Reform Capital: Replacing Rent-Seeking with Innovation-Led Urban Governance
Reform Capital: Replacing Rent-Seeking with Innovation-Led Urban Governance By Gaurav Malik, President, Mission 7374 Foundation India’s cities are standing at a historic crossroads. One path continues the familiar model of rent-seeking urbanization—where political finance is sustained through liquor vends, real estate speculation, opaque contracts, and regulatory discretion. The other path leads toward what I call Reform Capital: a new political and economic ecosystem where clean money, transparent institutions, and citizen-driven innovation become the primary fuel of governance. Today, the uncomfortable truth is that a large part of political funding is generated from the rent economy—liquor auctions, sand mining, waste management contracts, parking tenders, advertising rights, and manipulated land-use changes. These flows shape city priorities. Roads, drains, parks, and stormwater projects are often designed not for outcomes, but for extraction. Open tenders are delayed, contracts re...