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THE GIST of Editorial for UPSC Exams : 13 November 2018 (A gated revolution)

A gated revolution

Mains Paper 1: Society
Prelims level: Urbanisation
Mains level: Salient features of Indian Society

Urban India is the site of the most dramatic changes in human life. The manner in which we work, live, play, do business, enter into relationships and construct communities is firmly entrenched in the life of our cities.
The romanticised village of post-Independence cinema holds little interest for young people in particular, as they seek new futures within possibilities offered by the inexorable expansion of urban agglomerations.
Through unplanned and semi-planned means, our cities absorb with different degrees of hospitality migrants of different capacities, including those escaping provincial feudal social and economic structures and the fading promise of regional development.
In 2011, for the first time since the Census came into being, the absolute urban growth recorded a higher rate than the rural one.
Urban life for many may still be brutish, but it is possibly longer and not as short as in the countryside.

This new aspect of the urban can be most frequently witnessed in the manner in which Residents Welfare Associations (RWAs) are able to galvanise members to act on an issue that affects their perceived interests.
The growth of RWAs is, in turn, linked to both political nurturing of an important constituency (such as the Delhi Bhagidari scheme under the Congress) and a gathering sense of self among middle-class urban residents.
This is a new form of activism, enacted through lycra-clad bicycle enthusiasts, leisure activists, environmentalists, bird-watchers and “ordinary mums and dads” who want a better life in the city.
The ongoing residents’ campaign against the construction of a six-lane highway through Gurgaon’s Aravalli Bio-Diversity Park that stretches over 400 acres is a case in point.
Spurred through word of mouth, social media and news reports, protesters have gathered in their thousands, with steely resolve and placards aloft.
Alongside, local editions of national newspapers have carried extended coverage of protests as well as columns by Gurgaon residents that speak of the kinds of sustainable infrastructure that cities need for a decent life. The protagonists are articulate and rational in their evaluation: The urban fabric requires careful attention to the balance between physical and natural surroundings. “Who will bring back the birds?”, they rightly ask in one strong voice.

The current forms of urban politics are quite different from mass political movements we have seen in the past and it is this difference that holds the key to the kind of society we may end up with.
Its key concerns are based on redefining the idea of the “ordinary” person.
The ordinary person now is the relatively privileged white-collar professional who, it is asserted, has been exploited and denied his or her rights because of state “appeasement” of the poor.
The ordinary person pays taxes and gets little in return.
The ordinary person pays for electricity while slum-dwellers steal it.
The anger of this ordinary man is at the heart of a new sense of the city where the apparently dispossessed stake a claim through agitational activities that are increasingly narrowly defined in terms of their objectives.
This new outlook seems particularly prevalent in newer urban locations where the separation between the well-off and the poor is embedded in the fundamentals of planning.

Our cities will fail not just because we lack parks, gardens and highways. Rather, they will slide into dystopian states because of a failure of the imagination.
The nature of a liveable city is fundamentally connected to the possibilities of freedom and decency of life for the vast majority that has limited means to influence these aspects.
A “global” or “smart” city is, primarily, an advanced form of habitation because of the manner in which its residents think.
What is required is an urban consciousness that is concerned with both the physical infrastructure as well as its social one: Diversity, equity, and fair treatment of its most vulnerable workers.
Without such a consciousness, we will end up with a situation where it is easy to gather the well-off to defend a park but impossible to make them rise to defend the idea of a city.