Gotham
City – Learning for India’s Urban Governance
Disclaimer - To avoid any obsession with isomorphic mimicry
“We didn’t call it New York, because we wanted anyone in any
city to identify with it.”
There is something eerily familiar with the challenges of the
fictional Gotham city from the Batman comics. When you look at its map versions,
it will remind you of the multiple reclaimed islands that make up Mumbai, as
much as it would the Americans about the New York geography. When you look at
its perpetual grey skeys, you will indeed be reminded of the smoky air that
embraces North India for half of the year. Its mostly underground mafia and
un-inclusive development, will remind you of the problem of poverty-driven
crimes that plagues our cities. The corruption in the establishment and the
fall of its ‘two-faced’ heroes, give you more than enough examples for the
crumbling rent-seeking in our urban development projects (the 40% contractors of
Karnataka being a case in point).
The learnings from this fictional dystopia mixed with the
opportunities of real economic development is what has been evaluated in the
write-up below, in an aim to zero in on the effective and devolved policies
that can help us navigate these challenges.
Map of Gotham
Pollution and its multiple accountability centres
In the opening shot of Tim Burton’s Batman, all you can see
is a smothering of smog and steam – symbols of economic development and crumbling
infrastructure. The stark characteristic of this air pollution is the
indifference or at least the tacit silence of the residents suffering through
it. Did you realise it? I just transitioned from Gotham to Delhi there. Siddharth
Singh (2018), the author of The Great Smog of India talks about this ‘silence’ in great detail. The
policy-paralysis on this is quite a political jamboree. The one trigger that is
required is to stop treating air pollution as a state-specific issue (given
where most of the noise comes from), but an issue which requires an multi-state
committee to oversee the implementation. Of course, before adding a new
bureaucratic layer, what is first required is either early harvesting of the
Kharif crop (September) or late sowing of the Rabi crop (November) – which requires
policy-decisions to get the right seed variety that can sustain this growing
requirement.
At a larger level on ecological preservation and pollution in
general, inter-state bodies (like the NCR Planning Board) and national
tribunals (like the National Green Tribunal) will need to take centre-stage to
ensure that beyond just the principle of “polluter will pay”, the polluters
will also be taking proactive steps in “reducing harm” in the first place. The
policy will need to be lopsided on financial incentives for technological
changes that reduce this harm, rather than only regulations which focus on
penalisation for inflicting a negative externality, as a post-mortem (see Singh, 2018).
Crime, bahubaalis and electoral bonds
Crime in urban sprawls continues to be a challenging menace.
In Gotham, "Penguin is the Gentleman
of crime. Manipulating public perception to elect him as the new mayor.
Penguin, in other words, was a classic villain who police could not bring to
justice."
Is truth stranger than fiction? (left)
The Joker faces off with Batman in the Dark Knight series
There are examples abound of such gentleman of crime who have
taken over the political landscape of India, both in rural and urban conclaves.
In such circumstances, the Batman for us are the civil society activists and
often just citizens in general, who call out hate, crime and corruption and get
caught up in the mess (just like Batman, get framed by the Penguins for the
murder of the innocent Ice Princess). To take inspiration from Milan Vaishav,
the author of When Crime Pays, who says how supporters of criminal
politicians say that these politicians don't really carry out the murders
themselves, but, ‘manage’ these murders
When the voters suffer this form of a Stockholm-syndrome, one
has to probe further and double-click to realise that the primary reason such “bahubalis”
win votes is not just their money and muscle power, but, in the absence of an effective
and administratively feasible policy, their vital ability to leverage this to
provide basic urban utilities, facilities and safety to the voters. The
structural policy-answers to this are currently in murky waters – starting with
undoing the “electoral bond” legalisation of infinite and anonymous donations,
can be a good starting point for this exercise. This will not only ensure the
rule of law, but, also more institutional inclusive safety net for the citizens
in general.
Migrating into the poverty of the slums
The Narrows of Gotham city, as seen in Batman Begins, are
an inspiration from the Kowloon Walled City of Hong Kong, and are a symbolism
of how corruption has eaten the city to its core, with no literal and
figurative breathing space that remains in its narrow alley-ways.
The Narrows of
Gotham City, as seen in the climax of the first movie of the Dark Knight series
The allegory can be very much drawn with the
Dharavi slums of Mumbai or the region of Talkatora and Munirka in Delhi. Or as
Diedre Mask
If there is a single-minded focus that
policy-makers can have in these “bastees” and slums, it is to provide them
street addresses and house numbers, which boost democracy quite dramatically,
by letting them make Aadhar card, register as voters, get access to public
utilities like water and electricity – in general, just have a more
socio-economically equitable life. There was nothing more of a celebration of
inclusivity, than when Google partnered with the NGO Addressing the Unaddressed
to help put their addresses and hence their identities on the global map! Just
like Gotham, which has needed its Leslie Thompkins and Edward Nygma (The
Riddler), to save the residents of Narrows from disappearing from the
establishment’s periphery
State capacity fails in such areas of
high-densities in urban slums. If we have to prevent anarchist interventions
like those of Gotham city residents like Riddler
Urban Planning and
Devolution of powers
The most acute
challenges arise from the fact that there are multiple government line
departments who execute projects in the same city confines where the
municipality is also doing part of its work. Unlike the American cities, where
a central Mayor runs the aggregated show and accountability, Indian cities
suffer due to either the lack of a larger master-plan or the co-ordination
issues that stem from the lack of unified accountability, which can evaluate and
implement the inter-linkages between housing, electricity, water, roads and transportation;
while deciding on its larger policies.
The base
inspiration for Gotham city for its multi-media creators across the past few
decades has kept shifting from New York, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Detroit in USA to
now the UK cities of Liverpool, Manchester and Glasgow for the escapades of Robert
Pattinson’s Batman
Artha Global
(erstwhile IDFC Institute) has been at the forefront of researching the
increasing urbanisation of India, a theme that Devashish Dhar
Hence, with this
hindsight, a mega planning rehaul for urban cities needs to be the central
focus of policy-makers. They will have to compensate for land and use
re-allocation, just like the authorities in New York did back in the early 19th
century. Most importantly, they will have to give teeth to the ULB’s (Urban
Local Bodies) like the municipalities to have devolved power, accountability,
budget, resources to make this happen - and not multiple other line
departments, national bodies and parastatal bodies causing the current jumbling
up of responsibilities and resources. More importantly our urban expanses need
their own elected Mayors. This gaping hole is even more evident, when we
realise that the practice of having Mayors exists only in the few states of Chhattisgarh,
Haryana, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand. The work done by Praja in
its Urban Governance Index is a vital reference point to understand such gaps
For our cities and
urban agglomerations, this malaise of parastatal-parasites must be gotten rid
of, once and for all.
(left) An 1817 Grid Map of New York City
David Harvey
“Municipalities are more than just providers of services.
They are democratic mechanisms through which territorially based communities of
people govern themselves at a local level.”
The balance of governance with economic opportunities
Gotham’s economic
landscape was almost an oligopoly, with most industries and sectors being controlled
either by Wayne Enterprises or Lex Corp, with S.T.A.R. Labs being a third
player in this mix
Innovation, as the
author Andrew Wear (2020) says in his book Solved
(how other countries cracked the world’s biggest problems, and we can too),
“Innovation is not generated by market forces alone. The
government’s role – as funder of research, financer of commercial risk early in
a company’s journey, as customer and partner in city development – is critical.
Well crafted regulations can give the market confidence, and creates the
incentives that drive private sector innovation”.
And all of these
developments will come to nought, if public transportation is not improved on a
war footing in our urban areas. Otherwise, the paradox of Bangalore’s Silicon Valley (visualised in the two images
below), will end up becoming the new reality of every other urban locality –
where historic water bodies are drying up, and traffic jams only getting worse
by the day – primarily due to the un-planned, almost amoebic development of the
urban area in all directions.
It is not for nothing that even after 15,000 years of urban
life and death, governance of our burgeoning cities still remains a chronic
problem. Economic development and targeted government policies to encourage the
same, can help reduce a lot of socio-economic disparities that reflect in the
slums and ‘bastees’ of our existing cities. This action will need to be
complimented with a comprehensive plan for urban development that will have to
be executed by a single accountable government body – this devolution of power
to the Urban Local Bodies will need to be a mandate from central policy-makers,
leaving aside their political differences.
In the Christopher Nolan trilogy for Batman, as we move from the
movie Batman Begins to the Dark Knight trilogy, we realise that “corruption can never end in Gotham, so
the criminals move away from the slums and into the skyscrapers, banks and
police precincts.”
So, lest we aim to
let our cities turn into a 21st century Gotham City, the reformation
of Urban Planning has to cross the realm of imagined realities into an
actionable necessity.
References
Anon., 2023. batman.fandom.com.
[Online]
Available at: https://batman.fandom.com/wiki/The_Narrows
[Accessed 27 September 2023].
Anon., 2023. batman.fandom.com. [Online]
Available at: https://batman.fandom.com/wiki/Wayne_Enterprises
[Accessed 27 September 2023].
Anon., 2023. batman.fandom.com. [Online]
Available at: https://batman.fandom.com/wiki/The_Narrows
[Accessed 27 September 2023].
AswathyHoneylal, K., 2015. Missing Lakes of Bangalore :
Cause and Effect, s.l.: ISB Certificate of Business Analytics - Batch V.
Bat-Archivist, 1999. Gotham City Map Archives. [Art]
(http://batmangothamcity.net/).
Batman Begins. 2005. [Film] Directed by
Christopher Nolan. USA: Warner Bros.
Colton, 1866. Colton Map of New York City (Manhattan,
Brooklyn, Long Island City). [Art] (Colton).
Dark Knight. 2008. [Film] Directed by Christopher Nolan. USA:
Warner Bros.
Dhar, D., 2023. India's Blind Spot (Understanding and
Managing Our Cities). s.l.:HarperCollins India.
FFC, 2006. Original seven islands of Mumbai and drainage
of Mumbai city area. [Art] (Government of Maharashtra).
GoogleMaps, n.d. Concrete Wasteland. [Art] (Google
Maps).
Harvey, D., 2012. Rebel Cities: From the Right to the
City to the Urban Revolution. s.l.:Verso Books.
Hewitt, Z., 2023. variety.com. [Online]
Available at: https://variety.com/2023/artisans/spotlight/the-batman-british-cities-1235496898/
[Accessed 27 September 2023].
Kring-Schreifels, J., 2022. theringer.com. [Online]
Available at: https://www.theringer.com/2022/3/1/22955016/batman-gotham-city-design-history
[Accessed 27 September 2023].
Mak, J. C., n.d. In Search for an Urban Dystopia -
Gotham City. [Online]
Available at: https://www.readkong.com/page/in-search-for-an-urban-dystopia-gotham-city-3256616
[Accessed 25 September 2023].
Mask, D., 2020. The Address Book (What Street Addresses
Reveal about Identity, Race, Wealth and Power). s.l.:St. Martin's
Publishing Group.
Masood, K., 2016. Why is Bangalore stuck in traffic
jams?. [Art].
Matt Andrews, L. P. M. W., 2017. Building State
Capability: Evidence, Analysis, Action. First ed. s.l.:Oxford University
Press.
Motamayor, R., 2020. https://observer.com/. [Online]
Available at: https://observer.com/2020/08/gotham-city-christopher-nolan-dark-knight-films-batman-begins/
[Accessed 28 September 2023].
Motamayor, R., 2020. https://observer.com/. [Online]
Available at: https://observer.com/2020/08/gotham-city-christopher-nolan-dark-knight-films-batman-begins/
[Accessed 28 September 2023].
Praja, M. D. W., 2020. praja.org. [Online]
Available at: https://www.praja.org/ugi#:~:text=Urban%20governance%20Index%20is%20a%20measure%20of%20the,democratic%20empowerment%20and%20accountability%20pertaining%20to%20urban%20governance.
[Accessed 27 September 2023].
Prior&Dunning, 1817. Plan of the city of New-York. [Art]
(The New York Public Library).
Reuters, 2020. Shooter at CAA Rally. [Art]
(Reuters).
Singh, S., 2018. The Great Smog of India. s.l.:Penguin
Viking.
Srinath, P., 2018. Why Do We Elect Criminals? [Interview]
(08 November 2018).
Wear, A., 2020. Solved - How Other Countries Cracked the World's Biggest Problems (and We Can Too). s.l.:Oneworld Publications.
No comments:
Post a Comment