[Reader-list] Re: the idea of Jamshedpur

[sayantoni datta]

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Dear Kalyan

Your posting is extremely enriching in terms of a critique on the planning processes in Jamshedpur. On my recent visit to Jamshedpur, I found the political climate in the city very intriguing.
I visited two "unauthorised" slums in the TISCO area.Most of the people there are labourers involved in the "informal sector" engaged mostly in slag picking leased out by contractors. There is a strong labour class which enjoys the paternal culture of the TATAs and yet there is a growing informal industry that does not.There is also a community of rickshaw pullers who pride themselves in not being labourers for others but for themselves. The vibrancy in different interest groups makes these planning processes more complex.

I was wondering how urban planning processes like that of Jamshedpur are deeply influenced by governance and the issues of state and state accountability and citizenship rights. Jamshedpur being a Notified Area does not seem to have the similar arrangements of Wards and Ward Committees we see in other cities.How does urban local self governance(which would incorporate interests of different groups in the planning porcesses) find expression in the Jamshedpur planning process,(assuming here that planning is an intrinsic part of governance)? It would be interesting if you could share any sepcific examples of these processes, that you might have come across  in the history of planning in Jamshedpur.

Thanks

Sayantoni
  


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>    1. Third Posting:Kalyan:The Idea of Jamshedpur (kalyan nayan)
>    2. Fourth Posting:Kalyan:The Idea Of Jamshedpur (kalyan nayan)
>    3. Fifth Posting:Kalyan:The Idea Of Jamshedpur (kalyan nayan)
>    4. Sixth Posting:Kalyan:The Idea Of Jamshedpur (kalyan nayan)
>
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Message: 1
>Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 14:35:29 +0100 (BST)
> From: kalyan nayan <kalyannayan at yahoo.co.in>
>Subject: [Reader-list] Third Posting:Kalyan:The Idea of Jamshedpur
>To: reader-list at sarai.net
>Message-ID: <20040811133529.90455.qmail at web8307.mail.in.yahoo.com>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
>  	This posting would refer to the planning processes envisaged by J. N.
>Tata and others in Jamshedpur. It would also try to weave in it, the
>planning mechanisms that have been initiated by them.
>
>"Be sure to lay out wide streets planted with shady trees, every other
>one of a quick growing variety. Be sure that there is plenty of space
>for lawns and gardens. Reserve large areas for football, hockey and
>parks. Earmark areas for Hindu temples, Mohammedan mosques and
>Christian churches".
>Jamshedji Nusserwanji Tata
>
>Above remarks unmistakably advocates planning as a medium to initiate
>harmony in the physical as well as social resource complex of an urban
>phenomenon. The founder was contemplating a vision of an industrial
>city where maladies of urban growth can be done away with through
>pre-emptive planning. It was the acceptance of the responsibility on
>the part of the Tatas, the responsibility to plan Jamshedpur’s future.
>Unlike Bombay and other cities it had genuinely started with a dream to
>build a modern and efficient industrial city in the backdrop of Indian
>diversity. Moreover urban planning was also a pretext to deliberate
>upon the constitution of a modern nation.
> 	The successors of J. N. Tata might have thought that initiating plans
>every twenty years or so would give them a grasp over the impending
>future of the city but one could easily see, through these plans, that
>this was not the case. The texture of these plan documents compels one
>to break free from the constraint of looking at them merely as plan
>documents. It might be the case that the planners would have probably
>resisted the characterization of their careful marshalling of maps,
>graphs, and statistics as dreams, but there was something enormously
>suggestive about the way they looked at town plans and planning as a
>process.
>In the backdrop of these, we would look at different plans and planners
>of Jamshedpur. Detailed discussion would be initiated on the text and
>the context of both - the plans and the planners historically. In the
>second part there would be an attempt to see the legacy of these plans
>on the Jamshedpur city and the changes instituted by them.
>The idea of using town plans in the study of urban history is not new.
>In Europe, it goes back to seventeenth century when some publications
>combined historical information with town plans to look at the growth
>of the city space.  Frequent compositeness of town plans can give a
>clue to distinct stages in town growth of which a historical record may
>give no hint. It could be said without doubt that the town plans can
>shed much light on the size and structure of different communities, the
>different phases of their growth, their institutions and the relation
>between them and the urban community, which they serve.
>It is imperative on us first of all to describe what a town plan is?
>Conzen has attempted to describe the term town plan as ‘the
>cartographic representation of a town’s physical layout reduced to a
>predetermined scale’.  But more than this town plans are a complicated
>category because they represent changing functional requirements of the
>urban community. It would be our folly to regard these plans at their
>face value and dispense with them. When looked at their face value they
>represent themselves as a dry document of prospective physical lay out
>of town. However reading these plans in the backdrop of technological
>innovation, changes in industrial production, developments in the
>social structure and aspects such as public health and housing, it will
>provide us a comprehensive data on the evolution of physical and social
>scale of the town.
>Apart from the plans, planners are no less significant in the making of
>a landscape. Their worldview and their ideas creep into the plans even
>if they consciously attempt to be objective to the situation provided
>to them. One obvious question that comes to the mind before going any
>further is the primary concern of the planner regarding the objectives
>of the development of a plan. For Harvey the planner is concerned with
>‘for the most part, to the task of defining and attempting to achieve a
>successful ordering of the built environment’.   Similarly Planners are
>concerned with the ‘proper location’  i.e. the appropriate mix of
>activities in space of all the diverse elements that make up the
>totality of physical structures and constitute the built environment.
>These physical structures could be of a variety of mix, consisting of
>the houses, roads, factories, offices, water and sewage disposal
>facilities, hospitals and schools. Accordingly all the planners strive
>to attain this ideal. And their ideology, aesthetics and politics needs
>to be re-examined vis-à-vis the plans that they produce.
>In the case of Jamshedpur we would see that the first of the two plans
>by Kennedy and Temple are more in the nature of street plans rather
>than an elaborative attempt to affect an integrative analysis of
>population and spatial forms. With the increase in population and load
>over the town these plans had been introduced for a fuller and
>comprehensive account of the problems affecting Jamshedpur and
>attempted to suggest remedies accordingly.
>
>
>
>=====
>hi received your mail. thank you for calling me. i will reply you soon. sorry for the tantrum. bye
>
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>------------------------------
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>Message: 2
>Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 14:40:44 +0100 (BST)
> From: kalyan nayan <kalyannayan at yahoo.co.in>
>Subject: [Reader-list] Fourth Posting:Kalyan:The Idea Of Jamshedpur
>To: reader-list at sarai.net
>Message-ID: <20040811134044.86857.qmail at web8312.mail.in.yahoo.com>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
>This posting would engage with the apparent failure of planning process
>in the Jamshedpur city.
>Constant engagement with planning could not prevent Jamshedpur from
>falling into the traps that other Indian cities have been subjected to.
>
>Raising the concerns of the typical middle class inhabitant of the city
>an article in one of the prominent dailies of the area declared:
>
>"Roads overflowing with traffic, bustees eating into the taxpayers’
>prerogatives, inadequate power and clogged drains have raised questions
>about our planners’ foresight. Did they not look into the future or
>were their plans not implemented properly"?
>
> 	The concern raised in the quote above shows the disenchantment of a
>significant section of the population in Jamshedpur. It certainly
>reflects the critical scrutiny the Company planning policies have been
>subjected to by the general inhabitant of the city. Although it deals
>with the Jamshedpur of 90s and does not necessarily link with our
>period yet the tone of assessment over the years was never very
>favourable for the Company’s planning mechanisms. It might be the
>reflection of one of the prominent consideration that the planner is
>supposed to engage himself with in planning, i.e., to act as an arbiter
>or a corrective weight in negotiating with diversity of interest groups
>in an urban setting. Did the planners overlook this aspect?
>We have seen that the majority of the skilled workers were provided
>with one kind of housing or another. It was the unskilled labouring
>class who was mostly at the receiving end in terms of housing
>requirements. Quite naturally for this large section of the population
>every other engagement with the city was of secondary importance.
>Labour looked to the built environment as a means of consumption and a
>means for its own reproduction and, perhaps, expansion. It was also
>sensitive to both the cost and the spatial access of the various
>components in the built environment for example housing, educational
>and recreational facilities, and services of all kinds. It would have
>been naturally difficult for the planners to harmonize the immediate
>requirements of this class and carry on with the process of building a
>model industrial city. This predicament could be seen with every
>subsequent plan. Some genuinely tried to address this issue first and
>later on look into what respite the plan could provide the city’s
>infrastructure. Hence there was continuous emphasis on housing the
>labourer. Since the entire housing requirement was to be provided by
>the Company, those workers who were not directly employed by the
>Company were left unprovided for. One of the logical outcomes was the
>development of the bustee areas.
>Part of the problem lay in the formulation of the very ideology of
>planning. Michael Ames after a survey remarked three conditions that
>influenced the character of Jamshedpur: one was the non local origins
>of many of the workers; a second was the westernized orientation of the
>upper strata; and a third was a sense of economic scarcity and
>insecurity characteristic especially of the lower strata.   It would be
>interesting to note Ames’s further observation about the westernised
>orientation of the Company elites. According to him,
>
>"While the Jamshedpur labour force as a whole is more cosmopolitan than
>the general population of Bihar, the senior Company officials in the
>city are even further removed from the masses in education and style of
>life. The Company elites always have been either Western or westernized
>people whose primary ties and interests were with Calcutta, Bombay, or
>the Steel cities of America, England, and Germany".
>
>This observation was true in many respects and this has been indicated
>in earlier sections. The Tata family and other factory owners never
>hesitated to copy Western models of industrial organisation, labour
>relations, social welfare, and community planning. They also never
>hesitated to import foreign experts, to design or evaluate industrial
>and residential areas, or to send their own experts abroad for advanced
>training.  This had its obvious impact on the nature of housing
>strategies being adopted to tackle the problem of overcrowding. They
>assumed that certain social forms like single family dwellings and
>occupationally stratified residential areas could be easily
>accommodated into Jamshedpur setting. This is not to say that in an
>attempt to amalgamate these features, modifications suited to Indian
>conditions were not envisioned. But it was also true that in the quest
>for more economically rational transformation in the worker outlook the
>primacy has always been given to the former. We could see the
>reflection of it in the plans as well. In the words of J. R. D. Tata:
>
>"The first question one might ask is whether the problems involved in
>the Industrialisation of a country like India today are likely to be
>different from those experienced in the West in the nineteenth century
>and the first half of the twentieth. I think not. For the process, in
>both cases, will have been one of transforming the environment and the
>working and living habits of a large proportion of the people from life
>on the farm and in small artisan and trading communities to life in
>factories and urban areas. Human nature being fundamentally the same
>everywhere and at all time, it may be expected to react to such a
>change in generally the same way".
>
> >From the above message it is clear that boundaries defined by early
>modern Western standards played a significant part in the ‘idea of
>Jamshedpur’. The planners’ application of his ideas in these
>circumstances cannot be separated from this necessary ideological
>commitment. And planners were striving to affect reconciliation in
>conjunction with a rational socio-spatial ordering. We can analyse
>Temple’s idea of ‘hexagonal planning’ in this perspective where he
>tried to come to terms with aberrations in the surrounding of
>Jamshedpur. It was also the recognition of the fact that the efficiency
>of the labour might be enhanced by providing a compensatory sense of
>harmony with the nature in the living place.  Hence to bring more and
>more nature into the city was every planner’s endeavour.
>
>
>
>=====
>hi received your mail. thank you for calling me. i will reply you soon. sorry for the tantrum. bye
>
>
>________________________________________________________________________
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>
>------------------------------
>
>Message: 3
>Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 14:45:26 +0100 (BST)
> From: kalyan nayan <kalyannayan at yahoo.co.in>
>Subject: [Reader-list] Fifth Posting:Kalyan:The Idea Of Jamshedpur
>To: reader-list at sarai.net
>Message-ID: <20040811134526.2304.qmail at web8310.mail.in.yahoo.com>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
>This posting would focus on the aspect of paternalism in the city. We
>would try to explore its impact on the city. We would also see if this
>had any influence on the planning mechanisms that had been initiated in
>Jamshedpur.
>
>"We do not claim to be more unselfish, more generous or more
>philanthropic than other people. But we think we started on sound and
>straight forward business principles, considering the interests of
>shareholders our own, and the health and welfare of the employees, the
>sure foundation of our prosperity".
>Jamshedji Nusserwanji Tata
>
>The above statement might not be a remarkable and original insight into
>the social philosophy that should endow a man of wealth but it would be
>of interest to contrast it with an equally frank statement ten years
>later. During a conference in London with Tata’s representatives in
>1904-05 regarding concessions in freight rates for bulk conveyance of
>raw materials, iron and steel, the Managing Director of Bengal Nagpur
>Railway said:
>
>"It does not appeal to us at all if you can only show that in an
>indirect and remote way this would be for the benefit of India. The
>only appeal that can be made to us is that we can make money out of it.
>This Railway Company, you must always bear in mind, is a commercial
>undertaking, and must only be actuated by commercial motives. We must
>not consider the advantages to India and, must not be actuated by
>anything like patriotic or philanthropic motives 
 we do not consider a
>snap of the fingers about the advantages to India".
>
>One could only guess the fundamental difference in opinion, which later
>on became the foundation stone of Indian industrial bourgeoisie at that
>point of time. To follow from the previous chapter we would be able to
>see as to how the values of the Tata Iron and Steel Company were
>reflected in the city plans and architecture, how human interactions
>have been influenced by the architecture and urban design and how
>people have reacted to the Company’s built environment. We have traced
>the lineage of the city in brief but here we will not only see the
>establishment of Jamshedpur but also the sustenance of it as the oldest
>and the largest existing Company town in the world. It was the
>prototype for post independent Indian industrial cities such as Bhilai,
>Rourkela and Durgapur, which were established in completely rural
>areas.
>Closely following J. N. Tata’s ideas we will also see that the
>objective of building the city was not considered only on the basis of
>philanthropic motives. There was a larger philosophy behind it. In
>fact, world over the experience has been that the Company towns are
>excellent examples of rational attempts by planners and architects to
>mould workers and manipulate social and economic interactions for the
>primary purpose of improving industrial production. I will like to
>build upon this idea and try to weave segments of Jamshedpur here for
>greater continuity and understanding.
>For the purpose of moulding the worker, planning served as a
>significant tool. We have traced the intention and scope of planning in
>Jamshedpur in great detail to demonstrate the desire on the part of the
>Company to constantly intervene in the built atmosphere of the city
>whenever it saw things escalating beyond control. It was true that one
>of the guiding factors of planners in doing so was their concurrence
>and inspiration from the European and American industrial conditions.
>But it was also true that these planning mechanisms became a tool in
>their hands to make regulation of space serve their need of controlling
>and disciplining the labour. For example, housing was one of the prime
>considerations of every planner. Efforts were made in every plan to
>negotiate with this impending requirement. But it was also a means to
>dissuade the worker from building whatever it liked. To quote Lefebvre:
>
>"In the extension and proliferation of cities, housing is the guarantee
>of reproductivity, be it biological, social or political. Society i.e.
>capitalist society no longer totalizes its elements nor seeks to
>achieve total integration through monuments. Instead it strives to
>distil its essence into buildings".
>
>In other words planning was also for the creation of a modern,
>industrial working ethic. It was not a matter of carrot and stick
>policy for the Tatas. The city served as the extension of their
>hegemony. To put it in more precise terms, it was a platform to
>practice paternalism.  For we have seen that in our period they
>resisted every attempt to let go, the control of the city from their
>hands, even if it meant a huge expenditure for them.
>Regulation of space was necessary for instilling in the workers a sense
>of purpose and discipline. It was also significant for obtaining
>optimum performance levels and guaranteed competence. Lefebvre
>referring to the concept of ‘spatial practice’ stated,
>
>"Spatial practice embraces production and reproduction
Spatial practice
>ensures continuity and some degree of cohesion. In terms of social
>space, and of each member of a given society’s relationship to that
>space, this cohesion implies a guaranteed level of competence and a
>specific level of performance
It embodies complex symbolisms, sometimes
>coded, sometimes not linked to underground side of social space".
>
>This cohesion and creation of purpose seemed to be one of the primary
>objectives of the Tatas. One could still ask why this moulding and
>shaping of the worker? It has been observed that ‘each mode of
>production has its own space; the shift from one mode to another must
>entail production of a new space. A fresh space needs to be generated,
>a space which is organized and planned subsequently’.  Not only this,
>it has to be fashioned, shaped and invested by social activities during
>a finite historical period. Probably this mindset, although not
>pronounced, justified the refashioning or remoulding.
>But it was certainly not a one way process. There were contending urges
>for hegemony, between worker and the capital, and there seems to be
>contention over space for extending counter hegemony. This contention
>metamorphosed into an aspect of ‘ambivalence’. An ambivalence, which
>invited more and more negotiation rather than confrontation in the
>city.
>
>
>=====
>hi received your mail. thank you for calling me. i will reply you soon. sorry for the tantrum. bye
>
>
>________________________________________________________________________
>Yahoo! India Matrimony: Find your life partner online
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>
>
>------------------------------
>
>Message: 4
>Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 14:48:21 +0100 (BST)
> From: kalyan nayan <kalyannayan at yahoo.co.in>
>Subject: [Reader-list] Sixth Posting:Kalyan:The Idea Of Jamshedpur
>To: reader-list at sarai.net
>Message-ID: <20040811134821.97525.qmail at web8309.mail.in.yahoo.com>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
>In many ways Jamshedpur is the manifestation of Tata paternalism. This
>section would explore the meaning and implication of Tata paternalism
>in Jamshedpur.
>The word paternalism derives its meaning from the Latin-English kinship
>term. It is a type of behaviour by a superior towards an inferior
>resembling that of a male parent to his child - in most cases, a son.
>However, the precise forms of this behaviour vary from society to
>society because the culture of kinship varies, and also because the
>nature of the tasks performed in paternalistic societies vary.
>Max Weber, who developed the concept of patrimonialism, first noted the
>theoretical relevance of paternalism.  But the focus on patrimonial
>relations by Weber cannot lead us to equate patrimonialism with
>paternalism. In fact paternalism is different from patriarchy or
>patrimonialism, an error, which comes from the assumption that male
>domination is the prime element in every category.
>We would be distinguishing these categories for the greater clarity in
>our discussion. This would be carried forward by focusing on the idea
>of paternalism as practiced by the Tatas in Jamshedpur. We have
>referred to this idea cursorily in the preceding chapters. By giving it
>a separate focus we would attempt a synthesis where the question of the
>urban would be amalgamated with different streams of our discussion
>namely planning processes, the labour in the city and the factor of
>paternalism.
>The survival or creation of a paternalistic system depends on the needs
>and on the existing social organizational patterns and traditions. This
>is clearly visible in Jamshedpur.
> 	We have been talking about paternalism in our earlier postings. In
>fact our concern with the planning activities in the town and the study
>of the general morphological development of Jamshedpur reflects flashes
>of paternalistic idea recurring many times. In the development of
>Indian capitalism Jamshedpur perhaps is the most celebrated case of
>this idea.  The development of the steel works in the jungles of
>Chotanagpur forced the Company to develop infrastructure that would
>enable and sustain the steel works. One could argue that since the
>sustenance of the steel works needed this kind of preliminary
>investments Jamshedpur was more a matter of practical exigency on the
>part of the Tatas rather than a paternalistic benevolence. But then to
>argue in this manner would be to gloss over the sophistication involved
>in the deliberation of the idea of paternalism by the Tatas. Moreover
>we saw that the Tatas were not completely oblivious of their moral
>concern to provide for their employees. J. N. Tata and others down the
>line consistently spoke of making Jamshedpur an ideal industrial
>nucleus.
> 	Regulation and intrusion in other aspects of worker’s life was a
>logical extension of the above beginning in setting up an industrial
>township. The idea of being an employer and protector of the welfare of
>the workers saw its manifestations in the act of the Company
>undertaking rural development projects in the surrounding villages,
>including health, education, family planning and economic sustenance
>initiatives. Even when the eastern half of the city was being leased to
>ancillary industries, most of which were Tata controlled, the Companies
>were impressed upon to build and maintain their own workers’ colony
>following the model of TISCO.
> 	Paternalism is rare in Indian industries, although the Indian socio
>economic condition gives much space to allow this idea to thrive.
>Indian society continued to be a traditional patriarchal one where a
>strong emphasis on paternal power does not appear to have been much
>eroded by modernisation or urbanisation. Even after independence this
>is valid for India. But the extension of this idea could be hardly seen
>in the industrial sector. In the Western case many small capitalists
>could be found extending the paternalistic privileges to their workers
>as done by the big enterprises. One of the reasons of this might be the
>lack of resources which constricted Indian businessmen’s efforts. Since
>majority of the workers remained uneducated and unskilled the employer
>did not feel obliged to give more to the worker than what was required
>by law or union contract. For an enterprise like that of the Tatas in
>Jamshedpur, which started in the very beginning of the twentieth
>century with a conscious realisation of their role in Indian
>industrialisation, this attitude of paternal guidance was obvious and
>simultaneously an unique effort.
> 	The paternalism of the Tata Company had a profound philosophical base
>in its founder’s objective. We have already traced the origins of the
>corporate culture of the Tata group in its founder’s philosophy who
>passed on his social values to his sons and his successors. The Tatas
>like many other progressive nationalists and leaders of the late
>nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were advocates of swadeshi. As
>early as 1840s Indian intellectuals realised that the key to Britain’s
>power was its economic strength and that the only way India could
>become a free and a great nation was through industrialisation.
> 	J. N. Tata promoted many industries in his eventful lifetime and every
>venture of his became a model for successful industrial management and
>enterprise. His early focus was the cotton textiles. In its conception,
>the Empress Mill was the precursor of TISCO which he opened in Nagpur
>in 1877.  He not only invested the mill with the state of the art
>technology like proper ventilators and automatic fire sprinklers but
>also with an employee welfare policy. He provided housing,
>recreational, and educational facilities for his workers and instituted
>provident fund and pension schemes.  According to J. R. D. Tata,
>Jamsetji imbued the future Tata Management with a sense of social
>consciousness and trusteeship.
>
>
>=====
>hi received your mail. thank you for calling me. i will reply you soon. sorry for the tantrum. bye
>
>
>________________________________________________________________________
>Yahoo! India Matrimony: Find your life partner online
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