He keeps his half of the bargain. But increasingly, the city does not keep its half. It takes his labour and returns a tarpaulin roof, a toilet shared by two hundred, water from a tanker at a premium, and a three-hour commute crushed into a Mumbai suburban local at a load so brutal it deserves the name cattle class.

The question is the oldest one in political philosophy, transposed to the Indian street: what does a city owe every resident, and why has India stopped paying? Call it the urban social compact — the floor of guarantees a city owes anyone who lives in it, rich or poor, young or old, able-bodied or not. 

What The Constitution Forgot

The Constitution of 1950 is generous to citizens and silent on cities. It made local government a State subject — Entry 5 of the State List — and, in its Directive Principles, instructed the state to organise village panchayats under Article 40. The town found no such sentence. Urban residents were left to colonial-era municipal acts and the discretion of distant state governments, with no constitutional claim to the place they lived. For four decades, the city was an administrative orphan: important enough to tax, too unimportant to empower.

The 74th Constitutional Amendment of 1992 was meant to end that. It gave municipalities a place in the Constitution at last — Part IXA, a Twelfth Schedule listing 18 functions, from water supply to urban poverty alleviation, mandated State Finance Commissions and Metropolitan Planning Committees. But it devolved nothing by force. The operative verb was may: states “may, by law, endow” city governments with powers. Most never did. 

Three decades on, the three Fs — funds, functions, functionaries — remain largely with the state; the elected mayor is a ribbon-cutter while a state-appointed commissioner runs the city; metropolitan planning committees sit unconstituted. 

Giant That Is Not Seen

The neglect would be survivable if the city were small. It is not. 

By the Census of 2011, 377 million Indians — about 31% — were urban. 

But the World Bank’s Agglomeration Index found that around 55% of Indians already lived in settlements that were urban in form and function as far back as 2010, and it judged the region’s urbanisation “messy and hidden”. 

The government now concedes the point. The Economic Survey 2025-26 records that, “India was 63% urban in 2015, which is nearly double the urbanisation rate reported in the 2011 Census,” and accepts that the country “may be far more urban than the Census indicates.” 

The stakes are enormous. On roughly 3% of the land, urban India already generates close to 60% of national output. By 2050, the World Bank and the Housing Ministry’s July 2025 report Towards Resilient and Prosperous Cities in India projects the urban population will nearly double to 951 million — India adding more city-dwellers over the next quarter-century than any other country on earth. 

The World Bank estimates that India must invest some US$ 840 billion in urban infrastructure over 15 years, and over US$ 2.4 trillion by 2050 if those cities are to be resilient and low carbon. 

Yet cities have no money of their own. Municipal revenues have stayed frozen near 1% of gross domestic product (GDP) for a decade. A city that cannot raise its own money cannot keep its own promise. 

The Broken Compact

Measure the compact against the lived reality of the resident, and 10 fractures are now unmistakable.

One, shelter. With an urban housing shortfall of close to 19 million units, some 65 million people in slums and 1.8 million with no roof at all on the 2011 count — and, to tell the truth, both the slum and the homeless numbers are a gross undercount.

Two, water. No Indian city supplies water around the clock to all its residents. Where the municipal pipe fails, the tanker takes over — and the poorest pay the most per litre for the worst water. NITI Aayog has warned that some 600 million Indians face high-to-extreme water stress.

Three, sanitation. Less than a third of urban sewage is treated before it returns to the country’s rivers and aquifers. Toilets are shared, broken, or absent, and the men who clear the city’s drains still die inside them, decades after manual scavenging was outlawed. 

Four, mobility. Most urban Indians walk, cycle, or take the bus; the city builds its roads for the minority who drive. The lowest earners bear the longest, most dangerous commutes, and the pedestrian and the two-wheeler rider account for most of the dead. India has built the world’s third-largest metro network and still cannot move its people because no dense city is ever un-jammed by making more room for cars.

Five, safety. A city’s promise is withdrawn after dark — for women most of all. Unlit streets, absent policing, and a public realm designed without a thought for who feels safe in it turn half the population into part-time citizens, free to use the city only in daylight and only in company.

Six, public space. The park, the maidan, the riverbank and the footpath — the commons where a city becomes a society — are being encroached, privatised and paved over. 

Seven, gentrification and displacement. “Beautification,” riverfront redevelopment, and slum clearance routinely push the poor out of the very centres they serve, freeing prime land for those who can pay. 

Eight, the elderly. Cities built for the young and the able offer the old no benches to rest on, no shade, no accessible toilets, and footpaths they cannot cross safely. In a rapidly ageing nation, the hostile city quietly confines its elders indoors.

Nine, children. Car-dominated, pollution-choked, stripped of safe places to play, the Indian city is engineered against childhood. A generation is growing up with the street as a threat rather than a playground — a loss no flyover compensates.

Ten, the differently-abled. A decade after the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act mandated an accessible India, kerbs, buses, stations, and public buildings remain impassable for people in wheelchairs or who are blind. Accessibility is not a favour to a minority.

Ten Repairs

The fractures point to their own cure. Ten repairs would begin to make the compact real.

One, legislate the floor. Convert the compact from sentiment into statute — a national framework guaranteeing a basic entitlement to water, sanitation, shelter, mobility, safety, and public space - which is enforceable.

Two, count the real city. Redefine “urban” by density and satellite data.

Three, a right to shelter, not a bulldozer. Reorient housing policy to in-situ upgrading, rental stock for the poorest, and secure tenure, so the city’s workers are housed where they work rather than evicted.

Four, water as a guaranteed service. Commit to 24×7 metered supply with a free lifeline block for poor households and cross-subsidy built in — treating water not as a favour dispensed by a tanker mafia but as a standard the city must meet.

Five, close the sanitation loop. Fund sewage treatment to full coverage, mechanise every desludging operation to end deaths in drains, and enforce the law against manual scavenging.

Six, streets for people. Ring-fence a legislated share of every transport budget for walking, cycling, and public transport.

Seven, design for everyone. Make universal design — age-friendly, child-friendly, disability-friendly — a non-negotiable building and footpath code, audited and enforced.

Eight, an anti-displacement rule. Bar any public project from displacing the poor without rehabilitation in place, and turn the rising value of urban land into a fund for inclusion rather than a lever for exclusion.

Nine, a financed compact. Tie Union and state transfers — the Urban Challenge Fund and successor schemes among them — to the measurable delivery of the minimum guarantee, and reform property tax, user charges, and land-value capture so cities can at last pay for their own promises. 

Ten, an accountable city government. None of the above survives without a government that answers to the resident. Complete the unfinished business of 1992: devolve the three Fs in full, give the elected mayor real executive power and a professional municipal cadre, constitute the ward committees and area sabhas that let citizens hold the city to account.

(The writer is a former civil servant.)