November 2001 Insights Issue #38

Back to Insights #38

Politics by stealth?

Local democracy is a key factor in pro-poor politics. A grassroots look at urban politics in Bangalore - a globalising city of very rich and very poor - makes this clear. Does the sheer complexity of local politics relating to land and a cluster-based local economy aid or prevent access to democratic processes by poorer groups?

Poor groups fight to safeguard urban locations that provide access to employment opportunities and cheap land. Competing against big businesses backed by higher-level government supporting large-scale projects, poor groups are forced to shape their political arena at two levels:

Land - with its different tenure regimes, possibilities for small scale incremental development (where land is urbanised over time allowing poor groups to spread their investment) and municipal-led upgrading of infrastructure and civic amenities

Local economy - clustering of local businesses shaped by reciprocal links across ethnic or class boundaries

The system of 'master planning' is detrimental to the interests of poor groups: land claims exclude poor residents who are 'regulated out' through non-participatory planning processes. They are thus excluded from employment and livelihood opportunities in productive central city locations and denied access to cheap land in rapidly urbanising peripheries. Corporate and elite groups, on the other hand, enjoy easy access to higher level government and political channels and influence urban settings to their advantage, so that mega complexes, for example, are built on small trade and manufacturing sites or on settlements housing poor and middle income groups.

Poor groups can, however, subvert formal regulations and make or maintain claims on land and economic resources. They do this through persistent pressure via lower level bureaucratic channels and 'vote bargaining' with ward councillors and local political agents, rather than through protest and direct action. Such 'politics by stealth' and 'porous' democracy can maintain and even increase poor people's ability to consolidate their land claims, obtain essential services, or protect them against exclusionary regulations.

Key research findings are:

• Even though the formal system is stacked against them, the urban poor can and do use local political processes to their advantage. Access is as important, if not more so, than transparency.
• Pro-poor politics increases with greater political autonomy of local politicians.
• Central to urban poverty is access-contested economic territory for employment and residence. Local economies are important for the livelihoods and political strengthening of poor groups.
• Access to land underpins local economics and politics providing livelihood support and creating the basis for alliances across ethnic and at times class divides.

Implications for policy include the need to:

• view poor groups as active agents rather than passive beneficiaries: civic society consists of far more than just NGOs
• give greater control to municipal bodies over land and infrastructure, in particular land regulation
• promote a decentralised ward level management system along with greater political autonomy
• have special purpose agencies (such as development authorities and service providers) functioning under municipal council direction
• ensure that land policy supports employment and livelihood issues, allowing mixed land use, incremental (as opposed to planned) development, locally responsive land regulation
• evaluate the poverty impacts of large planned schemes and land resettlement projects and bring them under the jurisdiction of local government.

Solomon Benjamin
#349, 1st block
6th Main Koramangala
Bangalore 560034
India

T +91 (0)80 552-5485
solomonbenjamin@hotmail.com
solly_benjamin@vsnl.com

See also
'Democracy, inclusive governance, and poverty in Bangalore' Urban Governance, Partnership and Poverty Working Paper #26, International Development Department, School of Public Policy, University of Birmingham by S. Benjamin and R. Bhuvaneswari, 2001
www.bham.ac.uk/IDD/activities/urban/urbgovstage2.htm

FREE Information Delivery services from ID21:

ID21 is enabled by the UK Government Department for International Development(www.dfid.gov.uk) and hosted by the Institute of Development Studies (www.ids.ac.uk/ids), at the University of Sussex, UK. Charitable Company No. 877338. ID21 is a oneworld.net (www.oneworld.org) partner and a mediachannel affiliate (www.mediachannel.org).

Right-to-Reply:

Comment on any of the issues raised in this Insights.

Read what others have said.