Scope

for bottom-up planning in Kolkata: rhetoric vs reality ANIRBAN PAL ABSTRACT This paper describes the process of metropolitan planning and decision making in Kolkata, India. Despite widespread belief that West Bengal has been a pioneer in democratic decentralization in India, this paper argues that the dominance of one political party and its hierarchical structure has thwarted the scope for effective bottom-up metropolitan planning in Kolkata. It questions the unchallenged dominance of partisan political actors in public decision making at the local level, and suggests a greater role for non-partisan and locally based civil society organizations. The case also demonstrates that these processes call for expertise in communicative people-centred practices and for shrewd strategic actors who understand the power dynamics of the wider political context. It high-lights the need for policy makers to focus on the design of institutional mechan-isms that allow for a more bottom-up approach to metropolitan planning through which to address common problems and define shared objectives. KEYWORDS democratic decentralization / Kolkata / partisan politics / urban governance I