Antarin Chakrabarty

Antarin Chakrabarty Communicative Planning and Democratic Decentralisation in India- Case of Kolkata City Thesis for the degree of philosophiae doctor Trondheim, August 2008 Norwegian University of Science and Technology Faculty of Architecture and Fine Art Department of Urban Design and Planning ISBN 978 – 82 – 471 – 1145 – 1 (electronic version) ISBN 978 – 82 – 471 – 1144 – 4 (printed version) Serial no. – 2008 : 227 Advisor Professor Hans Christie Bjønness, Department of Urban Design and Planning, NTNU Adjudication Committee Dr. Hans Skotte (Administrator) Department of Urban design and Planning, NTNU Professor Tore Sager Department of Civil and Transport Engineering Faculty of Engineering Science and Technology, NTNU, Norway Professor Arild Engelsen Ruud, Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages, University of Oslo, Norway Maria Nyström, Adjunct Professor, Design for Sustainable Development, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden. I dedicate this thesis to the three revolutionary women of my family – my great grandmother Umatara Debi, who being uneducated herself, launched a domestic guerrilla struggle to smuggle her children out of the paddy fields of rural Bengal to the universities of Kolkata; my paternal grandmother Niharkana Chakrabarty, who, through her profound humanism, quietly and firmly smashed the social laws of caste and religious segregation on a daily basis and my grandmother Renukana Chakrabarty, who, in her life, demonstrated the most incredible and yet effortless blending of a progressive spirit and communicative ethic, which has been the aspiration of this research too. This thesis flows directly out of the heritage of these largely unknown and unsung heroines. “Until the lions have their own historians, all accounts of the hunt shall go on glorifying the hunter.” - African proverb Acknowledgements This is perhaps the toughest part of the monograph to write. The page on which I type is far too two-dimensional and rectangular to contain the massive, spherical feeling of gratitude towards the people who have been my benevolent allies on this academic journey. But I would begin with three groups of people, who have been absolutely pivotal to the process. Fist, I would like to express my gratitude to the wonderful people of the city of Kolkata. Doing a research amidst them is pure joy and one truly understands why the 19th century Urdu poet Mirza Ghalib wrote the following lines about the city … “One should be grateful, that such a city as Kolkata exists. Where else in the world is there a city so refreshing ? To sit in the dust of Kolkata is better than to grace the thrown of another dominion.” Second, I would like to express my unending gratitude to my parents, Shyamali and Ranajit Chakrabarty, and to my wonderful family, who forever kept alive and cherished an atmosphere of deep humanism, cultural openness, vibrant internationalism and scientific inquiry in our home in India. Third, I am greatly indebted to my supervisor, Hans Christie Bjønness for the wisdom, knowledge and unlimited patience with which he has guided me through this research, which did not involve just a few long detours. Equally, I would like to thank Linn Mo, for her assistance and clarity in some of the most vital stages of the research. Though she was not formally my supervisor, the thoroughness and promptess of her feedback showed me what an incredible academic karma yogi she is. Three other teachers, though not of the academic world, provided incredible spiritual support throughout the peiod of i the research. They are my three ‘Sensei’s - Daniel Braude, S. Venkatesh and Rajashekar Naidu. I would like to express my thanks to my wonderful fellow researchers at NTNU, who gave me invaluable support, communion and feedback during all these years – Rupa, Rolee, Ayon, Markus, Elias to name just a few. Rolee seemed to be around all the time (quite like the Norwegian summer sun), a perfect well-wisher both in and outside the academic world, and never tiring of my unending monologues on the history and politics of development planning in India. A special thanks to Randi Vikan Strøm for being a mountain of love and caring in the department and for all those quintessentially crushing Trønder-hugs. Unending thanks to the wonderful ladies at the architecture library who treated my endless borrowing and hopeless delays with an almost undeserved compassion. Thanks also to all the teachers of the Department of Urban Design and Planning and the staff of the Faculty of Architecture and Fine Art. A special thanks to my friend and former girlfriend Annika Diana Berdal. Her contribution in this research process is far too broad and deep to be elaborated in mere words. Her innate sense of creativity, truthfulness, compassion and analytical abilities inspired me all the time. Unending thanks to Hans Hadders, one of the most humane and scholarly researchers I know. I shall forever be greatful for his boro dada like love and compassion, enlightening chat-sessions and his incredible musicianship. Thanks to Pramila Ji for creating a wonderful motherly and homely ambience and for all the delicious Nepali food, which had a direct and positive impact on the quality of the research. A special thanks to my friend Saikat and the residents of Moholt Studentby. I would like to take the opportunity to thank the Quota programme of the Norwegian Ministry of Education and the State Loan Fund who provided me the scholarship for undertaking this research, and the wonderful employees of the immigration section of the Trondheim police station who work devastatingly hard to give their difficult responsibility a very human touch. ii Abstract This research entails a constructive critique of communicative planning theory from a historical materialist perspective. Communicative planning theory views the role of a planner as an experiential learner, rather than a technocratic leader. In terms of rationality types, it involves a shift away from instrumental rationality and towards communicative rationality. Communicative planning theory has been criticised on a number of grounds right from the start. These have ranged from an inadequate understanding of the generic structures of inequality and oppression in society to turning Habermas’ critical theory into a moralistic, normative objective. It has also been argued that communicative planning theory has been an unconscious theoretical vehicle for the justification of the forces of neoliberal urbanisation. While acknowleding both the potential of communicative planning theory as an appropriate planning theory for modern democratic societies and also the criticisms that have been launched against it, this research wishes to see the debate in the light of a serious lacuna in planning theory. This lacuna is the near complete absence of the historical experiences of third world democratic experiments as a contextual basis for the generation of mainstream planning theories. Almost all the major theories of planning have been generated from the historical and contextual experience of western capitalist democracies. This research argues that such a tendency leads to a major contradiction in communicative planning theory which becomes evident when it attempts to guide the creation of successful democratic planning alternatives to a global phenomenon like neoliberalism, while basing itself on a limited and narrow historical and geographical context. Contrary to mainstream planning theory, mainstream development theory has been more alert toward radical experiments with democratic planning in third world contexts. This research uses the experience of one such experiment – the decentralisation and democratisation of the planning and development structure in the city of Kolkata (the capital city of the state of West Bengal in India) – as a means of expanding the iii contextual base of communicative planning theory. In the course of the research it was discovered that creative democratisation experiments such as the one undertaken in Kolkata derived no inspiration or theoretical guidance from communicative planning theory. Let alone guide and inform such radical experiments, communicative planning theorists had not even been able to observe and comprehend them due to their inexcusable contextual bias. The experience of Kolkata shows that a more communicative and democratic planning structure can evolve out of a process that originated with completely opposite strategies of extra-parliamentary politics and open class-confrontation. Finally, it is argued that by broadening the contextual base of communicative planning theory and by learning from the real experience of democratisation experiments in third world contexts, its inner contradictions can be minimised and its capacity to inform genuinely democratic planning practice enhanced. iv Table of Contents Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................... i Abstract............................................................................................................................ iii Table of Contents ............................................................................................................. v List of Figures................................................................................................................. vii List of Tables.................................................................................................................. vii Part I..........................................................................................................................

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