Habitat Ii is being held at a time when the world is witnessing an major change in approaches and attitudes that question centralized systems of planning. Many developing countries are now going through a process of opening up their economies. This has created new problems in the form loss of traditional livelihoods and further marginalisation of the poor. Habitat II should essentially be looking at the institutional changes needed to meet this situation and how an environment can be created in which habitat related problems can be solved at a much faster pace than what the old system could achieve. Significantly, this is more than possible provided one looks at other governance issues which need change. 1 The Vancoover Backdrop The national report for the 1976 Vancoover Habitat conference was coordinated by the then mascent centre for environment in the Department of Science and Technology of the Government of India. It was a short well articulated document throwing upon various social and environmental issues and concepts for policy makers to ponder upon. Seeing the current state of the rural and urban habitat in the country, little attention seems to have been given during the past two decades in developing those concepts and building them into working practices. 2 The City Summit A unique feature of Habitat II is that it established a highly participative process. As part of the consultations, the Government of India constituted three key groups of housing managers, private sector and NGOs. Each key group organized a series of consultations which were expected to be taken into consideration in the preparation of the national report. The national report as it has come out, seems to have followed a stereotype route without paying any heed to the consultations. During the two decades following the vancoover conference, the ministry of urban development seems to have highjacked "habitat" notwithstanding that the small centre on environment in the department of science and technology has since grown into a full-fledged ministry of environment. The urban ministry is clearly illequipped to look into habitat issues holistically. Habitat issues not only cut across the urban and rural divide but are also greatly dependent upon socio-economic, infrastructure and environmental issues. Creation of sustainable livelihoods in places were people are living, can play a major role in promoting sustainable communities. The right location for dealing with habitat issues in an integrated manner is therefore the environment ministry. As it stands, the ministry of rural development refused to coordinate with the urban ministry possibly because it did not have much to say. The result is that the national report deals primarily with urban issues in a fragmented manner. It contains all concepts tried out by the ministry of urban development so far, whether they worked or not. The report totally misses the issues of the green environment. Though Habitat II has been dedicated as a city summit, the basic problem in India and most developing countries is the socio-economic and environmental degeneration of the rural economy which, in turn, has made the villages and cities unsustainable. The report has very little to say on this critical issue. In the national forum which was convened to review the report, the authenticity of the statistics and data credited to the consultants (Society for Development Studies), who compiled the report for the ministry, was severely criticized. This, in our view, is amongst the least often shortcoming of the report. Gross economic statistics without any relation to regional realities, usually used in development management, do not help much in policy planning. The national report does not offer any coherent plan of action for the future. 3 Key Strategy not touched The habitat related problems in most developing countries including India have arisen from superficial centralized planning and centralized public management being practised in them. Largely following colonial practices without realizing how damaging they could be, these countries generally have an overpowering bureaucracy and weak local governments. National report only makes some perfunctory statements about district planning in the context of the constitutional amendments. General One often wonders why there should be so many wise people in central ministries trying to solve habitat problems of urban and rural settlements which are essentially local issues. All that the central government needs to do is to empower the local government and the people and create an environment for them to solve their own problems. The national report can easily be reduced to one-third its size and, in the process, significantly improved. As it stands, it is a non document.
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