ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the continual expansion of town planning organizations and development agencies within existing central and state bureaucracies that sought to control the use and ownership of urban lands via enabling acts and executive regulation between the 1960s and 1980s. But even as public sector planners championed the cause of comprehensive planning in state legislatures and official circles, very few cities could actually prepare master development plans, much of which could never be implemented. Faced with stupendous challenges of the country’s lackadaisical economy, persistent lack of resources, and rural impoverishment driving incessant urbanization, planners sought to decongest large cities by deflecting growing population to small and medium-sized towns even as massive housing shortages forced many residents to seek shelter in jerry-built settlements. This chapter concludes by explaining how the governments and its agencies began oscillating between denial and acknowledgment of such people- and community-led spontaneous planning efforts, while ubiquitous ‘informalities’ began challenging state-led formal plans across urban India.
