Trust and Legitimacy in the National Capital Region of India

• In Event: Lightning Round: Research Design

Abstract

By 2031, an estimated 600 million Indians will be living in urban areas, comprised on megacities such as Delhi, as well as smaller cities and towns that have emerged to meet the demands of a rapidly urbanizing population. Ahluwalia (2014) notes that “Besides the 8000 or so cities and towns, there are also the unacknowledged urban areas, that remain so even when the Census declares that they fulfill the criteria to graduate from a village to a town. Such “census towns” increased by more than 2500 – from 1362 in 2001 to 3894 in 2011 – while the number of statutory urban local governments increased by less than 250 over this period.” State capacity to respond to India’s rapidly urbanizing population remains limited, and citizens’ trust in local governance bodies is essential for effective delivery of public goods and services. The India Household Development Survey - II (2011-12) found that household confidence (often used as a proxy measure for trust) in local governance bodies varies across urban areas across the country. In the National Capital Region (NCR) alone, we find that in urban cities with comparable state capacity, provision of public services, political culture and social norms, confidence levels vary.

My dissertation project explores the factors associated with citizens’ trust in government, focusing specifically on local governance bodies in urban India. I aim to answer the following question: In a rapidly urbanizing democratic society characterized by uneven local governance outcomes, what explains the variation in public trust in urban local governance bodies in areas with low state capacity? I contend that while performance is a necessary condition that influences variation in generalized levels of trust, it is not sufficient in explaining citizens’ trust in their ULBs. I further contend that in areas characterized by poor state capacity to provide public goods at the local level, individual membership in bridging/bonding social networks and institutional proximity to ULBs influence the conditions under which individuals are empowered to demand better public services in their neighborhoods. I contend that institutional proximity and membership in bridging/bonding networks together predict levels of trust in ULBs through a linking mechanism that I call ‘reputational legitimation’, by which bridging networks foster greater vertical linkages among their members to formal institutions than bonding networks, allowing for a diverse membership to gain access to ULBs directly or indirectly and foster reputational feedback loops that build trust over time.

I will employ a nested and sequential mixed-method design (Lieberman 2005), in which initial stages of my research will inform subsequent stages. I focus on two states in the National Capital Region (NCR) of India : Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. Together, these two states are home to 229 million people, out of which approximately 60 million (26.2%) live in urban areas (2011 Census of India) and 46 million (76.6%) of those live in the NCR. Urban local bodies in these states are crucial in expanding public services to meet the needs of a rapidly growing urban population. Spread across three distinct but inter-linked data collection phases, I will conduct an original survey of neighborhoods in select cities across both states, beginning with a pilot data collection phase to gather preliminary data and extended fieldwork starting January 2023 combining survey research with qualitative interviews.

Author

• Shagun Gupta, American University-SIS