Decentralisation, decolonisation,... you get the idea!

Of course, I am not suggesting something new or radical here. Over the last few years, we have had more and more activists and philosophers explain to us that "small is beautiful", even necessary given the social and ecological crises we're in today (and have been in for a while).

However, while this is starting to get accepted in personal decision-making contexts, where it really matters, we're still shying away from this decision-making. When we talk about the future of cities like Bengaluru and Mumbai, we're still exploring ways to retain the power with the cities, build flyovers (which like activist Srinivas Alavilli continues to try and explain is a 'solution of the 19th century'), and work around people's capitalist greed rather than work towards more decentralised, community-driven, transformational solutions.

While activists and architects world over have recommended regional levelling up and building up tier-2 and tier-3 cities to reduce pressure on urban infrastructure, it's often seen as leftist impractical propaganda; "yes, we've tried to do that in Hyderabad, Goa, Bristol, etc, but it doesn't work because of agglomeration effects, etc". But how are we determining what works!

We often tend to look at the economic gains we make as a state within the first 5-10 years of a project. In fact that is how most public sector decisions are currently made: what would yield the most optimal outcomes in the next 5-10 years. We do not consider longer term. We do not even consider:

  • The future costs of maintaining the things we choose to implement
  • The costs of discontinuing something we can't maintain
  • The costs of 'dependency' on an intervention
  • The cost of doing something poorly
  • The unintended consequences we're having on equity and sustainability

Also, to that last point, I often wonder, is it really unintended if we know it fully well?

While as a humanity we can be quite sceptical, somehow we're too optimistic about the tolerance of the planet and people living on the edges. A wise person once said "we're going to have to move out of our cities in the next 50 years; the sooner we do it, the more control we've".

Beyond the leftist agenda of 'saving' the planet and all its people, even from an economic and capitalist standpoint there's something noteworthy here.

  • Agricultural innovations like Akshayakalpa can and do benefit from their proximity to urban markets like Bengaluru but they could've never really started in an urban centre.
  • Even solutions like iteach schools could not have started in a Mumbai because in their early years before their model was proven they needed free public infrastructure which is not the easiest to get in a city like Mumbai.

There are problems and solutions that you can only nurture in less fast-paced, less urban spaces. And at least for that reason, we need to build up our tier-2 and tier-3 cities. You could claim that Bristol hasn't become London V2.0 despite all the efforts put into it, but I would submit to you that Bristol never tried to be! Bristol is where the green party stands a chance; Bristol is where artists like Banksy go to be; Bristol is where economic development co-operatives and democratic ownership are cool. Bristol ain't London y'all; Bristol has and exudes hope <3

And I think that's exactly it! We need to redefine what 'small is beautiful' means at a macro level; what we want from our future non-colonial non-capitalist cities; we're not building cities that could be a competition to Bengaluru and Mumbai; we're setting out to step out of the competition.

Here's to decentralisation, decolonisation, degrowth and all the things a 5-10 year cost-benefit analysis cannot justify; here's to our competence as a species to be more ambitious about our future on this planet and our ability to make decisions beyond economic debauchery (after all, that's what economics is: a tool to make you feel like you're in control and you understand what's going on; and if I may be as bold, a tool to make us feel good about the mediocre decisions we make :D).

PS: No, I don't have it out for economists! Just economists who claim that economics is the be-all end-all. Thank you!