Written by Mercy S Samuel
The Morbi tragedy should make us probe further municipal management and how our cities function. Who is responsible, who gave the nod, what was in the contract, what was required to be repaired, what repairs happened, and who monitored them – these are all questions pending investigation. But the loss of life is huge and for the families who lost their near and dear ones, the pain will last forever. The reality is that this loss could have been prevented.
The Morbi tragedy raises several questions about urban governance and the issues faced by our cities, particularly small cities. There are ambitious schemes, missions and programmes run by the government. The onus of implementing these is on the city government. This gives rise to a question: Do our cities have enough infrastructure, manpower, and resources to become agents of change? The plight of city governments and resource inefficiencies can be seen just by visiting municipal offices. The torchbearers of ambitious programmes need better organisation and management. Poorly maintained buildings, stained walls, stinking toilets, unhygienic water stations, poor parking facilities, missing fire safety and piles of files on desks are a common sight. Municipal offices are the point of contact for citizens. The conditions of these offices reflect the functioning of the services delivered by these institutions.
Our local bodies need rejuvenation, modernisation and professionalism. Cities of tomorrow cannot be managed by traditional systems. The first step is to acknowledge that there is a dire need for specialists to be at the helm of service delivery. HR policies and budgets must enable city governments to hire such professionals. A separate cadre of municipal managers should be set up in states, who should be empowered to recruit domain experts as well municipal generalists with an incentive-based compensation system. The next step is to put the house in order in terms of finance and budgeting. City finances are an area of serious concern as state governments do not devolve funds as expected. The annual budget of a city is extremely important in terms of quality of life and yet, unlike Union and state budgets, hardly anyone pays attention to city budgets. We must standardise the making of city budgets with inputs from citizens and manage budgets at the ward level.
Cities also need to be empowered to generate and strengthen their own sources of revenue. Devolved funds and grants have expenditure guidelines dictated by the state or Centre. Own sources of revenue empower the city to choose the strategic area of expenditure, growth, and development as per its denizens’ needs. Bigger cities still have some municipal finance systems in place but small cities are in dire need of the same. Many of the small cities still follow the single-entry accounting mechanism where the world has gone ahead by leaps in accounts. The budgetary deficits in small cities are huge, indicating that budgetary planning is not appropriate and fiscal transfers are not happening on time. Almost all own sources of income available for municipalities are underutilised. The property tax, which is a major source of income, is also greatly underutilised in small cities with low collections. The current income-generating avenues need to be strengthened first and then, new avenues need to be explored.
The Smart City mission has deployed IT-based interventions in 100 cities. Within smart cities, a few initiatives like Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) and Integrated Command and Control Centre (ICCC) should be made mandatory across all cities. Modular formats of ICCC for solid waste management and SCADA for water supply should be implemented in all cities.
Similarly, the Swachh Bharat Mission could achieve such a great outcome because the focus was sharp and concentrated on one area. Cities have started thinking and acting in multiple ways in the realm of waste management to achieve the mission’s objectives. Cities are hard-pressed for performance in Swachh Survekshan. But with every ranking toolkit, the goalposts keep changing. For example, the service level progress component had a weightage of 25 per cent in Survekshan 2020, which changed to 40 per cent in 2021. The big cities still can afford to keep track of the changing expectations, but small cities are held back. They start with improving on one area in the Survekshan toolkit and by the time the next toolkit comes, there is a new area with higher weightage and the whole effort goes for a toss.
Almost all cities shy away from engaging with the citizens. But there are visible examples of the power of civic engagement, which can be seen in Indore. Initially, the citizens turn out to be demanding but slowly, they become participants and enablers of change. Much of the load on the city government for on-site monitoring can be resolved by participatory monitoring by citizens. This is a pathway for trust building, which a few cities like Surat, Indore and Chandigarh have utilised effectively.
Similarly, the procurement process for small cities needs big-time overhauling, as is evident with what happened in Morbi. DPR, tendering and contract design are areas that needs immense professionalism and monitoring for service quality. Hence the capacity building of municipal staff needs to be an ongoing exercise that is taken seriously, and connected with performance appraisals and incentives. State governments need to collaborate with institutions and set up training agendas for municipal staff.
Last but not least, the municipal offices need to be redesigned and retrofitted to reflect the missions they implement. It’s not about glamorous buildings but functional, hygienic, well-lit and well-maintained premises. Such better facilities need to be topped up with professionals to run the cities. Not all services can be contracted out. In-house employees are more accountable and responsible than contractual staff. Many municipal positions are vacant and existing staff are under pressure of managing multiple services along with many tasks being outsourced. All this put together breeds inefficiency, irresponsibility, and unaccountability.
City governments need to be empowered politically and financially to face the challenges of urbanisation before it is too late. Seventy-five years after Independence, nearly 40 per cent of India’s population lives in urban areas. In the last decade, India has seen a top-heavy urban structure, with more urban density in the metropolitan cities than in the non-metropolitan Class I and II towns, census towns, and urban agglomerations. In the past decade, Class II towns also witnessed an increase in population due to migration along with big Class I cities. As the big cities brace with the challenges of urbanisation, small cities equally need to be strengthened and equipped with infrastructure, manpower, funds and finances to make the most out of urbanisation for the Indian economy.
The writer is Senior Associate Professor, Faculty of Management, Ahmedabad