Big City Government in India (Councillor, Administrator and Citizen in Delhi)

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Has politician no place in municipal government? It has since urban politics is very much a part of Indian life and culture and Delhi is no exception.

Philip Oldenburg, in this book, gives an insight into the functioning of the municipal government in the Delhi Union Territory, particularly at the ward level within a system of decentralized administration. In a detailed account of 'Kucha Khirkiwala', a pseudonym for the award, he highlights the dominance of urban politics in the Delhi Municipal Corporation and shows how the boundary between politics and administration at all levels in most areas of Delhi is blurred.

This study is a 'political ethnography' which deals with complex interrelations between economic, social, and historical factors and day-to-day concerns of the main actors on the Delhi stage: the counselor, administrator, and the citizen, Though the author's analysis is focussed on Delhi it is significant for understanding how municipal governments operate in other cities in India.

Philip Oldenburg received his Ph. D. from the University of Chicago in 1974. In addition to. his work on municipal government in India, he has written on United States policy toward India and Pakistan during the 1974 crisis and joined other scholars in preparing introductory materials on Bangladesh. He has taught in the Department of Political Science and the Center of Asian Studies of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Presently he is teaching Political Science at Columbia University, New York.

This study is a revised version of my Ph.D. dissertation, completed in August 1974 for the Department of Political Science of the University of Chicago. The revisions have been confined mainly to the substitution of data from the 1971 Census of India for the 1961 census data used in the dissertation. I have retained the title of the original work for this study. In the revision, I have added some references to works published after the dissertation was written, and taken note of some of the more important events in the recent history of the Delhi Municipal Corporation. I have attempted to eliminate the many errors of the original study; I fear, however, that many persist, and these are, of course, my responsibility alone.

While this revision was in preparation, the Delhi Municipal Corporation was superseded, for the period of a year, in March 1975. Moreover, the effects of the proclamation of a state of emergency in June 1975 are bound to penetrate into the entire political system of India. The use of the present tense in much of the study does not imply a description of the current system of government of Delhi, but rather the descriptive analysis ) an observer in 1969-70, the year of my research there.

There are no English equivalents for many of the Hindi and Urdu terms found in this study, and such terms are wet defined in context. A page reference for where the term is first used and defined is given in the index. The translations from Hindi and Urdu are my own. The listing of my debts to others for the formation of the ideas which went into this study, the support is given during the research, and the help rendered during the writing must begin with that due to Lloyd Rudolph, the chairman of my dissertation committee. He has helped shape my work from before its inception through its completion with unfailing attention and skill. I am grateful also to David Greenstone and McKim Marriott, the other members of my committee, for the time they took to read and comment on my work.

The members--faculty, students, and staff; far, far too numerous to mention--of that marvelous scholarly community which is the group of South Asianists at the University of Chicago, contributed immeasurably to my understanding of India. The staff of the library and those who struggled to teach me Hindi and Urdu deserve special thanks. A -similar group of scholars and staff at the Center for Asian Studies of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign helped me through the tasks of completing the dissertation and the revised study.

The year and a half of field research in India were financed by a grant from the Foreign Area Fellowship Program (which also provided for six months of study before I left and six months of writing time after I returned) for which I am very grateful. The Program is not, of course, responsible in any way for the views expressed in the study. This final version owes much to those who read and criticized the dissertation; to the editor of the Monograph Series, Paul Wheatley; and to the staff of the University of Arizona Press, Even more, is owed to Dorothy Osborne, who prepared the final transcript, and to Christopher Muller-Wille, who prepared the charts and maps.

In Delhi, with almost no exceptions, I was given cooperation cheerfully and with open hands. I owe most to the councilor of "Kucha Khirkiwala" (the pseudonym of the municipal ward I studied in detail) for permitting an outsider to peer in on him and his work, and to the councilors and officers of the City Zone who consented to interviews. Mr. H. B. Dass, the 0 & M officer of the Delhi Municipal Corporation in 1969-70, steered me clear of many incorrect judgments, with good humor and keen in-sight; my debt to him is particularly great. My stay in Delhi was enriched by my affiliation with the Indian Institute of Public Administration, and by the help given by its faculty and staff, particularly the members of the Center for Municipal Training and Research -- G. Mukharji, A. Datta, and M. Bhattacharya, among others.

This set of acknowledgments is hardly complete. I have mentioned few names here, not because others were not important in shaping my thought and helping me complete this work, but because most of my Delhi informants and friends must remain anonymous, and it seems hardly fair to overwhelm them with still more Americans.