Executive Summary

Vadodara, formerly known as Baroda, was the center of Baroda’s princely state.   It also had one of the first municipal governments in princely India.  The Municipal Act of 1892 created the city’s municipality.  After British rule ended, Baroda joined Bombay province.  Later in 1960, it became part of Gujarat state, when Bombay province was split into its two large linguistic units.  But the 1949 Bombay Municipal Act, integrated into Gujarat state laws, remained the operating framework for Gujarat’s municipal governments.  In 1974, Baroda became Vadodara.  According to the last census (2011), Vadodara had a population of 1.67 million. 

While the history of Vadodara is viewed as one of great eminence, its recent past is marked by a widely noted decline.  From being the second largest city of Gujarat, Vadodara is now the third largest, and a rapidly rising Rajkot might leave it further behind.  Starting in the 1990s, the city’s population growth rate started decelerating. The city underwent an educational and industrial decline.  In contrast, the more globally connected cities – Ahmedabad and Surat – moved ahead, significantly shaping Gujarat’s image as an industrially dynamic state.   Ahmedabad also replaced Vadodara as a leading educational center of the state. 

The educational and industrial decline notwithstanding, compared to the other cities researched in this project, Vadodara is among the among the most participatory and also among best governed, both in terms of services and how its citizens evaluate their local government. 

Among the cities in our project, Vadodara has among the highest propensities to vote and its citizens also participate heavily in civic life, including participation in NGOs and in caste, religious or linguistic organizations, etc. 

The city’s civicness, however, is more about involvement in traditional caste and religious organizations than in what are normally called modern voluntary organizations (Unions, NGOs, Resident Welfare Associations, professional organizations).  And in the civic sphere, Vadodara is very much dominated by its upper caste and upper class elites, the two being highly correlated.  The dominance of the caste elites is also reflected in a very stark pattern of spatial segregation, one in which elite neighborhoods are more exclusively upper caste and relatively devoid of lower castes and Muslims than in any other city in our project.  

The voting story is, however, different. Lower classes, lower castes, and Muslims vote in disproportionately high numbers, especially as compared to the upper castes.  

Reviewing patterns of access to basic services, we find that, as elsewhere, class matters a lot, and, in most cases (e.g., water, sanitation), we find a linear decline in the quality of services as one moves down from the highest-class category to the lower classes.  The correlation between upper 3 classes and upper castes is also very high. Upper castes have much better sanitation than the lower castes.   

Adivasis are the most deprived community in Vadodara.  They are heavily concentrated in the poorest category of housing, have the lowest rates of voting registration and election turnouts, and have the most inadequate supply of basic services.  Dalits, to whom Adivasis are often compared, are much better off in all respects.  

Dalits may not have presence in the elite neighborhoods, but they are also more or less absent in the informal shacks.  They are widely distributed among the middle categories of housing.  Most of all, Dalits voting rates are higher than those of any other community in the city.  

As measured by our overall index of public services, we find that Muslims also do somewhat better than the Hindus. This appears to be a function of the very low concentration of Muslims in the lowest housing type  in Vadodara, which primarily comprises Hindus, especially Adivasis, and has a much lower overall level of service delivery than other housing types in the city. 

To address their problems with services, the citizens of Vadodara rely more on the government office (responsible for the relevant service) than on corporators and other state actors, but they do have a favorable view of corporators. Citizens of Vadodara also rely on “intermediaries” (persons of influence, unelected politicians or local leaders). However, compared to other cities in our project, the use  of intermediaries in Vadodara is the lowest. Vadodara’s heavy reliance on bureaucrats for public services departs from the patterns elsewhere in our project.  Corporators have on the whole become the first port of call for solving service delivery problems. 

Finally, compared to other cities in our project, Vadodara is socially among the most conservative. Friendships, let alone marriages, in Vadodara rarely cut across caste and religious boundaries.  Vadodara’s citizens develop friendships primarily within their communities, and also marry within.  One of India’s best governed cities is also among its most conservative.