The great Indian Urban mess .

Contrast to cities in the developed world, urban India is a mess. What we see in a typical Indian city are shabby buildings, congested roads, encroached public spaces, pathetic state of garbage disposal, and a lot of such woes which we are all experiencing if we happens to live in any Indian city. Yet millions of young people are migrating from rural areas to urban India, leaving their farmland behind, in search of economic opportunities and better life style. 

People primarily blame their local Member of Parliament and MLA s, and many others for this state of affairs. Media often brings MP s, MLA s , Chief Ministers, when they talk essentially municipal issues like garbage, condition of roads, slum issues etc. We make these elected representatives responsible for all the ills because we essentially don’t know who the real culprit is. Let’s examine the issue in perspective and see where the real problem lies.

Root cause of the issue of urban mess in India is that   we don’t have an urban leader in our cities. What we have instead is  multiple authorities operating in silos and sometimes at cross purpose. We have a Mayor post which is more like a titular head without much effective powers. Real executive powers are lying with a bureaucrat CEO who is appointed by Chief Minister and is accountable only to him.

Elected Councillors of our municipal bodies are mainly rent seeking, career politicians whose roles are limited to choosing Mayoral candidates. They play a minimal role in administration of municipalities. Meanwhile whole Municipal administration under the bureaucrat CEO is mainly concerned about garbage disposal, a few roads, water supply and sanitation, building permits, registration of births and deaths, a few public works etc.

Urban administration in developed countries is much different from what we have in our country. In those places, an elected Mayor is a very powerful entity, who looks after almost everything related to that city which includes appointment of Police chief who report directly to him.  He does have the power to tax, formulate land use pattern, prepare master plans, recruit and dismiss municipal bureaucracy, Engineers , firemen and all others whom he deemed fit for smooth functioning of his municipality.

Voters, in return can evaluate Mayor’s performance very clearly and can put all the blame on him if something gone wrong and can outvote him if wish so. Many times, Mayors are seen to be competing with each other for fresh investments and thereby creation of jobs and new tax revenue. We can recollect how cities and mayors vied for newly announced campus for Google. Let us recollect the  highly visible and commendable role played by Mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani when 9/11 happened.

In many aspects, these mayors of capital cities are perhaps second most powerful authorities next only to Prime Minister/ President. In many countries, mayor post is a stepping stone for highest political offices of that country. 

Contrast to this is the way we see our Mayors. I am sure that very few people in our country know the name of mayor of their own city. He or she does have a limited role to play whenever any key decisions are taken. Most of the decisions and approvals pertaining to any cities are directly approved and monitored by Chief Minister/ Cabinet minister himself and are executed by concerned District collectors/ CEO s of municipality.

First step towards urban renewal in our country should be about real empowerment of our Mayors who should be a directly elected one and can appoint officers under him. Mayor should be a man/woman who should have enough financial resources and managerial bandwidth to take up every, matters related to urban administration and should have command over all the authorities and bureaucrat under that geographical area.

Since he is an elected representative and if sufficiently empowered, he will be having a clear incentive to do things which are in the larger interest of his city as he will be always interested in re election. Further like in Developed countries, his political career and ambitions are directly connected to his Mayoral performance. This is unlike a bureaucratic Municipal commissioner who does not have any incentive to have a better administration for the city. Let us keep our MP s, MLA s, away from Municipal issues and let them concentrate on their legislative role.

Unlike other countries, there is a reason why Mayors in our country is a powerless entity. During freedom movement, Indian leaders were getting elected to Municipalities as popular representatives. Remember, Sardar Patel was the President of Ahmedabad municipality and so was Jawaharlal Nehru in Allahabad. British government was not ready to give sufficient powers and authority to these popular leaders and kept real executive powers with British bureaucrat in the form of CEO s and Governors of the provinces. After independence, the CM s and Commissioners continued to exercise these powers. Hence we continue to have the institutional legacy of British municipal administration.  Even the 73 rd and 74 th amendment couldn’t bring much needed changes.

There is a huge amount of institutional persistence when we talk about urban governance. Bureaucrats don’t want to cede any powers to an elected Mayor nor do our ‘All India Service’ officers want to serve under such commands.  Neither the CM s wants to bring any changes to this status-quo situation. An empowered mayor would be a real political rival to the incumbent CM. Besides no CM wish to lose control over the these cities, since much of the discretionary and rent seeking powers for the incumbents come from the land parcels, necessary approvals, building permits, infrastructure building etc.

Faster economic growth can happen only if we can re-imagine our cities as more vibrant, productive, environmental and people friendly.  If we want our cities to be transformed in that manner, we need to have a complete overhauling of our municipal administration from what we have today. However, what stops us from having a modern, accountable and incentive based Municipal administration is that it will be vehemently resisted by the present day authorities and power holders, who will be having much to lose.