Regarding farcical flirting...and GIS based master plans

Earlier today, I wrote the following on my linkedin status -

GIS based Master Plans...it's a bit like saying pen based novels...or camera based photographs.
India's farcical flirting with technical terms has to stop.
It shows an unreflected acceptance of meaningless sentences - in other words, it helps accelerate collective stupidity.

I felt that this should be elaborated upon. 

To be sure, I am not against flirting - it is a creative art. Anyone who wishes to study it seriously could turn to Act 5, Scene 2 of William Shakespeare's play "Henry V". 

Here is a youtube link to the scene in the classic film adaptation by Sir Lawrence Oliver -

 

Of course, one is free to point out that strictly speaking Henry was wooing Lady Katherine and not flirting with her. 

But then I am equally free to reply, that while Henry was indeed wooing Katherine...he was also flirting - not with her - but with the just altered geo-political situation in Europe following the battle of Agincourt where Henry achieved decisive victory over the French and was in a position to dictate terms to her. 

Yes, flirting is art indeed - of geo-political scale and significance.

So much for my admiration for genuine (geo-political or not) flirting. 

But the recent tendency (increasing at an exponential rate) in India to flirt with "tech" terminology (including the ridiculous sounding word "tech") without any regard for what they really mean, can be considered farcical indeed.

Sentences beginning with the following should immediately put one's BS-filtering systems on high alert -

• "We are developing digital tools for..."
• "According to our AI based tools..."
• "As per our machine learning algorithms..."
• "We use high-resolution satellite imagery for..."
• "We have adopted a data-driven approach for...."

The trouble is not with terms like digital, AI, machine learning, high-resolution satellite imagery etc., but with the things that generally appear in the second part of the sentence.

Consider the following statement - "We use high-resolution satellite imagery to track land-use violations in Bhubaneswar smart-city on a monthly basis."

If this video clip (with an animation showing a satellite "diving" from its orbit every time it tries to get a better look at Bhubaneswar and other such wonderful things) is not enough to turn you numb, consider the following questions -

• How exactly does a high-resolution satellite imagery help me understand what use the buildings it shows are put to - commercial, residential etc. ?
• How does it help me understand violations in bye-laws such as height restrictions ?
• How exactly does it help me understand the prescribed use of the land on which the building is situated ?

 

 AND...

• What about the fact that last I checked the master plan of Bhubaneswar was under revision the new one is not even out in the public yet ??

High-resolution satellite imagery is indeed extremely useful for city planning purposes, but let's just say -

there is many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip.

 

In other words, there is a whole range of activities that have to be done, and done properly, before high-resolution satellite imagery can perform the task of tracking and preventing land-use violations.

By beginning the sentence with the 'cup' and ending it conveniently with the 'lip', without ever clearly mentioning what all lies in between betrays either complete ignorance of the processes involved or a sly ploy to shock-n-awe anyone not familiar with such technology for the sake of furthering ones agenda.

As regarding all that lies in between the cup (the technology) and the lip (its successful application), we can turn to Shakespeare again and say,

"Ay, there is the rub !"

It is precisely in all the activities that need to be done to make a technology effective, that the real professional grind lies - and that which most would like to steer clear of.

It is easy to write a software...but notoriously hard to organise and clean the data that would be used by the software; and fix the organisations that would use the software.

 

And now let's turn to the star of the show...one that really cracks me up every time I hear it - 

GIS based Master Planning.

I wonder who came up with that one, and most importantly - why ?

Do we ever say ludicrous things such as a pen-based novel; or a camera-based photograph; or a type-writer based article  etc ?

What exactly is the point of defining a planning process using one of the many tools, which may be deployed to aid its preparation, apart from either or both of the following -

    a) Zero understanding of planning.

    b) Zero understanding of the role of GIS in planning.

Well, there is a set of more realistic causes which are far more sinister than the above two - but let's go with these for the moment.

Applying the GIGO (garbage-in-garbage-out) model - which suggests that if the input (data) is garbage, then the output (solution) would be garbage too - to our present topic, we can argue that if the input (the planning approach) is meaningless, then the output (plans produced), would be meaningless too.

Thankfully, we have an elaborate dash-board available in the public domain to support our argument. 

As expected, the dash-board is a cool and elaborate one containing all kinds of information, except the most important one - the plans themselves. 

The first alarm bell rings when we scroll to the middle of the page and look at the master plan formulation status. We learn, that after 8 years of implementation, only 135 out of the total 500 cities covered by the scheme have reached the final step of "Final Master Plan". A total of 257 have reached the level of "Draft Master Plan".

But where are these amazing 135 GIS based Master Plans ?

For that one has to scroll right to the bottom of the page and click on the relevant states (or cities) on a map to access the plans. One has to repeat a few more rounds of needless clicking until one finally reaches the page from which two separate files can be downloaded - Master Plan Report and Land Use Map.

As Gujarat was proudly colored green (all tasks completed for all cities), I decided to click on a random city called Botad.

I didn't expect to hit jackpot on the first city I clicked on, but this is the Master Plan Report that popped up -

 

 You can download the report directly from this link.

It was a pdf copy of a 30 page long report in Gujarati language. And here is a screenshot and direct link to the land use map that accompanied it -

The map too is in pdf format; a jumble of different layers overlaid on top of each other; with no clear distinction between existing and proposed land-use. 

The map is a cartographic nightmare but that's the least of our worries.

Forget about using available technology to develop a planning approach based on decades of theoretical and practical advances and reflections in the field of planning, we are offered a national level scheme which purports to use GIS but provides us with pdf files that tell us nothing and which we can use for nothing.

The reports and plans of different cities seem to be prepared by different private consultants, each following their own cartographic rules; structure of report; and occupying their own unique positions on the scale of being slapdash.

The only thing that we can be certain of regarding the meaning of the term "GIS based Master Planning" is that all consultants have made some use of GIS software in preparing the maps.

Pardon my French, but what the F*** is the use of that ?

And yet, why is it that we don't burst out laughing and brush aside the moment we are presented with these ludicrous "tech"-loaded planning terms, be it GIS based planning or the galaxy of terms following that other ubiquitous and incomprehensible adjective - Smart ?

What makes us take such tragic farces seriously....discuss them, develop projects around them, organise conferences and webinars on them ?

May be because we are distracted from the real tasks that face us...and alienated from the scienctific knowledge that we need to tackle the urban challenges facing us.

This nonsense seems to be everywhere...and relentless.

But it seems to contain the petrified brittleness of all things insecure...one tiny push and it may crumble to dust.

Then why not give it a resounding whack ?

 

 

   

 

 

 

 

 

Solving the "land" variable in land-titling equations (and some more on tackling complex urban problems)

My previous blogs have stressed the importance of operational parameters of large and complex urban development projects and how their implementation can become very difficult - if not impossible - without a creative combination of modern computing and community feedback. Perhaps nowhere does this reality hit home harder than in the implementation of mega-sized slum land-titling and upgrading initiatives such as Jaga Mission.

The Odisha Land Rights to Slum Dwellers Act, 2017, which guides the implementation of Jaga Mission, states in section 3, sub-section 1, that 'every landless person occupying land in a slum in any urban area by such date as may be notified by the State Government, shall be entitled for settlement of land and certificate of land right shall be issued in accordance with the provisions of the Act.'

All very well-intentioned and clear so far, but a whole operational quagmire opens up when one begins to implement the provisions of the Act. The art of land administration in India as it exists today, is an elaborate one that pre-dates the Mughal era. Words like 'kissam' (a derivative of the Farsi 'Qism', referring to land-use type) co-exist with the English 'Record of Right' in land revenue records, reflecting the deep and layered history of the subject. The typical planning student of professional is often not even familiar with these terms used by the revenue department, let alone being able to intervene in the operational matters of land administration.

The slums in any city may be located on hundreds of separate parcels of land, which may belong to diverse 'kissam' types, which, further, could be a mix of non-reserved (on which land rights can be given) and reserved (on which land rights cannot be given without initiating a process of re-classification of land in consultation with the revenue department) categories. Furthermore, parcels belonging to different kissams could be owned by an array of government departments or private entities, depending on which it may or may not be possible to grant land rights. It is these attributes that must be cross-referenced with each other and with the location and household data of the slum dwellers in order to satisfy all the conditions necessary to settle land rights.

Quantifying Complexity

Let's take the example of a single city of Balasore in Odisha. The 3128 families living in 41 slums of this city are located on 735 land parcels with belong to 33 different 'kissams'.

Let's further consider a particular 'kissam' called 'gharbari', which refers to homestead. There are 238 parcels corresponding to this kissam out of which 121 parcels are owned by private enitities; 71 parcels are owned by the railways; 23 parcels are owned by temple trusts and 23 parcels are owned by various departments and offices of the state government. Only the slum houses located on the last 23 parcels in the above list, can be settled without getting into special arrangements and negotiations with other government departments and private entities.

This is just one kissam out of 33. Now, also consider the location of the 41 slums in the city and how the 3128 slum houses intersect with the land parcels of various kissam and ownership types. 

What has been described above is the case of just one city out of 115; just 41 slums out of 2919; and a mere 3128 slum houses out of a total of above 400,000.

This is complexity quantified.

And this is why we need the processing power of modern computers (and not for making powerpoint presentations on the achievements of the Mission).

Political will is a necessary condition...but not a sufficient one

This is also the reason why in the first phase of Jaga Mission, which covered about 170,000 slum households in 109 small and medium towns of Odisha, the government reached as impasse after granting about 70,000 land rights certificates. The remaining 100,000 households fell on land parcels belonging to various reserved kissam categories, restricted central government lands, private entities, temple trusts or environmentally hazardous lands.

Instead of basking in glory for having distributed 70,000 land rights certificates in less than two years (no mean feat !) the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the nodal agency overseeing the implementation of the Mission, went out of its way to initiate inter-departmental negotiations with the revenue department, forest and environment department, private entities such as royal families, temple trusts etc to find workable solutions to grant land rights to the remaining slum households. Special standard operating procedures were also developed to address the challenge of slums located on highly restricted central government lands such as those belonging to railways and defence, which may require relocation.

The special measures initiated by the Government were a clear indicator of the strong political will that backed Jaga Mission. It was also a clear indicator that even when a strong political will exists (which is rare in itself), the implementation of any large pro-poor intervention may face serious challenges due to technical and operational reasons.

And it is extremely important for people not directly involved with the implementation of such projects to have a thorough understanding of these operational reasons if they wish to engage effectively and critique accurately.

Consider this news clip (in Odia) from 2019, by a regional news channel which was critical of the Mission. It showed the residents of a slum called 'Godhi Basha', who had not received land rights certificates. However, the news anchor could not give any reason for the state of affairs apart from the usual one that the government was failing to keep its promise to slum dwellers. At the 33 second mark, the clip showed a beneficiary called Ms. Anjana Das holding the card showing her Jaga Mission house number.

However, as we have already seen, lack of political will is definitely not a problem with Jaga Mission. What then is the mystery of the Godhi Basha slum ?

Had the journalist investigated just a little more, he would have discovered that the whole slum was situated on a parcel of land that belonged to "South Eastern Railways" - one of the 72 land parcels in the city which are owned by the Indian Railways. As a matter of fact, the journalist also got the name of the beneficiary wrong.

It was possible to identify all these issues in time less than the duration of the news report, thanks to the digital data collected as part of the Mission, relevant open-source software and quick data analysis on the command line, which we started discussing in the last two blogs. 

Unfortunately, as I have shown through case examples in another blog, the government itself fails to utilise available computing technologies effectively by continuing to rely on archaic bureaucratic methods and pointless application of manual labour (relying on paper maps and field visits despite possessing high-resolution imagery and GIS databases).

It definitely retains operational overview but it cannot solve the complex problems (where complexity is merely a function of processing power available i.e. with respect to the computer, they are simple problems) which not only prevent it from overcoming its operational impasses but also cause community level confusion as shown in the case of the news clip.

Community Empowerment at Slum level...Community dis-empowerment at Mission Level

Just as the Government faces its own difficulties for not using available technologies effectively, so does the community.

As I have pointed out earlier, given the size and complexity of projects such as Jaga Mission, the typical methods of community participation, engagement and critiquing are simply not adequate. 

It is not enough to understand why something is not working in one's own slum - it is only one out of 3000 slums ! 

That means 0.0003 % of the Mission in terms of the number of slums.

How can the community get effective overview of the implementation of the Mission while covering (at the level of each slum) a microscopic 0.0003 % of the Mission, when the Government and its consultants have overview of 100 % ?

Just have a look at the maps above. The one on the left, shows the location of Godhi Basha among all the slums in Balasore city; and the one on the right shows the location of Balasore city among all the cities covered by Jaga Mission. 

I hope this gives some sense of the scale....in other words, what 0.0003 % looks and feels like.

Unfamiliar methods...or merely abandoned ?

This is why it is neither enough for governments to continue using their familiar bureaucratic methods, nor is it enough for community organisations to continue using their familiar participatory development methods. 

Probably it is time to embrace the unfamiliar methods.

The size and complexity of urban challenges in the present times demands the use of methods which were created specifically for tackling large, complex and dynamic systems -- more extensive use of open-source geo-spatial software and data analysis; further refinement of mathematical models for urban and regional planning; application on the principles of cybernetics to understand the functioning of urban systems; techniques of operations research etc. 

It is an irony that huge progress was made in the development and application of many of the above techniques in solving pressing social problems precisely when computing power was very low, and abandoned in favour of feel-good but ineffectual qualitative approaches (not to mention the pseudo-scientific farce that passes for 'tech' in contemporary urban discourses) when computing power is at its peak.

More on that in forthcoming blogs...