Conferences and meets on Mumbai are dime a dozen. What seems to be somewhat new is to see the city’s regulars smelling out shoddy research and giving it to the scholars good and proper.

A small meeting was convened recently to discuss a global study (work in progress) on urbanization done by representatives of the World Bank. The reputed international agency had set upon itself to understand how urban concentration is crucial to economic growth and to explore the impact of such concentration in real contexts. These two dimensions were presented as distinct studies.

Frankly, it was shocking to see the shallow assumptions behind one report, which made the loudest proclamations of urban concentration and economic growth. Considering the amount of resources that the scholars must have had at their disposal, if all that they could produce were broad strokes of explanation based on a hundred year timeframe and use that to extrapolate on much shorter urban planning life spans then that is plain shoddy research. If they could neutralize a major historical epoch like colonialism by not naming it as such, in the garb of economic explanation, then that is stepping ten steps behind even in terms of the discipline’s own intellectual history.

It was entirely to the credit of some invited participants and the chair, that the discussion and responses reflected better sense. The representatives of various city based government agencies, university departments and civic groups pointed out several theoretical lapses and methodological lacunae in the study. Without necessarily agreeing with each other. One bureaucrat did make the puzzling allegation that the city’s intellectuals often bully the political elite (who know the city’s pulse better), and some activists found it difficult to believe that most people in Mumbai actually walk to work (as per the reliable findings of a local study based on the city’s large slum population). By and large though, they made strong and sensible points. Including the observation that a political economic framework in Mumbai is always better than a purely economic explanaition given the way power and commerce work here. Also – some pointed out – planned urban concentration can never be the cause of economic growth – which is what the preliminary report seemed to tautologically suggest.

However, if average Mumbaikars were to hear these arguments there would only be confusion in their minds. Why is it that with such amazing ideas, intellectual expertise, political willingness and wisdom that get expressed at such forums do we still find ourselves in a city that struggles to provide basic civic standards for most of its people?

Maybe the answer lies in the architecture of this particular meeting itself. At the end of the day, international financial agencies see themselves at the peak of the world order and push forth agendas that, in spite of better informed local critiques, do not really help the city as per its own needs.

And if you look at the history of the city’s planning processes it has always been at the mercy of a global narrative of urbanization that sits at odds with its peculiar connections to its hinterland, local migration and needs of average citizens. Yet – we do not have the resources or the appropriate framework to collect and organize local knowledge into a formidable critique of urban choices that get bestowed on us by those who benefit from such narratives. If we look closely, these beneficiaries cannot be simplified into categories such as business or political interests. Eventually business and politics are what makes cities. What will help is a more specific villain; financial companies who are behind the grand urban construction juggernaut that rules the urban roost and defines the global order. Whether people need their projects or not.

Eventually we all left with the feeling that we still did not have enough basic data and information to actually substantiate even the most reasonable critiques made on the basis of actual lived experience.

While global laws of urbanization continued to be blithely formulated by those who lived elsewhere.