The road less travelled, and the price we have paid

After many rounds of debate, the Chief Minister has finally allocated the Bengaluru Development portfolio to a full-time minister. Presumably, this role will combine the two earlier roles of a city in-charge minister and the chief minister himself, who held the portfolio. This brings a clear line of accountability for the development of the city, but in all probability, not much more than that.

The problems of the city stem from failures in the structure of government, in planning and in the lack of genuine opportunities for public participation. Half-a-dozen committees and advisory groups of the state government have advised reforms in these areas for years together, since the late 1990s. But so far, none of the governments over the years have been willing to take this step.

In 1992, Parliament passed the 74th Constitutional Amendment Act, which decreed that metropolitan regions like Bengaluru should have a statutory planning body to spearhead comprehensive regional-scale development. Most other places have local planning authorities that look only at land use – BDA itself is one such – and it was felt that metros would need something far greater than that. The amendment also directed that state governments should transfer responsibility for most city functions to local councils.

The Government of Karnataka, like most other states, did not seem to agree with this law – although two-thirds of the states had given their approval to get the amendment passed. Therefore, they did not implement it in spirit. They went through the motions of doing a few things here and there, and the courts also nudged them along, but all the time it was clear that state governments preferred to lord over the cities. They neither wanted local councils to succeed, nor did they want a new layer of metropolitan governance to emergence.

Along the way, the failures mounted. The city clearly appeared to creak under the weight of its rapid growth, and one government after another attempted to bandage this instead of carrying out the deep-rooted reforms that were needed. They appointed advisors, special task forces, committees and in-charge ministers, and most Chief Ministers kept the 'important' portfolio to themselves, but none of this worked.

Why? It's quite simple, really. Large cities are complex and diverse, and their success depends on a number of parts moving together in sync. Some of these are in the control of the government, but the responsibilities for them are held by different departments. And there is no mechanism to integrate them. The Mayor of BBMP, for example, is responsible to keep the roads motorable and the garbage cleaned out, but apart from this there isn't much he can do. Many of the things that matter to people – transport, health, education, water supply, sewerage – are still firmly in the control of the state government. This is the model that the 74th Amendment rejected, and therefore the law, as it stands today, is contrary to the practice on the ground.

Inevitably they will collide, and the result will be that rather than applying their collective energies for the development of the city, political representatives of the state and city will each be left holding one piece of a large puzzle that they cannot solve on their own. People sometimes ask, “What if the state government and the BBMP are both led by the same party? Couldn't things work in such a situation? The state and the city should be able to cooperate among themselves in that case, shouldn't they?”

Yes and no. Of course the state and city could both cooperate better, but that would still mean that we don't have a metropolitan layer of government, which is required by law, and which is supposed to carry out the all-important planning function. Therefore, a lot of things that are done even in a cooperative state-city relationship could still end up being challenged in the courts.

We could try properly created metropolitan planning body, and hope that all three – city, metropolis and state – will be politically aligned. But what are the chances of that, in a sustainable way?
Governments change, and councils change. We cannot put the development of the city on hold whenever there is misalignment of politics at different levels. What we need instead is a way of working together which is not vulnerable to political whim and will.

As it turns out, the 74th CAA itself provided part of the answer – include the people in the planning and running of the city. In ward committees, in the Boards of the para-statals, and in the planning committee, if there is meaningful space for participation by people in their respective localities (or their self-selected representatives at the city level) we can establish a continuous path for development. As elected representatives come and go, the people themselves can provide stability to the choices that are made for the future.

But if there is one thing that all the mainstream political parties agree on, it is that "the people must be kept out, at all costs". By turn, one of them in government would figure out how to keep the other at arm's length, and the others would turn a blind eye to this. The issue never comes up in Assembly. And in the odd instance where the Centre reminds them about it, they will  make some grudging positive noises but ensure that nothing changes. And that's the problem. Those who can bring permanence to the landscape of development have been excluded from its pursuit. And we are instead juggling various balls in the air, hoping that somehow, this time, we will get the combination correct. That won't happen. You can't open a number combination lock by trying a different key.

In fact, today, 23 years after the passage of the CAA, the challenge is even more daunting. There are large swathes of the development landscape in which governments have become irrelevant. Think of housing, education, healthcare, jobs creation and economic development – and you'll quickly realise that on these fronts the state is either missing or asleep. And where possible, those who can afford it are adding to this list – security is largely private in many places, large communities now manage their own waste, and power supply is heading towards more and more autonomy.

What we find, in fact, is that whereas 25 years ago we worried only about silos in government, we now have to figure out how to integrate the work of government with the work of the private sector, and seek the greater public good together. But who will do this job? It is not the work of public office, it is instead a social challenge. And as much as people avoid politics, they avoid social engineering even more – so much, in fact, that it isn't even spoken about.

A new minister for the city can help, and to be fair we must give everyone a chance to show what they can do. But what the city actually needs is much more than a shuffling of roles in government. What is needed is a fresh new balance between different levels of government, and more importantly, between the state, market and society. What we're doing now is applying more band-aid on a broken skeleton, and asking if it helps now that the bandaid is brand new and has better adhesives.

The tragedy is that we are trapped in our own web, and have no one else to blame. If the progress of the city requires something, and yet we refuse to acknowledge it, let alone embrace it, what right do we have to expect that progress or its fruits? And if each of us continues to believe that working for a better city is someone else's responsibility, can we really expect anything different from what we've already seen?

No. That's why, more than a new minister for Bengaluru, we need a new kind of citizen. The government – and its structure – has become the problem, and we have to stop looking for solutions there. Instead, we must focus on what we can each do, out of a sense of responsibility, in our neighbourhoods, with a combination of civics and progressive politics.

The law, and the reality, requires this, and nothing else. The correct way to welcome Mr George is to resolve to participate in public problem solving, and become part of the solution. This city is among the best in the country to live in, if you're looking for that kind of engagement. And when we do that, we'll find that our governments too begin to mimic the vision of the 74th CAA. There is a lot of truth to the saying that “wherever the voters lead, surely their leaders will follow”.

(The writer is an urban expert)