Basic services approach to urban development: Indian experience☆
In India a number of earlier efforts were made to improve basic services in urban areas, with the active involvem e n t of the p e o p l e and n o n governmental organizations (NGOs). But these were more in the nature of pilot projects. The Urban Basic Services (UBS) programme launched during 1985-90 in India, covering a number of small and medium towns in various parts of the country, is a unique experiment. Its uniqueness stems not only from its wider scale of operation but also from its basic themes of community participation, convergence and capacity building. The active involvement of the NGOs and its institutional support are other unique features of the programme. This paper traces the genesis of the basic services approach, the role of international bodies like UNICEF and the World Bank and analyses the UBS programme as it is being implemented in India.
Scope of Intervention
As recently as 1993, two authors were lamenting the state of urban management. Stren noted that: ‘Since the mid-1980s, urban management as an integrating concept has been strangely bereft of substantive content and definition … The central core of meaning attached to the concept has been surprisingly elusive’.1 Later, ‘while comparative and conceptual work has taken place within the (UN Habitat — Urban Management) Programme sectors, the overall concept of urban management has not been addressed head on’.2 Similarly, Davey suggested that ‘the evolution of urban management is littered with attempts to develop an effective methodology for strategic planning and management at the metropolitan and municipal levels. The literature has uncovered few examples of good practice’.3 This chapter seeks to identify the parameters of urban management. It therefore considers three topics: 
 
 
OPERATIONAL PARAMETERS 
 
 
INFRASTRUCTURE 
 
 
INSTITUTIONAL STRENGTHENING.
Pitfalls in benefit-cost analysis of birth prevention.
Abstract The paper summarizes the procedure usually employed by Enke, Meier and others to estimate the benefit-cost ratio of a prevented birth. Some possible deficiencies in the formulation, the possible lack of relevance of the resulting computations, are considered. For example, since the benefit-cost ratios are exceptionally high they would imply unusually high rates of investment for family planning. The results would also apply for the birth prevention of not only high parity births, but also for first and second children. Some arguments are presented which suggest the possibility that the income distribution might be worsened as a consequence of the application of a family planning programme based on these principles - especially those which employ subsidies to induce the practice of family limitation. In addition it is also argued that the average economic quality of the population may be lower than otherwise as a consequence of such programmes, and that the consequences of such events are not taken into account in the usual formulation. Also the usual estimates of costs of such programmes are questioned since the relation between acceptances and births prevented are unknown given the lack of knowledge about the substitution between the proposed methods of family limitation and other means of population control. Finally, we present a model based on reasonable but different assumptions than the formulation popularized by Enke and others, and show that on the basis of this model it is possible to obtain results which are the exact opposite of the Enke model. Also it is argued that the model presented is much more sensitive to actual data than the usual formulation.