CLASS POLICIES IN METROPOLITAN DEVELOPMENT 23 a recent international seminar on social problems of the cities and communist policy,17 French and Italian participants pointed out how millions of people lacking adequate qualifications and proper housing were flocking to the cities and how those Who could secure a home were compelled to pay a huge part of their wages, sometimes as high as fifty percent as rent. On the other hand school construction, medical care and other services were extremely poor* Urbanisation in these countries had been accompanied by economic decline and 'impoverishment of numerous cities. By contrast the parasitic strata of the urban society had become richer still. A vast reserve army of workers swelled the population of slums and depressed areas. The stranglehold of monopoly was tightened. Marcel Rosette of France said that the state tried to use urban development policy as a means of dividing the non-monopoly urban strata and instilling reformist illusions particularly in those who were less exploited. Outlining an alternative city development policy, Giancarlo Quagliotti, leader of the Communist group in Turin municipality, referred to a programme which ensured that urbanisation served the interest of the working people who formed the overwhelming majority in all cities. This meant termination of social segregation and adoption of a housing policy that would tackle the problem as a social one, ending of parasitic and speculative use of urban land and control of rent, transformation of schools into an instrument of new culture, reorganisation of mass transport and medical services that would be within everyone's reach. Resistance to pressures of monopolists and rentiers on urban politics, culture, public life and planning and guarantee of autonomy of municipal bodies assumed cardinal significance in the development of this alternative programme in which physical planning was to follow social and economic initiatives. Growing financial debts are one of the greatest problems facing all large cities in the entire capitalist world including such giants as New York, Rome, Tokyo and Paris. The conditions are no different in the Third World. Renzo Ciaiolo, leader of the Communist group in the municipality of Bossoleno, pointed out that in Italy, the alternative programme insisted on the state assuming the communes' entire debt and paying it off within specified years, on changing the tax system to make the rich pay higher taxes and on introducing a fundamentally new pattern of tax distribution between the state and the communes. At present municipalities everywhere received only a small fraction of all tax receipts. All these are valid alternatives also for Calcutta's development. The bourgeois slogan of fchange the city to change life5 deliberately puts the cart before the horse, tends to represent a deep-seated social crisis as a mere bottleneck in physical planning, skilfully avoids issues of