Decentralization and small cities: Towards more effective urban disaster governance?

Habitat International xxx (2015) 1e8

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Decentralization and small cities: Towards more effective urban disaster governance? Andrew Rumbach* University of Colorado Denver, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o

a b s t r a c t

Article history: Received 11 August 2015 Accepted 14 August 2015 Available online xxx

Decentralization, the devolution of fiscal, political, and administrative powers and responsibilities from centralized governments to local ones, has spread rapidly throughout Asia. Proponents of decentralization argue that it has the potential to improve local capacity for governing many challenging issues, including the management of hazards, disasters, and the effects of global climate change. Disaster governance is particularly challenging in small cities, communities that house a large portion of Asia's urban population but where disaster management institutions, knowledge, and capacity are often lacking. Across Asia, a substantial portion of urban growth is occurring in small cities. This paper examines whether decentralization has led to more effective disaster governance in small cities in India, using the state of West Bengal as a case study. It finds that decentralization has created the potential for improved disaster governance, by providing constitutional and legal authority for improved urban governance and local disaster management plans and programs. In reality, however, decentralization has yet to significantly reduce urban disaster risk in small cities in West Bengal. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Decentralization Disaster Governance Small cities India

1. Introduction: decentralization and disaster governance in urbanizing Asia Decentralization, the devolution of fiscal, political, and administrative powers and responsibilities from centralized governments to local ones, has spread rapidly throughout Asia over the past several decades (Chattopadhyay, 2012; Cheema & Rondinelli, 2007; Clark, Fujiki & Davidson 2008; Faguet, 2014). The arguments in favor of decentralization vary by country and by context, but several are common. Proponents of decentralization argue that it will improve the responsiveness and effectiveness of local governance by allowing local citizens to hold their public officials more accountable (Bardhan & Mookherjee, 2006a; Chattopadhyay, 2012; Faguet, 2012), improve local participation and increase the voice of citizens and civil society actors in governance (Cheema & Rondinelli, 2007), spur local economic growth and social justice (Behar & Kumar 2002), increase political stability by giving minority populations control over local governments and issues that affect them (Faguet, 2014), and reduce corruption and rent-seeking behavior by politicians and political parties (Lessman & Markwardt

* College of Architecture and Planning, University of Colorado Denver, Campus Box 126, PO Box 173364, Denver, CO 80217-3364, USA. E-mail address: [email protected].

2010; Vernon, Williams, Corbridge, & Srivastava, 2006), among other benefits. Urban decentralization vests greater authority in local governments and officials, with the goal of improving city governance. As Miller and Bunnell (2013) argue, decentralized urban governance has the potential to make cities and urban areas “potential sites of innovation in addressing challenges related to urban growth … and the management of resources for liveable and sustainable urban environments” (716). Among the key challenges facing Asian cities are the rising costs of disasters and climate change. The economic and human costs of urban disasters have risen significantly in recent decades, a trend that seems likely to continue as the pace and scale of urbanization in Asia increases (UN-ISDR, 2015). Urban disaster governance is particularly challenging in smalland medium-sized cities, communities that house a large portion of Asia's urban population but where disaster management institutions, knowledge, and capacity are often lacking (Rumbach, 2016). This paper asks whether decentralization, in urban governance and in disaster management, has to the potential to improve disaster governance in these smaller urban centers. I focus on India, one of Asia's fastest growing countries and one where urban disaster management is a core challenge. India has charted a gradual path towards decentralized governance since Independence. In 1993, two amendments to the Indian constitution

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formally devolved many key social sector and development powers to local governments. In 2005, India passed the National Disaster Management Act (NDMA), which devolves many of the disasterrelated planning and decision-making functions to state and district authorities, and lays the groundwork for community-based disaster management. Will these changes translate into better urban disaster governance in smaller cities? I base my findings on a qualitative study of small cities and disaster governance in West Bengal, one of India's most populous and hazard-affected states. I made six research visits to the state from 2009 to 2015, focusing my study on a series of small cities in the Darjeeling District, a mountainous region in the north of the state. I conducted semi-structured interviews with 22 key informants that included current and former government officials, non-governmental organizations, and researchers.1 I also gathered government documents including development plans and local, district, and state hazard mitigation plans. The paper proceeds in five parts. Following this introduction, I briefly describe the process of urban decentralization in India. Next, I describe the movement towards decentralized disaster management through the Disaster Management Act of 2005. Third, I problematize the rapid growth of small- and medium-sized cities in the context of environmental hazards and climate change, arguing that small cities represent a distinct challenge to disaster governance. Fourth, I examine the impacts of decentralization, in both urban governance and disaster management, in the state of West Bengal. While West Bengal has proactively embraced urban decentralization and the creation of local disaster management plans, the disaster risk generated by the growth of small cities continues to grow, and has not been acknowledged or adequately addressed in plans or in practice. I conclude with a brief discussion of whether decentralization should be regarded as a potential mechanism for effective disaster governance in small cities. 2. Decentralization and urban governance in India India took decisive steps towards decentralization in 1992 with the passage of the 73rd and 74th amendments to the constitution, which focused on village and city governance respectively. The amendments, which took effect the following year, gave constitutional status to rural and urban local governments for the first time, mandated regular elections for local officials, and reserved seats in local elected bodies for underrepresented groups (Chaudhuri, 2006, 153). Though the central government had encouraged decentralization on a voluntary basis since at least 1957, only West Bengal had made any real movement towards increased local governance prior to 1992 (Bardhan & Mookerjee, 2006c; Chaudhuri, 2006). India's constitution, adopted in 1949, made the states responsible for local governance, and states were typically unwilling to give away their power to local bodies. As a result, local governments remained largely weak and ineffective (Jayal, 2006; Chaudhuri, 2006, 161). The amendments were seen as “a means of promoting greater community participation and involvement in development efforts,” and the impetus for the amendments came from a “widespread consensus regarding the failures of the bureaucratic and centralized apparatus of the Indian developmental state” (Chaudhuri, 2006, 154). These failures included the ineffective delivery of public services, poor provision and maintenance of infrastructure, lack of equity, and failure to address core deprivations associated with poverty (Chaudhuri, 2006, 160). The language of

1 Because of the sensitivity of some of the interview topics, particularly discussions of government efficacy and corruption, I have chosen to keep the names and offices of interview participants confidential.

the amendments recognize as much. The preamble to the 74th amendment, for instance, argues that in many states urban local bodies (ULBs), the primary governance institution for cities, were unable to “perform effectively as vibrant democratic units of selfgovernment.” The 74th amendment, sometimes called the Nagapalika Act, incorporates urban governance into the Constitution in order to more firmly establish the relationship between the state government and municipalities. The amendment calls for three types of municipalities: 1) Nagar Panchayats for “areas in transition from a rural area to urban area,” 2) Municipal Councils for smaller urban areas, and 3) Municipal Corporations for larger urban areas.2 For municipalities with populations of three lakhs (300,000) or more, the amendment calls for the creation of Ward Committees, made up of representatives from one or more wards within the municipality. The 74th amendment gives significant latitude to individual states to determine the exact role and functioning of local governments. It introduced the 12th schedule (Table 1), which describes the functional domains of municipal governments.3 Several are critical to effective disaster governance, like urban planning or the regulation of land-use and building construction. The 12th schedule is not a mandate, however; state governments determine which functions to devolve and which to keep centralized. The 73rd and 74th amendments were passed in the same year, but significantly more progress has been made towards rural decentralization (Bardhan & Mookherjee, 2006a; Chattopadhyay, 2012; Ramanathan, 2007; Singh, 2013). A common sentiment among observers of urban policy is that the 74th amendment has “not lived up to its promise and expectations” compared to the relative success of the panchayati raj (village council) institutions established by the 73rd amendment (Mehta & Mehta 2010; Singh, 2013). The attention to rural reform is consistent with India's historical ambivalence towards its cities. For decades the policy of the government seemed aimed at slowing down or stopping urbanization rather than promoting or guiding it (Mukhopadhyay, 2006, 879; Ramanathan, 2007, 674). In recent years India's stance towards its cities has begun to shift, as the sheer scale of the country's urban transition comes into focus. India will add close to 250 million people to its urban population between 2010 and 2030, an urban growth rate unparalleled outside of China. Equally important is the recognition of the contribution of India's cities to the national economy; Indian cities generate more than 70% of the country's GDP, but severe deficits in infrastructure, basic services, and capacity for urban governance are seen as limitations to foreign investment and economic growth. In response, the central government has focused greater attention on the management of cities and has worked to reinvigorate urban decentralization efforts. The Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM), launched in 2005, is the most ambitious urban development program in the country's history. The JNNURM aims to build basic infrastructure and strengthen municipal governments “in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution (seventy-fourth) Amendment Act, 1992” (Mukhopadhyay, 2006, 879). The JNNURM requires full implementation of the 74th amendment as a prerequisite for receiving funds, an incentive the Center hopes will hasten reforms (Mehta &

2 The amendment gives the authority to determine what constitutes a “transitional area,” “small urban area,” or “large urban area” to the Governor of the state, based on factors that may include population, population density, revenue generation, percentage of employment in non-agricultural activities, or other factors as “he may deem fit.” See Amendment 74, section 243Q(2). 3 The Indian constitution enumerates and categorizes bureaucratic activities and responsibilities through schedules.

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Table 1 Summary of Twelfth Schedule: responsibilities of municipal governments. C C C C C C C C

Urban planning Regulation of land-use and building construction Planning for economic and social development Roads and bridges Water supply Public Health, sanitation, and solid waste management Fire services Slum improvement and upgrading

C C C C C

Urban poverty alleviation Provision of urban amenities and facilities, like parks and playgrounds Public amenities like lighting, parking lots, bus stops Urban forestry Advocacy for “weaker sections of society,” including mentally and physically disabled

Source: Constitution of India, 74th Amendment, Article 243W

Mehta 2010, 21). In June of 2015, the newly elected Modi government announced two flagship urban development programs, the Smart Cities Mission and the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation. Together, these two programs are meant to support 600 small and large cities with approximately 980 billion rupees ($15.5 billion) in funds over five years (Sharma, 2015). The story of urban decentralization in India is thus incomplete. While there is a strong constitutional foundation for decentralization and a growing sense of urgency about the state of Indian cities, onthe-ground reforms have been slow to materialize. This is especially true in India's small cities, where urban policy has remained largely on paper. These secondary cities, home to more than 230 million Indians, have grown “on their own and in their own way,” with worrisome results (Shaw, 1996, 224; see also Singh, 2013). 3. Decentralizing disaster management in India Like the decentralization movement in local government, international best practices in disaster management have moved decisively from centralized and top-down systems for disaster relief towards community-based models rooted in local contexts. The term “disaster governance” has gained popularity because it recognizes that a broad and diverse set of actors contribute to risk reduction and resilience, including governments, non-profits, private sector businesses, and civil society entities, operating at different scales and across borders (Tierney, 2012, 342, 347). Internationally, decentralization of disaster governance has steadily grown in popularity, and major international agreements like the Hyogo Framework for Action (2005e2015) stress the need for an increased role for local governments and civil society actors in disaster risk reduction (DRR) efforts (Allen, 2006; Shaw, Ishiwatari, & Arnold, 2012). The efficacy of the decentralization of disaster management activities is still uncertain, as we have only limited research measuring the impacts of such efforts. What research we do have suggests variation across countries and regions. In Indonesia, democratic decentralization since 2001 has “empowered nongovernmental organizations and civil society actors in disaster preparedness, response, and recovery activities,” even as they have harmed local response and recovery capacity in some areas (Miller, 2014). In Taiwan, efforts towards bottom-up disaster management planning has been shown to improve community emergency management capacity and reduce vulnerability to natural hazards (Chen, Liu, & Chan 2006). Like decentralization in local government, it is hard to reach any general conclusions because decentralization of disaster management is occurring in diverse ways and in unique contexts. Until fairly recently, India's disaster management apparatus was largely centered in state governments and focused almost entirely on emergency relief and community rehabilitation post-disaster (Kapur, 2005; Saikia, 2005). The Disaster Management Act (DMA), passed in 2005, is now the guiding framework for disaster risk management nationwide. The DMA broadens the mandate of

disaster management to include pre-disaster mitigation and risk reduction, capacity building at the state and local level, and longterm reconstruction post-disaster. In some ways, the DMA further centralizes disaster management. The Act created significant authority within the central government, primarily through the creation of the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), chaired by the Prime Minister of India, and a National Response Force. The NDMA has the authority to set national policies on disaster management, draw up a national disaster management plan, provide guidance for state-level planning, and provide funds for disaster mitigation, among other responsibilities. The DMA has also laid the groundwork for a significantly more decentralized disaster management system. It mandates that each state establish a Disaster Management Authority, to be headed by the Chief Minister of the State. Similar to the functioning of the NDMA, State Disaster Management Authorities (SDMAs) are required to develop a state disaster management plan and are authorized to establish state policies and recommend the provision of funds for disaster mitigation. Additionally, the DMA calls for the creation of District disaster management plans. The Disaster Management Act is a significant departure from the previous approach to disaster management. While the ultimate authority for managing disasters remains with state governments, the DMA expands their responsibilities and lays a legal foundation for district and local-level planning and DRR projects. The DMA requires that state mitigation plans provide a vulnerability assessment of “different parts of the State to different forms of disasters,” inherently recognizing that risk will vary by district and community. The DMA also establishes the legal authority for the distribution of funds from the Center to state governments for the purposes of hazard mitigation, capacity building, and preparedness, which could directly benefit local governments wishing to develop their own community disaster management plans. Three criticisms of the DMA are salient to discussions of decentralization. First, the DMA, similar to the 74th Amendment, gives individual states wide authority to manage their own disaster management authorities. So, while the DMA does give states the legal authority to take major steps towards decentralized disaster governance, it does not require them to do so. Second, the DMA is relatively silent on the role of non-governmental organizations or civil society actors in disaster management, and is meant to be implemented “entirely through the government system” (Martin, 2007; Sarma & Sarkar, 2006, 3762). Finally, the mandated role for local authorities in the Act is also relatively limited. The DMA does state that the local authority “may take such other measures as may be necessary for disaster management,” but does not provide any further guidance on what those measures might be. Despite these criticisms, the DMA has created the legal foundation for decentralized disaster governance in India. The remainder of the paper will focus on small cities and ask whether decentralization of governance and of disaster managementdin theory or in practicedhas the potential to improve disaster governance in those communities.

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Table 2 Small and Intermediate sized cities in India. Size of urban settlement

1995

1995

2005

2005

2015

2015

Fewer than 300,000 300,000e500,000 500,000e1 million Total

126,901,000 15,812,000 27,558,000 170,271,000

50% 6% 11% 67%

150,425,000 17,919,000 29,150,000 197,494,000

46% 5% 9% 60%

173,162,000 22,383,000 32,173,000 227,718,000

41% 5% 8% 54%

Source: United Nations World Urbanization Prospects 2014

4. Small cities and urban growth in India Scholarly discourses on cities, in India and elsewhere in the Global South, predominantly focus on large urban centers: places with high populations (megacities), global economic and/or cultural influence (global cities), and/or significant political importance. In reality, the epicenters of urbanization in India and the Global South are not in the largest cities, but the smaller ones. Small- and medium-sized cities will account for the majority of urban growth in the 21st century, but are largely “off the map” in planning and policy dialogs (Bell & Jayne, 2009; Pelling, 2003, 2012; Robinson, 2002). In 2015, approximately 54% of the world's population, or about 3.8 billion people, lives in cities (UN, 2014). Nearly half of this global urban population lives in a small city, defined by the UN as having less than 500,000 people (UN, 2014). Another 8% lives in cities with populations between 500,000 and 1 million. By contrast, less than 7% of the global urban population lives in megacities, agglomerations with 10 million or more inhabitants, and just 17% lives in cities with over 5 million (large cities and megacities).4 In India, while the overall share of the urban population living in cities with less than one million residents has declined over the past 20 years (from 67% in 1995 to 54% in 2015), the absolute population in those places grew from approximately 170 to 227 million (Table 2). It is also worth noting the growth of large villages in India, communities with populations of 5000 or more that are not classified as cities. These large villages share many of the same characteristics as small cities, like higher population densities and larger shares of commercial activity (World Bank 2013). In 2011, these large villages housed more than 16% of India's population (more than 200 million people), up from 5% of the population in 1951 and 14% in 1991.

5. The challenge of disaster governance in small cities Like our discourses on cities generally, the majority of what we know about urban disaster risk is grounded in the experience of large cities; small cities are largely absent from the urban disaster literature (Pelling, 2012). In previous work I argued that managing disaster risk in small- and medium-sized cities in India is uniquely challenging because of four characteristics of such places: 1) their physical, cultural, and experiential distance from centers of power and influence; 2) their lower capacity for urban governance; 3) a lack of environmental experience and learning; and 4) a lack of redundancy in core infrastructural systems (Rumbach, 2015). In my research on small cities and disaster management, the theme of distance is one of the most frequently cited challenges for

4 The UN statistics on small- and medium-sized cities do not distinguish between urban centers on the edges of existing cities and those at a significant distance from existing centers of trade, culture, and politics. Both get counted in the category of “small city,” even if the former are effectively parts of larger cities or urban megaregions. Thanks to Michael Douglass for emphasizing this point.

achieving goals of disaster risk reduction. Small cities are often far away from where decisions get made, and struggle to insert themselves into the agenda of decision-making bodies. When considering small cities beyond those in the immediate vicinity of large urban centers (which collectively constitute the urban agglomeration), distance is perhaps the key characteristic that makes them uniquely challenging for disaster governance. Distance expresses itself in multiple ways. There is a political distance between constituents in small cities and elected officials. In countries like India, where priorities for disaster management are determined at the state level, voices from small cities are competing with a much larger political majority in large cities and rural areas. It is often difficult for small cities to get their particular needs and concerns on the state disaster management agenda, especially when they face different hazards than the majority of voters. Besides physical distance there is also an experiential distance between state officials living in state or district headquarters and people living in small cities. In a country as geographically and climatologically diverse as India, the nature of hazards often varies significantly across states, and decision makers tend to privilege the hazards they know from past experience or from exposure in their own communities. In West Bengal, for example, this means that the overwhelming majority of attention is focused on floods and cyclones, because they are the hazards that impact the largest populations. Less common hazards like landslides and earthquakes affect many small cities in the northern part of the state, but receive relatively little policy attention. Lastly, there can be a cultural distance between small cities and those in power at a higher level. This cultural distance may be ethnic or religious, but also a “big city, small city” divide. For example, in my study of northern West Bengal, I found a distinct pattern of state authorities undervaluing the knowledge and experience of local people in landslide-affected communities in favor of technical and scientific knowledge emanating from the state and national capitals. A second characteristic of small citiesdperhaps the most important factor overalldis a lack of capacity for urban governance. Small cities generate many of the same risk factors as larger urban centers, but without an accompanying growth in the capacity of local institutions to manage risk. Cities, large and small, exhibit many of the same dynamics of risk: increasing populations living on hazardous land, a growing reliance on complex infrastructures that are susceptible to natural hazards, deforestation and other types of environmental degradation, building and development that is incompatible with the local environment, etc. (Graham, 2010; Hardoy & Satterthwaite, 1991; Pelling, 2003; Rumbach, 2014). In larger cities, urban risk is typically governed by a broad and complex set of actors, institutions, laws and policies, local and regional planning, private and public sector entities, and civil society actors, among others (Pelling, 2003; Tierney, 2012). This is not to say that all large cities effectively govern disaster risk, but that the core components of a resilient urban system are more likely to be found in larger cities than smaller ones, and in cities with high concentrations of public institutions than those without. The majority of studies focused on small cities highlight their reduced

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capacity for governance and planning, and the same argument could be made with regards to disaster governance (e.g. Bell & Jayne, 2009; Cross, 2001; Montgomery, 2008). A third characteristic of small cities is that their growth tends to outstrip their environmental learning. The growth of cities and the occurrence of natural hazards typically take place in very different timescales. A destructive earthquake, cyclone, or landslide may only occur in a geographic area every few decades or perhaps centuries. Small cities, on the other hand, may emerge in a matter of years or decades, often between major hazard events. For cities with long histories, past disasters tend to get written into the physical, spatial, and cultural fabrics of the place. Where people live, how they build their homes, the location of critical facilities, what infrastructure they invest in, and numerous other decisions are often influenced by past disasters. Small and rapidly growing cities have not necessarily had those learning experiences and are often growing in ways that are conducive to economic growth and development rather than disaster resilience. Short-term concerns outweigh distant and abstract warnings about natural hazards, and the exuberance of urban growth has yet to be tempered by the tragic lessons learned from major disasters. A final characteristic of small cities that makes them uniquely at risk from environmental hazards is their lack of redundancy, or the properties that allow for a system to have “alternate options, choices and substitutions under stress” (O'Rourke, 2007, 25). In cities, any number of systems combine to create and maintain the whole: physical infrastructure, social infrastructure, supportive ecosystems, metabolic systems like food production and waste disposal, etc. Whereas large cities, especially in the Global North, tend to have multiple, redundant infrastructural and social systems that help them to continue functioning even after a disaster, small cities typically do not, with major implications for disaster governance. Redundancy extends to civil society as well. While larger cities have multiple, overlapping (and sometimes competing) organizations and institutions committed to issues like disaster risk reduction, smaller places may have few such groups, if any. When they do, they are often single organizations or individual “champions,” fragile to disturbance. Given the scale of small city growth in India, is decentralization of urban governance and disaster management a promising pathway towards effective disaster governance? This is the question I turn to in the next section, using the state West Bengal as a case study.

6. Decentralization and urban disaster governance: the case of West Bengal One of the unique features of decentralization in India is that the constitution gives legislative domain over local governments to the states rather than the central government (Chaudhuri, 2006, 154). As such, there has been “tremendous variation in the design, scope, and extent of devolution to local governments.”5 As a number of scholars have warned, judging the general impact of decentralization on any particular area of governance in India is difficult, because of the broad authority the constitutional amendments give to state governments in developing local governance institutions (e.g. Pal 2006; Chattopadhyay 2012). For that reason, this section will focus on West Bengal, India's fourth most populous state.6

5 An earlier attempt to revitalize rural local government was introduced in the Parliament in 1989 by the government of Rajiv Gandhi. The bill was eventually defeated, with one of the main criticisms against it being that it “offered the states little discretion in the design of local government reforms” (Chaudhuri, 2006, 157). 6 The population of West Bengal was 91.3 million in 2011 (Census of India 2011).

5

West Bengal has had a strong history of decentralization and is one of India's most hazard-affected states, making it an interesting and instructive case study of decentralization and its impact on disaster governance in small cities. I specifically examine urban planning and disaster management in the Darjeeling District, a mountainous region in the north of West Bengal with three small cities. West Bengal has been at the forefront of the urban decentralization movement in India.7 In 1980, the state passed an amendment to the Bengal Municipal Act of 1923 mandating regular elections of municipal governments every five years. A further amendment in 1993, conforming to the passage of the 74th amendment, established a two-tier urban governance structure with a municipal government and a ward committee in every urban local body. Whereas municipal government representatives are elected by the people, ward committee members are appointed from among the people (Chattopadhyay, 2012, 186e187). The reforms were put into place by the Left Front, a coalition government led by the Community Party of India (Marxist) that ruled West Bengal from 1977 to 2011. The Left Front government “substantially increased the authority of local governments at the expense of the state bureaucracy,” including the transfer of administration of local infrastructure and welfare programs (Bardhan & Mookherjee, 2006a, 20). The West Bengal experience is “hailed as an instance of successful implementation … that other Indian states would do well to emulate” (Bardhan & Mookerjee, 2006c, 203). Consistent with the Twelfth Schedule to the Constitution of India, municipal governments in West Bengal are responsible for key planning activities like land-use planning and building regulation, as well as the provision of services like solid waste disposal, water supply, and roadways. Local development plans nominally determine the provision of infrastructure and regulate urban growth. In reality, urbanization is proceeding largely unchecked, and municipal authorities struggle to provide basic services to match burgeoning demands. Building regulation is illustrative of the larger disconnect between the official authority of local urban government and their actual practice. In the Darjeeling District, multi-story building construction is inherently risky because of the steep terrain, unstable soils, and frequency of landslide, earthquake, and rainfall hazards. Decentralization of urban governance has given the various urban local governments in the District the authority to regulate building construction in a manner consistent with the unique physical and environmental needs of the region. All three cities in the District have adopted building regulations that limit the height of building construction and require mandatory setbacks from roadways and adjacent buildings, to limit the risk from environmental hazards. And yet, the vast majority of new buildings that have been constructed in the region over the past decade violate these basic development rules. In Darjeeling, for instance, hundreds of buildings now exceed the local height restrictions (see Fig. 1). Local architects and planners acknowledge that the building regulations exist only on paper, and argue that local political leaders are unwilling to restrict development. State planning officials likewise blame local political leadership, arguing that the power to regulate development is the purview of urban local governments. Similarly, other areas of urban development, like water supply and roadway construction, are proceeding in violation of basic urban development rules and plans. An analysis of disaster mitigation plans in West Bengal yields similar conclusions. At a state level, the West Bengal Department of

7 Chaudhuri (2006), in his “aggregated index of devolution” in the 14 largest Indian states, ranked West Bengal as the second most decentralized, trailing only Karnataka.

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Fig. 1. Multi-Storied construction in Darjeeling City. Source: Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons License.

Disaster Management published a state disaster management plan in 2009 (updated in 2014), in accordance with the Disaster Management Act of 2005. The plan aims to provide a “consistent, statewide framework to enable state, local, [sic] governments, Central government and the private sector to work together to mitigate, prepare for, respond to and recover from the effects of emergencies …” (West Bengal Department of Disaster Management, 2013, 8). In theory, the state disaster management plan is meant to synthesize district levels plans and reflect the wisdom and planning priorities of local communities. It is also meant to be a vehicle for the identification and prioritization of local projects for center and state funds earmarked for disaster management. In reality, the West Bengal plan is largely a creation of the state Executive Committee and does not include any specific recommendations or actions generated directly by local planning processes. As a result, the plan displays a poor understanding of local conditions and needs. In sections of the plan related to hazards and risk analysis, for example, the plan is vague about how specific hazards impact different regions. Landslide hazards, which are the major threat to lives and property in the small cities in the Darjeeling District, are a case in point. Landslide hazards are described in a single paragraph, without any specific reference to their contemporary or historic impacts in the north of the state, the diversity of landslide hazards in different geomorphological contexts, or the relationship between human activity and increasing incidence of landslide disasters. Without a clear analysis of local hazards, vulnerabilities, and risk, the plan itself is not an effective mechanism for guiding policy-making or allocating national or state funds to effectively manage risk. The Disaster Management Act also requires the creation and updating of district disaster management plans (DDMP) which are meant to engage local communities, assess disaster risk, and develop measures to prepare for, mitigate, respond to, and recover from disasters (NDMA, 2014). DDMPs in West Bengal have yet to live up to these expectations, and are instead largely disaster response plans that list key contact persons and shelter locations for villages and blocks within the district. The Darjeeling District

plan, for instance, includes a summary of disaster events affecting households in the previous decade but does not include any specific information on future hazard scenarios, assessment of community or household vulnerability, or recommendations for policies or projects that would help to reduce risk (Darjeeling District, 2012). Several DDMPs in West Bengal have begun to address long-term disaster mitigation, however, plans that I will refer to in the concluding section. On the whole, however, DDMPs remain underutilized as a vehicle for disaster governance, in small cities or elsewhere in the state. 7. Urban decentralization and the NDMA: towards resilient small cities? As the costs of disasters continue to rise in India, managing disaster risk in small cities has emerged as a fundamental challenge. India's move towards decentralization, in local government and in disaster management, could potentially open pathways towards more effective disaster governance. In this concluding section, I consider how decentralization might theoretically address the unique challenges of urban disaster governance in small cities, counterpoised with the on-the-ground reality in West Bengal. One of the major arguments in favor of decentralization is that it increases citizen participation in government and reduces the distance between government officials and their constituents (Pinto, 2006; Ramanathan, 2007). As Bardhan and Mookerjee (2006b) argue, decentralization is “typically seen as an important element of participatory democracy” where citizens are able to voice their preferences to elected officials, who are themselves held accountable to their constituents (4). Further, they propose that “local government officials are likely to be better informed about preferences of local citizens and thus exhibit greater responsiveness to heterogeneous needs” (7). In sum, decentralization may theoretically solve some of the issues that arise from the distance between small cities and centers of power, by allowing more direct participation and representation of marginalized citizens and communities in governments. Decentralization could bring increased policy attention

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and resources to bear on “minority” hazards and environmental challenges that affect small cities in places like the Darjeeling District. Closing the gap between government and citizens could also make municipalities more responsive to citizen demands for action on issues like disaster risk reduction. In reality, decentralization has yet to close the distance either between citizens and the government, or between small cities and the state capital. One issue is the lack of participation in planning and governance. While the voting rate in the state is very high (over 80% in the last nationwide election), opportunities for participation in local government are rare, despite the rhetoric exhorting community engagement in planning (Ghosh, 1988; Pal, 2006). Local development plans are written without any meaningful public involvement, as are the state and district disaster management plans, despite requirements that such plans take a “participatory approach” (NDMA, 2007, 2014). There are a few examples of local participation in disaster management plans elsewhere in the state, such as the Burdwan DDMP for 2013e2014, which describes at least one village-level meeting between disaster management authorities and citizens during plan formulation. Burdwan is the exception, however, with the vast majority of disaster management plans created separately from the communities they intend to govern. Decentralization also has the potential to improve urban governance capacity, a key challenge in small cities. Decentralization presents something of a catch-22 in this regard, because small cities would likely be ill-equipped to manage a sudden influx of resources and technical responsibilities. Observers of Indian urbanization argue that a long history of centralized planning and fiscal management has created cities with low capacity for governance (e.g. Banerjee & Chakravorty, 1994; Mehta & Mehta 2010; Mukhopadhyay, 2006; Pal, 2006; Shaw, 1996). Mukhopadhyay (2006), writing about the implementation of the JNNURM, observes that the lack of infrastructure in Indian cities is the symptom of a larger disease: that “[cities] do not have a government that can enable the citizens to decide to provide themselves the infrastructure they need and the financial powers to pay for it, if they so decide” (883). Under such circumstances, it would be “unwise to immediately hand overall decision making to an elected ULB with patently little capacity.” The same could be said for disaster governance; placing the responsibility for such an important and complex task on a lower-capacity local government may be a recipe for failure. One obvious recommendation is a more gradual decentralization of governance and funding, with significant support for capacity building at the local level. Another recommendation would be to strengthen the role of non-governmental organizations and the private sectors, actors who are virtually absent from the existing disaster management infrastructure in India. Doing so would build redundancy in civil society and increase local capacity for disaster governance. In conclusion, decentralization of government and disaster management in India has the potential to improve disaster governance in small cities, by closing the distance between citizens and their government and by improving local governance capacity. The legal and constitutional authority for decentralization is now in place, with the 74th amendment and the Disaster Management Act laying the groundwork for improved, more community-centered disaster governance. Evidence from West Bengal shows that the theoretical benefits of decentralization have yet to materialize however, in local government actions or in disaster management plans. References Allen, K. M. (2006). Community-based disaster preparedness and climate adaptation: local capacity building in the Philippines. Disasters, 30(1), 81e101.

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