Displacing the “parallel state?”

As I delve into case studies of local and national slum upgrading models from around the world to distill potential lessons and apply those to a slum upgrading policy for Kenya for the Nairobi policy studio I am part of at the University of California, Berkeley, I am struck—not for the first time—by the innovation, control and sheer amount of informal service provision that exists prior to any government intervention.

Urban sociologist Loïc Wacquant who writes on urban poverty, especially in rich (or like in Brazil’s case exponentially enriching) countries, describes those informal provisions as “parallel institutions that serve as functional substitutes for and a protective buffer against the dominant institutions of the encompassing society, duplicating the latter only at an incompetent and inferior level.” But at least they provide needed services, one might counter.

Similar to often militant resistance groups such as Hamas in Palestine or Hezbollah in Lebanon, favela drug lords, aside from taking payments for protection or enforcing loyalty, also provide services. Similarly, Kenya’s slums depend on this informal service provision. Fewer than 22% of Nairobi’s slum households have access to clean water, and more than half of slum residents rely on illegal water kiosks and street vendors. These illegal providers operate under great risk but with sizable benefits. Because, as ironic as it is, the poorest are often charged double or triple the public price. But at least they provide needed services, one might interject yet again.

Is that, however, enough to justify the existence of a so-called “parallel state?” Does it do good? Or should it be eliminated?

The answer is complex and there are several pieces to it.

In the case of Brazil, scholars have speculated that eliminating favela gangs could prove rather difficult due to their often deep involvement with the state itself. While bureaucratic apathy and administrative ineptness characterize many slum-government relations, there are also larger issues of political corruption—direct links between government officials and drug deals and arms, gambling rings, electoral favors and patronage politics.

That might be true, but first attempts to do exactly that—eliminating drug cartels—have been made. Under the name Unidade de Polícia Pacificadora (Police Pacifying Unit or UPP), this intervention has been violent in certain cases but successful in most.

And as it turns out, gangs did not provide as many services as expected. It is true that many favela drug traffickers are better armed and possibly more responsive (and definitely better earning) than the police. It is also true that the drug cartels provide certain non-existent services, such as public transport within the favelas. But that provision is marginal.

It might come as a surprise that, in fact, the state—even if insufficiently and inferiorly—provides services to favelas. And has for a while, argues scholar Janice Perlman in her chapter on urban marginality in Rio de Janeiro in “Urban Informality—Transnational Perspectives from the Middle East, Latin America and South Asia.” Since the mid-1980s, the Brazilian welfare state has been expanding with new programs and benefits for the poor. It is the government that runs the day-care centers, the schools, the clinics and hospitals and the skill-training programs. Other Brazilian state programs include the cheque cidadão (“citizen check”), a monthly stipend to be spent on food and personal hygiene, “popular restaurants,” soup kitchen-type restaurants offering subsidized meals, the Bolsa Alimentação (Food Grant), the Bolsa Escola (School Grant) and finally, the Bolsa Familia, a successful conditional cash-transfer program.

So will regulated service provision displace informal forms? Yes, most likely. Be it the state or the private sector to provide those services, the next logical questions are whether this regulated service provision will be enough and whether it will be affordable.

In Brazil, the infrastructure-focused slum upgrading program Favela Bairro has drastically increased access to services. Perlman writes that access to collective urban services such as water, sewerage and electricity are virtually universal. But are they affordable? The persistence of so-called gatos (“cats”), an unofficial and often illegal connection made to legal sources of water and electricity, indicates that the price of legal and regulated services is simply too high. According to Daniela Fabricius, the price per kilowatt for electricity in Rio de Janeiro is comparable to the electricity price in New York City, while the average income is—of course—significantly lower. Clearly, Brazil still needs to work on lowering prices. Meanwhile, however, Kenya might learn some lessons about scale and partnerships.

Want to go on a walk through Rocinha, the favela bairro? Come along here.