Public Trust and Urban Governance in Delhi, India

• In Event: Politics of Place and Space

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. While existing literature on governance and decentralization establishes that citizens’ trust in local governance bodies is essential for effective delivery of public goods and services, we also know that local state capacity to respond to India’s rapidly urbanizing population remains limited. Based on an original survey of 260 households as well as interviews conducted in June-July 2022 in Delhi, India, I contend that horizontal ties among households, and vertical ties between households and neighborhood-level organizations influences variation in public trust. In doing so, I create a novel typology of trust at the local level. I focus on public trust in the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) among residents of unauthorized colonies that house approximately 30% of the city’s population.

The paper also presents new insights on data collection that are relevant to the study of trust in highly informal urban spaces, given that there is no existing dataset that directly captures a snapshot of trust in a local governance body in a major Indian city. The findings from this study highlights the importance of capturing inter-household variation when measuring trust in government. In addition, qualitative data reveals the everyday trade-offs residents face between engaging with the state directly, through existing neighborhood-level organizations or other forms of collective action. The findings push the boundaries of scholarly work on the sub-national determinants of trust and its relationship with governance in rapidly urbanizing spaces characterized by high levels of informality.

Author

• Shagun Gupta, American University-SIS