Developing Service Delivery Frameworks in Urban South Asia – the case for Process Mapping

Abstract

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Viewed as the backbone of the ‘informal city’, migrant labourers and low income communities represent the largest populations of many medium and large sized cities in South Asia. The expanse and density of Dhaka (Bangladesh), Karachi (Pakistan) and Mumbai (India) testify to the unrelenting pace of growth across South Asia. Continued rural to urban migration will feed urban growth and class polarisation for years to come. In order to mitigate these challenges, policy reforms and intergovernmental coordination must be aligned to address service delivery to low income communities. This paper provides primary and secondary research on the condition of state and non-state efforts to extend municipal services to informal settlements and communities in some of South Asia’s largest mega cities. Given the complexity and fragmentation of data gathering across disciplines in urban contexts, a comparative policy approach is coupled with the ‘process tracing’ methodology to contrast positive and negative service delivery experiences across the three mega cities. Within each of the case study contexts (water, sanitation and solid waste collection), the agency of individuals and interests are seen to outpace the capacity of institutions in engaging the needs of low income communities. The findings from the ‘process tracing’ exercise point to the importance of engaging lower tier state and non-state actors for low income urban service delivery. These findings also emphasize that a labyrinth of municipal and provincial actors persists with opposing interests. As such, this requires clearly defined boundaries between intergovernmental jurisdictions and more specifically, service providers. It is within this space that the 'process tracing' method outlines how civil society actors have demonstrated an ability to monitor tensions across actors, bringing more transparency and where possible, accountability to the urban development process. Taken further, 'process tracing' can also ensure that the participation of donors (technical and financial) can enable results tied to specific outcomes. Case study evidence points to the centrality of lower tier state service providers and frameworks of accountability and transparency across urban governance settings.