While urban poverty alleviation has long received less attention in Indian policymaking than rural poverty alleviation, simply creating urban policies that parallel rural policies won't fully solve the problem, especially when migrants and other groups fall into the cracks between the two policy regimes.
A hundred-year-old street market in Bangalore was demolished in the dead of night last month. How much history and local colour is lost by enforcing the law now after so many years?
Governments in many places can exhibit a loss in the basic competencies required for effective urban planning. In the UK and India, some of the slack is picked up by the private and non-profit sectors, with surprising and innovative results.
While Bangalore has a longer history of globalisation than Gurgaon, both are facing major inequality and infrastructure deficits, and both have the human capital to overcome these problems.
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A number of urban poverty alleviation schemes including housing, sanitation and slum upgrading programmes still principally target on the basis of reported household income, and fail to incorporate a more nuanced understanding of poverty.
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The Global Urbanist is an online magazine reviewing urban affairs and urban development issues in cities throughout the developed and developing world.
Its readers are drawn from the urban policy and international development sectors, and include urban planners, officers in local, national or international government agencies, civil society leaders, and researchers.
