Indian cities were not always like this. Consider the 1970s, a time when I was growing up. There is no question that cities were cleaner, greener, and better run. Of course there were vast slums, built of sackcloth and stick and, in many ways, more miserable than those of today. But large swathes of primary cities had a sylvan, clean core, and you could argue that a (smaller) middle class had a better quality of life. Today’s cities have become engines of growth and improved material prospects for many more millions of Indians—the proportion of city dwellers living in slums has fallen by half since 1991—but the quality of life has, in many ways, plummeted. Half of the world’s top 20 polluted cities, for instance, are in India.

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New authorities have come into being, each reluctant to cooperate with the other. In Bengaluru, commuters risk life and limb trying to change over from new metro stations to older railway stations: linking bridges or pavements are not being built because metro, railway, and civic officials squabble and spend their time communicating through letters. Many flyovers have been hanging in mid-air for years because contracts were handed out and payments made without land being made available for flyovers to made landfall.

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Do not expect a political solution. Indeed, as many experts have pointed out, politics is at the heart of India’s inability to create empowered, directly elected leaders and power centres responsible for taking charge of cities. Every city has a mayor, but he or she has no real powers, which are vested in a set of bureaucrats running various departments. Many of these officials are earnest and honest, but lone rangers cannot ensure metropolitan transformation. Big-ticket plans and budgets are controlled by state politicians, usually elected from the hinterland and with no interest in individual cities. In many emerging and advanced countries, mayors make their careers by transforming cities; in India, they make their money, cut a ribbon or two and fade into oblivion.

Urban reform is one of India’s greatest political and administrative challenges. To dismantle corrupt interest groups will not be easy, as Bengaluru’s inability to deposit salaries directly into the bank accounts of its street sweepers has shown. A cabal of garbage contractors—who hire the sweepers, keep a host of ghost sweepers on their rolls and take a cut in the salaries—has successfully stalled reform, stopping trash collection every time the municipality attempts direct cash payments. The sweepers are cheated, as is a city that has gone from being known as a garden city to a garbage city.

The bad news: India’s cities are likely to worsen. The good news: There is none.