Can the Karnataka High Court Directive Explain the Set of Represented Actors in the Action Situation?

Transcription

1 Sarah Irmgard Schäfer Urban Policy Lab Konstanz, 2015 Working Paper SoSe 2015/2 Urban Solid Waste Management in Bengaluru Can the Karnataka High Court Directive Explain the Set of Represented Actors in the Action Situation?

2 Contents 1 Introduction 1 2 Outline of the case 2 3 Using the IAD framework 3 4 Research Question and Operationalisation 4 5 Findings 6 6 Strengths and Weaknesses 7 7 Summary 9 Bibliography 10

3 Sarah I. Schäfer 1 1 Introduction In 2014, more than half of the world s population lived in urban areas. According to the World Urbanization Prospects of the United Nations (UN), 66 percent of all humans are going to live in cities, by 2050 (United Nations, 2014, p.1). Cities always had a power of attraction to men. Urban areas stand for labour and therefore wealth, civil liberty and an overall better life than in rural areas. People move to the city to find jobs, enjoy culture life and to live in multicultural societies. But the positive impacts of cities and the consequently rapid urbanization also holds its risks. Cities all over the world are faced with three major problems: rapid urbanisation, globalisation and climate change (Bryceson et al., 2009). Rapid urbanisation in a globalised world can lead to slum building and inequality, gated communities and violence, as well as low economic growth (Rigg et al., 2009). Besides the internal problems, cities increasingly have to cope with climate change and its environmental consequences. Only one example is Hurricane Katrina in the year of 2005 and its devastating and long lasting impact on the city of New Orleans. The residents of urban areas have to learn how to recover from such shocks and how to resist them. In the long run, the ultimate aim is to adapt to the mentioned risks and to be resilient (Béné et al., 2012). The necessity of resilient cities is also mentioned in the UN sustainable development goals, which shall be adopted in autumn 2015 (United Nations, 2015). Goal 11 of the sustainable development goals intends to Make Cities and Human Settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable (United Nations, 2015). It is also listed which aspects need to be fulfilled to achieve the given objective. One aspect is to reduce the adverse environmental impact of cities, including by paying special attention to [...] waste management (United Nations, 2015). One example for a city which tried to achieve resilience in this field is the city of Bengaluru, India. Bengaluru was faced with a garbage crisis in the year of 2012 and started the campaign Kasa Muktha to eventually adapt to the problem of waste management. The aim of this paper is to find out how the Kasa Muktha campaign was realised. For this purpose I will use the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework by Elinor Ostrom to analyse the case of urban solid waste management in Bengaluru. Ostroms s framework enables one to structure your research and to study common pool resource dilemmas. My personal focus for this research are the actors in the process leading to the campaign. I will answer the question which actors were present and why they were part of the decision making process. The outline of my work is as follows: First, I will present the case of urban solid waste management in Bengaluru and give a short overview of the events that lead to the campaign. Second, I will explain why I am going to use the IAD framework by Ostrom to answer my question. The third part will

4 Sarah I. Schäfer 2 clarify my research question and clearly define my variables and how I operationalised them. Subsequently, I will present my findings for each variable and to the research question. The last part will discuss the strength and weaknesses of my research and give recommendations for future research. 2 Outline of the case The city of Bengaluru is located in the south-center of India and is the capital of the Indian state of Karnataka. Its population more than doubled from 1990 to 2014 and counted 9,718 thousand people in the year of 2014 (United Nations, 2014). In 2014, Bengaluru was the fourth largest city in India and the 31st largest in the world. Alongside the Indian cities of Ahmadabad, Chennai and Hyderabad, Bengaluru is moreover expected to become a mega city in the following 15 years (United Nations, 2014). The United Nations thereby define mega cities as cities with a population of 10 million or more people (United Nations, 2014). As cities start to grow so does the amount of waste produced by its inhabitants. Bengaluru generated between 4,500 and 5,000 tonnes of solid waste in the year of 2012 (Karnataka High Court, 2012). In order to manage urban solid waste the city realized the Kasa Muktha program. The program started in June 2013 (Urban Management Consulting Pvt. Ltd, 2015, p.50). It was a response to previous events which I will outline in the following. Before 2013, the whole amount of solid waste produced in the city of Bengaluru was sent to two dump sites in the outskirts of the city. The dump sites were located in the villages of Mandur and Mavallipura. The people living right next to the land fills complained over time about health problems and the bad environmental impact of the land fills to the ground water and the surrounding area (Urban Management Consulting Pvt. Ltd, 2015, p.48). In August 2012 the dwellers of Mandur and Mavallipura started to protest against further waste disposal in their towns after all. The land fills were blocked by the villagers who prevented the unloading of solid waste from the incoming bin lorries. They ultimately demanded the closure of the two dump sites. Additionally to the protest in Mandur and Mavallipura the private contractors in the city of Bengaluru itself started to protest. The contractors are responsible for the collection and transportation of solid waste within the city. Due to outstanding payments of the city government the private contractors went on strike. Those two events lead to the so-called garbage crisis of Bengaluru (Urban Management Consulting Pvt. Ltd, 2015, p.48). During this time the waste was neither collected nor transported to the landfills which lead to piles of garbage lying around the city. The situation was then brought to the attention

5 Sarah I. Schäfer 3 of the Karnatak High Court. The High Court, concerned about the circumstances in Bengaluru directed the city government to immediately react and to solve the problem. Furthermore, the city government was instructed to come up with long term solutions for the problem of waste management in the city of Bengaluru (Urban Management Consulting Pvt. Ltd, 2015). The first step in terms of a long term solution was the organization of a one-week information campaign, called Wake Up, Clean Up. This one-week expo took place in February 2013 and was primarily meant to inform and educate the citizens of Bengaluru in the field of waste disposal (Malusare, 2013). Out of this expo eventually emerged the Kasa Muktha program. The concept of the program was the segregation at source which implies that every household and every company should segregate their waste at home into wet and dry waste. Afterwards the private contractors were supposed to collect the segregated waste and bring it to different landfills. But the ultimate goal of Kasa Muktha was a zero waste future. The program was implemented in June 2013 in 22 wards as a pilot project (Urban Management Consulting Pvt. Ltd, 2015). 3 Using the IAD framework Eventually, the Kasa Muktha Program was intended to manage public space in Bengaluru by reducing the absolute amount of waste in the city. In the following, I will clarify why it is possible to apply the concept of a common pool resource to the case of Bengaluru and why I am going to use the IAD framework by Elinor Ostrom to analyse the case. Ostrom (1990) distinguishes between the resource system and the resource unit to study a common pool resource situation. The resource system is defined as a stock variable, for example a lake, a bridge or a park (Ostrom, 1990, p.30). In the case of urban solid waste management in Bengaluru the resource system is public space. The resource unit, defined as the element which is extracted from the resource system (Ostrom, 1990, p.30) is therefore one square kilometre of public space. As cities are built by humans, public space within a city is a men-made resource system. Contrary to a men-made resource system is a natural one, for example a lake or a river (Ostrom, 1990, p.30). The good public space can be described as a common pool resource as defined by Ostrom (2007). According to Ostrom (2007, p.280), common pool resources are characterised by high costs of exclusion and the subtractability of the good. First of all, the non excludability of the good is given. Theoretically it would be possibly for the city government to exclude individuals from using public space. But practically it is hard to realize and way

6 Sarah I. Schäfer 4 to costly to exclude anyone. Second of all, public space is highly subtractable because the usage of space leaves less room for others. One example for the subtractability of public space would be the creation of a landfill. If the city government decides to build a landfill, the area of the landfill is extracted from the resource system. This certain spot can not be used for something else. Another example would be an individual who dumps his waste on the street. Eventually this leaves less room for other citizens. Concluding, because public space is a common pool resource it is possible to use the IAD framework to analyse the case. Further aspects of my study are the problem I am looking at and the level and sort of analysis. In the case of Bengaluru the underlying problem is an appropriation problem. Ostrom (1990, p.30) describes appropriation as the act of removing resource units from a resource system. If too many people withdraw too many subtractable resource units from the system we are facing an appropriation problem. Applied to the case of Bengaluru the problem was the disposal of solid waste within the given public space. Because by using space again for a landfill the room is taken away and can not be used for something else. Beyond, my level of analysis is the collective choice level which looks at the process of policy making (Ostrom, 2005, p.58). My research is concerned with the question of why and how the Kasa Muktha program was enacted. Finally, I am doing a diagnostic analysis instead of a predictive one because this paper is looking at the events and decision that eventually led to the program (Ostrom, 2005, p.28). 4 Research Question and Operationalisation In order to understand the action arena, Ostrom (2007, p.28) names three components which affect it and thus need to be analysed. The first one is the concept of rules, the second one are the attributes of the community, and thirdly the physical and material attributes of the world (Ostrom et al., 2014, p.276ff.). In this paper I am focusing on rules, which order the relationship between the participants of the action arena (Ostrom, 2007, p.28). Crawford and Ostrom (2005) define rules as a shared understanding among those involved [...] about what actions or physical and material conditions are required, prohibited or permitted. Ostrom emphasises the importance of rules and institutions and classifies them into seven different types of rules. Each rule influences a different element of the action arena (Ostrom et al., 2014, p.278). For my research I will analyse boundary rules which affect the set of represented actors or participants in the action situation (Ostrom et al., 2014, p.278). My exact research question is as follows:

7 Sarah I. Schäfer 5 Can the Karnataka High Court directive explain the set of represented actors in the action situation? Boundary rules are a main part of the whole IAD framework because they determine the number and characteristics of the actors in the action situation (Ostrom, 2005, p.194). Hence, to understand the emergence of the Kasa Muktha program it is essential to know which actors were part of the process and how they were able to become acting members. Next, I am going to define my dependent and independent variable and clarify how I operationalised them. My dependent variable is the set of represented actors in the action situation. I operationalised the dependent variable by defining it like Ostrom (2005). Thereafter, an actor can be an individual or a group (Ostrom, 2005, p.14). Participants can be governmental actors, non-governmental actors as well as private corporations (Ostrom, 2005, p.38). The actors in the action situation are able to make decisions and to select from different possible actions (Ostrom, 2005, p.38). To identify the set of represented actors I did a content based analysis and mainly analysed news paper and scientific articles. For my research I used the search engine duckduckgo.com and the following key words: Kasa Muktha, swm indian cities, wake up clean up bangalore. I searched in particular for newspaper articles thus Kasa Muktha is not an implemented law and therefore no official documents exist. I also searched for the prior one week-expo Wake Up, Clean Up which directly led to the program. Since Kasa Muktha originated from the one week-expo it seemed reasonable that the actors involved in the Wake Up, Clean Up campaign were also involved in the implementation of the Kasa Muktha program. The independent variable within my research are boundary rules. To analyse the boundary rules I focused on the Karnataka High Court directive which ordered immediate reactions to the garbage crisis in Ostrom (2005, p.194) defines boundary rules as entry and exit rules. They determine which actors are allowed to enter or exit the action situation and which requirements they have to fulfil to be part of the action situation (Ostrom, 2005, p.194). As already mentioned, boundary rules play an important role in understanding the action situation and analysing the case. To examine the independent variable I also did a content based analysis and mainly studied the official Karnataka High Court directive but also internet documents and newspaper articles. Again, I used the search engine duckduckgo.com and the following key words: kdcd landfill bengaluru, bbmp bengaluru waste management, Karnataka High Court order. During my research it became clear that both the Wake Up, Clean Up campaign and the Kasa Muktha program were a response to the High Court directive. Consequently, I searched for the official Hight Court document and further sources. Inside the High

8 Sarah I. Schäfer 6 Court document I used cue words in order to identify boundary rules. I was guided by the syntax of a grammar of institutions by Ostrom (2005). The syntax includes five components: attribute, deontic, aim, conditions and or else. In summary, these five components build three different types of institutions. The first one are shared strategies. They contain an attribute, a deontic and an aim. The second one, norms contain all previous ones plus a condition. Rules contain all five components (Ostrom, 2005, p.140). To search for boundary rules I focused on the deontic and its modal verbs. Therefore I used the following cue words to search within the High Court directive: must, need to, obliged, ordered. 5 Findings After clarifying how I operationalised my variables and how I organised my research, I will now present my findings for each variable. For the dependent variable, the set of represented actors I found three newspaper articles and one paper. Two newspaper articles are from the newspaper citizenmatters.in. Citizen Matters is a local paper in Bengaluru and describes itself as a citizen-oriented newsmagazine (Citizen Matters, 2015). The third article is from the newspaper deccanherald.com, which is a regional paper mostly for the state of Karnataka. The fourth source for the dependent variable is a scientific paper called Urban Solid Waste Management in Indian Cities (Urban Management Consulting Pvt. Ltd, 2015). The paper is a compendium, describing different positive approaches of Indian cities towards waste management. It was published by the National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA) which is a research institute for urbanization in India (Urban Management Consulting Pvt. Ltd, 2015). As a result I could identify the following main actors: Bruhat Bengaluru Mananagara Palike (B.B.M.P.) Solid Waste Management Round Table (SWMRT) Federation of Karnataka Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FKCCI) Bangalore City Connect Foundation (BCCF) The B.B.M.P. is the local body in Bengaluru and responsible for all municipal duties in the city (Urban Management Consulting Pvt. Ltd, 2015, p.47). The other three actors are stakeholders who have an interest in a garbage free city (Malusare, 2013).

9 Sarah I. Schäfer 7 The primary source for my independent variable, boundary rules is the official document of the Karnataka High Court. As mentioned in the operationalisation part of this paper I focused on the deontic of the syntax of institutions. Therefore, I searched the document for modal verbs like must, need to, obliged or ordered. The research showed two different types of institutions for the various actors. First, for the B.B.M.P. the participation in the action situation was mandatory. In the High Court directive it says, [...] long term measures have to be initiated by all concerned Authorities as a permanent solution for disposal of garbage from Bangalore. (Karnataka High Court, 2012, p.2). The wording contains all components except for the or else and is therefore a norm (Ostrom, 2005, p.140). Accordingly, the B.B.M.P. was obliged to interact in the action situation. Secondly, the directive contains a soft strategy for the other actors, although it does not name them explicitly. The exact wording of the directive is: B.B.M.P. may seek the assistance of N.G.Os or other private agencies [...] (Karnataka High Court, 2012, p.2). It explains in part why the other actors were present but it also leaves a lot of room for interpretation. To conclude, my findings show that the Karnataka High Court directive can explain in part the set of represented actors in the action arena. 6 Strengths and Weaknesses After presenting my findings I would like to have a look at the strengths and weaknesses of my research. Strengths The theoretical literature already contains many papers analysing urban resilience. A lot of them deal with the effects and the need to adapt to climate change (Campanella, 2006; Muller, 2007). Fewer studies discuss urban resilience linking waste management. And if so it is only one aspect alongside others (Pelling and Manuel-Navarrete, 2011). The same holds for the application of the IAD framework. Overall, many scholars did use the IAD framework by Ostrom to analyse their cases. But till now, no study exists where the IAD framework was applied to the management of solid waste. With this paper I contributed to the research by linking urban resilience and waste management and applying the IAD framework to analyse the case. Although, I could not find studies which used the IAD framework on waste management,

10 Sarah I. Schäfer 8 I did find a study which supports my thesis of public space as a common pool resource. Pethe et al. (2012) did use the IAD framework in their study Anatomy of Ownership and Management of Pubic Land in Mumbai. Weaknesses As lined out, the Karnataka Hight Court directive as boundary rules can only partially explain the set of represented actors in the action arena. It is not able to explain why the identified actors, besides the B.B.M.P. were represented in the decision-making process. Analysing the directive it would also have been possible for other actors to join the action arena due to the quiet vague wording of the strategy. A weakness of my research is how I evaluated the High Court directive. Although I tried to orientate myself on the grammatical syntax of institutions by Ostrom to examine the directive, I did not use an institutional grammar tool like for example Saba Siddiki. In her work she codes policy documents, applying the institutional grammar tool. To figure out the total number of statements within each document she does a frequency count of each institutional component (Siddiki et al., 2010, p.9). Comparing my study with other academic writings which analysed boundary rules as well, my work has its shortcoming. Larson (2006) and López-Gunn (2003) for example analyse natural water systems and how the access to water is regulated. They examine who is eligible to extract water from the resource system and if the withdrawal is in any way governed. As they analyse boundary rules, they review all non-written and written rules that manage the entry and exit to extract herein water from the resource system. Since I focused only on the impact of the Karnataka High Court directive as boundary rules I surely missed other written or non-written rules which influenced the set of represented actors in the action situation. Also my resources need to be questioned. For one, I could only identify a small number of sources. Second of all, most of my sources are newspaper articles and other papers. It was only possible to have access to one official document, the Karnataka High Court directive. As newspaper articles are often highly biased this may also have influenced my findings. Another limitation of my work is that I only identified group actors and no individuals. Even though I am sure that I identified the most important actors in the action situation, it is clear that I could not list all represented participants.

11 Sarah I. Schäfer 9 7 Summary The aim of this paper was to answer the question if the Karnataka High Court directive can explain the set of represented actors in the action arena. In the course of this paper I outlined the case of urban solid waste management in Bengaluru and which events lead to the examined Kasa Muktha program. In the following I explained why it is possible to analyse the case with the IAD framework and clarified my methods and data collection. My findings showed that the Karnataka High Court directive is partially able to justify the participants in the action arena. Afterwards, I expressed the strength as well as the weaknesses of my research. Some of the weaknesses are due to limited access to sources and the given time limit for a bachelor seminar paper. In an advanced paper it might be possible to find further sources and to get a more complete picture of the case. First of all, I would try to examine all written and non-written boundary rules like for example Larson (2006) and López-Gunn (2003). For future research it would be interesting to have a look at payoff rules and the net costs and benefits. Analysing them it might be possible to state if especially the B.B.M.P., had also other motivations besides the mandatory Karnataka High Court directive to start the Kasa Muktha program. Another interesting aspect to look into would be the attributes of the community. First of all, because I assume that the culture in India might play a role when it comes to subjects which effect the whole community. Second of all, because attributes of the community have not been studied as much as other components of the IAD framework. Even Elinor Ostrom describes the attributes of the community briefly as a third factor that influences the action situation (Ostrom, 2005). Finally, as more and more people are moving into cities and the total amount of waste is growing bigger, cities have to think of ways how to handle garbage. With the Kasa Muktha program the city of Bengaluru was able to recover from the garbage crisis and had serious intents to adapt in the long run. It was a first step towards becoming a resilient city. Whether the program was in the end successful needs however to be questioned.

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