Resetting urban governance
India’s cities are plagued by poor sanitation, traffic congestion, weak municipal governance, and ineffective enforcement, requiring urgent structural reforms, financial autonomy, and empowered local governments to drive sustainable urban transformation
Our cities and towns are gasping for quite literally everything. Clean water, plastic waste removal, medical waste cleaning, electronic waste, sanitation in totality is really a big, big issue. Add to the fundamental deficits, and we have archaic rules, flawed implementation and no accountability for any lack of city management. The citizenship has endlessly waited for a divine solution, but that is not about to happen ever, given that God prefers to let the humans arrange their world as best as they can or in our case dis-arrange ours. The metros are a little better than the smaller cities, at least some affluent areas of metros, but in general we need a herculean effort to redeem our living spaces in every city without exception, before the apocalypse.
True, there are problems galore. Traffic, parking in public or residential areas, deficient local transport services, total lack of safety for pedestrians and many more making the citizenry helpless and no one to appeal to. There is a fragile set of laws enlarged by excessive rules which are compounded by a near total inability to enforce compliance. All urbanisation has become a hapless story of dynamic chaos pushing our cities and towns into unhealthy and unliveable spaces. It makes one wonder if municipal governance is at all to be taken seriously in any of its avatars.
The sooner it is realised that it is only the local government that can effectively redeem our city governance, we can begin to steer and navigate urban development to generate prosperity for the people. Governments working out of the respective State capitals or even in the Centre can only do very little except create a positive ambience for local municipal institutions to function and perform. They need resources, they need a skilled workforce and they need political space. The constitutional framework exists and has been there for a long time but has just not been given a chance to become sustainable and enduring and effective. The 73rd and 74th amendments did not work wonders they had so ambitiously intended.
The sooner it is realised that municipal governance is the bedrock of a city's attractiveness for the citizen, we can begin to hope for redemption of our urban dreams. We often compare the reasons for the enormous success of the Chinese in managing its urbanisation process and in doing so attribute it to its unitary governance system. Their cities are mayor-driven local governments and anchor the development and city management process. They are in fact called ‘mayoral economy’ because of the leadership provided by the mayors to imagine and implement models of infrastructure and efficient civic services delivery. The cities are in competition to create better conditions than each other to attract business and investment to enhance prosperity and economic wellbeing. One of the singular reasons for their success is also the functional autonomy that these mayors are vested with that enables governance in the best interests of the city. Failures are also vested with consequences. Adoption of the ‘small government’ logic helped in the revitalisation of their cities.
There is no argument for copying a model because it has worked in one geography but this is only to emphasise that only a local government can deliver all the needs of city management and city development on a sustained basis. We have the framework, though in a dilapidated state. So it needs a genuine and honest rejuvenation. The ‘why’ of the remedy is well known. It is the ‘how’ that is the hard part. The politics of the state has to undergo a transformation.
Until now, governance of the cities has been driven by the state capitals. Yes, it is the power of the patron model that allures the chief ministers and his or her colleagues to control the finances of the municipal bodies. These bodies are held to account for delivery of civic services and thus take the blame and ire of the citizenry for all the deficits. To add to their woes, there is no respect for the officialdom of a local government for which they attract no talent. Career progression is dismal which has impacted their ability to raise their stature.
There is no shortcut to rebuild the municipal structures of delivery except a sustained support of financial and human resource muscle. Whether we make our mayors lead the governance revolution in the cities or stay with the commissioner as the leader of city developments, we have to choose and stay with it in earnest. There is little point in swaying from one to the other, with no real belief in making our municipal bodies really muscular and the vehicles of urban growth. There is a very long and arduous road for our cities to become really liveable which only an efficient local government can ensure.
And the reality is that efficiency at the cutting edge of people’s interface with law enforcers is the most vital piece in the whole environment. Even good policies are rendered useless by poor implementation or an indifferent one. It is visible in every aspect of local governance. So a much needed redemption of local institutions can prove to be the panacea for the ambition to make world class cities.
The writer is Former Director, India Habitat Centre. Views expressed are personal
