (2017), Sisyphean Efforts? State Policy and Child Labour in Karnataka (2013), Peasantry Capitalism and State: Political Economy of Agrarian Societies (2013), Decentralized Governance and Planning in Karnataka (2011) and Land, Labour and Caste: Agrarian Change and Grassroots Politics in Andhra Pradesh (2008).
‘Spatially speaking, India’s social science research has been predominantly focused on the countryside. Urban India, as an object of inquiry, has remained on the fringes. This was understandable for India was overwhelmingly rural for the first six decades of its independence. By 2011, however, India was 32 per cent urban and by 2031, not less than 40 per cent of the nation’s population will be in the cities. Therefore, it is highly important to start studying urban governance carefully. Those studies that have already emerged have focused on one city or two. This book is the first to compare urban governance across states, covering all of South India, a region which has experienced among the highest rates of urbanization, especially in Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Scholars and practitioners of urban governance will greatly benefit from the insights and learning presented in this book.’
Ashutosh Varshney, Director, Center for Contemporary South Asia; Sol Goldman Professor of International Studies and the Social Sciences; and Professor of Political Science, Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, Brown University, USA
