I was privileged to attend the India Urban Conference in the Infosys Campus at Mysore, Karnataka, India. The theme for the conference was ‘Evidence & Experience’. It was required that every anchor organization conducted sessions on their sector of expertise.

Let us begin with some facts here, by 2030, 60% of the World’s population is projected to be in Urban areas. In India, estimates suggest we would have over 40% of the population in urban areas. Find below a snap-shot taken from a McKinsey report on Urban settlement.

Cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore & Pune will be economically bigger than countries like Malaysia, Portugal, Columbia etc. Read McK report here.

{Interesting fact: India will have 68 cities with a population of more than a million by 2030, 63 cities have been recommended in the “multi-brand” FDI retail Bill. Contrary to the government’s claim of ‘JUST’ 63 cities }

The anchors were Pratham (Education), Janaagraha (Governance), IIHS(settlements), PHFI (Health), Arghyam (Water), IFMR (Finance), Dronah (Culture), IUSF/SPA (Planning)

As the sessions happened in-parallel, i was able to attend Deep-Dives (as it was called) of Pratham & IFMR.

DAY 1 : Thursday Nov 17th, 2011 – Field Visit

Pratham kicked off with field-visit to one of the urban settlements in Mysore. We conducted a survey in Kurubarahalli, Siddhartha Layout. Door-to-Door through the help of mobile phones. It was great to interact with the kids when you don’t speak their native language.

Door to Door in Kurubarahalli layout

Learnings

• The smallest block in Urban India is no longer a ‘Ward’.

• ‘Low-cost Private schools’ are no better

• Urban areas with income diversity are tough to work with

DAY 2 : Friday Nov 18th, 2011 – Pratham on Education

In a session moderated by Mr.Subir Shukla (blog), we discussed on ‘what the learning outcomes are’ in the context of RTE. 3R’s are the all to learning? In school days I never valued ‘Moral education’ classes because there was no focus on outcomes.Apart from measuring ‘Letter, Para, Division’, what other things should we measure?

The final session for the day was ‘Sharing Data: Strategies and platform for Data Access’.  I was pleased to meet one of my seniors from NIT Calicut working on Accountability Initiative.

Have you ever wondered what CESS is? Read their Gov Budget spending on SSA here.

It is really interesting to see government data being projected in a ‘BETTER’ form as compared to the DISE data which is horrendous.

Learnings

•  Data is never ready. Present the data you have

• Keep it simple.

• Story should go along with the data. Easy to understand.

BUT, there is plenty of data to show that the situation is bad. So, a lot of implementers do not fancy ‘Data’ folks especially in development.

DAY 3 : Saturday Nov 19th, 2011 – IFMR on Finance

IFMR sessions were REALLY interesting. In one of the sessions by Mr.Harvey Koh,who specializes on Impact measurement, I learnt how the Monitor Group is working on disbursing loans to people with salaries of Rs.10,000-15,000.

The final session which I attended, was by Mr.Vikram Kapur an IAS officer from Tamil Nadu, India. He spoke about financing local/municipal government through a Municipal bond market. He presented a concept of moving away from grant by Central to State or State to Local government to ‘Public Funds’.

Ensures

•  Completion of the project on tim

• Governments need not wait for ‘Grants’ for every project.

Look through this entire presentation here The default rate has been ‘NIL’ in his experience. NIL!!

What are you trying to say?

Rural development planning in India is extremely strong compared to Urban development. In my visits, I have found staying in villages more comfortable. Though the quality of education & health should improve, I find governance largely better in villages than it is in cities.

The lowest percentage of voting from any ward in the last Tamil Nadu State Assembly Elections was from T.Nagar, Chennai at 63%. Chennai polled at a measly 66% compared to Karur at over 85%.  Most of us treat cities like villages and adopt a wrong model for development. NGO’s & government alike.

SIFI is an organization based out of Chennai.  It is important for us to understand the approach NGO’s take in their respective area of work. Increasingly, we would try short-listing NGO’s that specialize in Urban Development especially working with Citizens & communities as Tamil Nadu & India become more urbanized than ever.