"The idea is that rules—whether laws, social norms or corporate practices—matter a great deal in determining outcomes and so therefore we should seek innovation and improvement in rules exactly as we do in technology". - Paul Romer's TED lecture on charter cities.
Have you ever noticed that no matter how much we have developed and shown the world the progress of our country still whenever any nation talks about India they still see us as a developing, poverty stricken nation and my answer to this is they are right. People see in us only what we show them. The second you goggle poverty stricken countries, India is number 3 not very difficult to find. Poverty in India is widespread with the nation estimated to have a third of the world's poor now reside in India. If you take a look at the 2005 World Bank estimate 42% of Indians fall below the international poverty line of US$ 1.25 a day (PPP, in nominal terms 21.6 a day in urban areas and 14.3 in rural areas). How can we call ourselves a developed nation where a little less than half of the population of our country doesn’t have the basics that one needs for survival?
We keep hearing time to time that the government and some nongovernmental organizations are initiating several programs to alleviate poverty from our country, but the rate of success of these programs lies in this very figure “42% poor reside in India”. So the question lies whether we should wait for the government to come up with plans or programs to assuage poverty or we as citizens should come up with a hard core elucidation for this crisis.
I see one such solution, but this solution will bring about a revolution in our country. The road to any such big change is not easy there are lots of dynamics involved which together bring about the transformation. To influence people to come out of their comfort zones and try something new will not be a piece of cake. We live in a democratic country, we have certain rights and privileges, but our entire constitution is designed in such way that to bring about any new reform in the constitution, can take ages together. I believe that the only time people hear you is when you put into their ears a way in which they will reap more profits. Now the whole idea is to innovate a business sculpt which brings a revolutionized growth in all sects of our country.
The concept of “charter city” is what supports my above statement “These cities address global poverty by giving people the chance to escape from precarious and harmful subsistence agriculture or dangerous urban slums. Charter cities let people move to a place with rules that provide security, economic opportunity, and improved quality of life. Charter cities also give leaders more options for improving governance and investors more opportunities to finance socially beneficial infrastructure projects” as defined by Paul Romer.
Let’s look at geographical boundaries of our country from an eye of a designer, if we compare with all the continents on the planet our country has an exquisite form. Now the question arises, can we use this formation of our country to our pro or not. Yes we can, now the basic requirements of a charter city are an unoccupied piece of land and a charter, and this is where our first amendment transpires. Our very first charter is to find an unoccupied piece of land, in a nation where the population count is 1,173,108,000 (2010 est), this basic requirement might be a little difficult to accomplish but this cannot stop us from thinking about the alternatives.
The Indian peninsula, hemmed in by the Indian Ocean, Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal, boasts of a magnificent marine ecosystem. A combination of geo-morphological and climatic factors and the nutrients supplied by the rivers along the coast, make it exceptionally productive and biologically rich. Indian Coastline stretches across 8000 km. India has a significant marine fisheries sector that has long been an important source of employment and livelihood for coastal communities. A conservative estimate suggests that at least 3.5 million people derive their livelihood from marine capture fisheries in the over 4000 fishing villages situated along the Indian coastline, though other estimates put the number of people dependent on marine fisheries as much higher.
If you travel along the coastline of India you will notice that the population here is much lesser in comparison to the central part of the country. Most of the residents migrate to the planes in search of better jobs, more money and better education for their children.
So what I am proposing is- What if we convert the entire Indian coastline into a stretch of charter cities? So for this we will start with a charter that specifies all the rules that we need to build a charter city to attract the investors who will build out the infrastructure, the power system , the roads, the ports, the buildings, we need to attract firms that will hire the people who move their first. We will also need to attract families who instead of migrating to the plains, want to come and live there permanently. To make the charter city we need good rules that will be captured in the charter and choices for people. We also need choices for leaders, we need to allow potential partnership between nations or cities to grow. (For eg: India and Sri-lanka or Bangladesh etc) So if we allow these partnerships to foster we get the benefits of reducing poverty scale throughout the country.
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