- Outsourcing Governance? Revising the Master Plan for the Bangalore Metropolitan Area, Karnataka, India    click here to open paper content474 kb
by    Karol Mohan, Anjali & Rajgopal, Champaka | anjalikmohan@gmail.com   click here to send an email to the auther(s) of this paper
Short Outline
The paper traverses the process of Plan Revision for Bangalore, India; the
first planning exercise in India to be outsourced to the private sector.
The planning process, not being participatory has resulted in a plan which
has little ownership.
Abstract
Liberalization of the Indian economy in 1991 ushered private interventions
in various sectors including urban development. In parallel, policy
interventions to decentralize planning processes to the local government
where little or no capacities exist resulted in plans being outsourced to
domestic and international consortia. While outsourcing brought new
paradigms, tensions arising out of public-private, North-South and global-
local dialectics shaped tenuous planning processes. This paper traverses
the plan preparation of the Revised Master Plan (RMP) 2015 for the
Bangalore Metropolitan Area, the first master plan in India outsourced to a
global consulting firm. The project posited the state planning agency
(owners of the plan) and the local government (implementers) as passive
recipients rather than co-partners in knowledge generation and application.
Engagement with formal, informal groups and the civil society was minimal
towards decision making. Five years after the State Government approved the
plan, not just issues of ownership and accountability loom large, an
adequate comprehension and enforcement of the plan is also lacking,
triggering debates on the legitimacy of the process. This paper maps the
gaps in the process and the resultant dispossessed product. While
supporting innovation, the authors, members of the project, argue in favour
of locally rooted and participative planning.
Keywords
Outsourcing, governance, participatory planning
Case Study presented on the ISOCARP Congress 2010: Sustainable City - Developing World
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