Strengthen, don't superCede

Roads, drains, and garbage. These are the three things people expect the BBMP to  take care of and it should be easy, right? After all, unlike other large cities around the world, or even in India, a lot of other stuff - public transport, water supply, power, fire, law and order, health and education - is taken care of by the state government.

But what happens in reality is an endless saga. New Mayors take office each year promising to deliver and Ministers in charge of the city go on inspection tours, pulling up officials, but the net effect is zero.

The High Court has weighed in many times, threatening the BBMP Commissioner and other officials with all sorts of consequences and the state government has often taken over the administration, either by superceding the civic council or by not holding elections on time and yet nothing has changed.
So what now? Is there a way out of this?  There could be if we give the BBMP more responsibilities and more money to fulfil them.

I know a lot of you are reading this and thinking, WHAT? Isn't the BBMP doing enough damage already with just the limited mandate that it has? Won’t giving it greater powers and funds not make things even worse?  I admit it's counter-intuitive, but think about it like a journey . If we have chosen the wrong road, at some point it won't matter how well we drive on it, we simply won't get to our destination.

There are two reasons why the current approach will never work. One, it is contrary to the law. And two, it is contrary to common sense. We're trying to fix urban governance and administration by doing things that are neither legal not sensible. After making these choices, we should be asking ourselves not why BBMP is failing, but why we expect it to succeed!

Let me explain. According to the law, 18 administrative functions that were performed by state governments until the 1990s were supposed to be devolved to the local councils and regional planning bodies. But the state government has let go of only a handful, and is in control of the majority.  This is impotent power, however, because nothing new can be proposed by the state government. Someone or the other will challenge the move saying it is illegal, which it will be. Power is useful only if you can wield it.

The Master Plan is stuck, because people have argued in court that the state government (through its agency, the BDA) no longer has the right to plan the city. The steel flyover was stopped because people (including yours truly) argued that any proposal on that scale should be included in the Master Plan, and its environmental impact should be subject to public scrutiny. Garbage management is stuck because people argued the BBMP could not dump its waste in villages outside the city, and there's no plan in place to manage it internally.

The list is quite long. In many spheres of civic administration we find that the people doing the job are not the ones who are supposed to be doing it under the law. And in every case we find that the way they are doing it is not in the manner required by the law. In terms of governance then, we are on the wrong road and it doesn’t lead where we want it to.

What's the alternative? Simple. Go back to the law, and do it right. This involves three things. First, we need to let a Metropolitan Planning Committee make a plan for the entire metropolitan area, from Hosakote to Ramanagara, and let it look into everything, not just land use, but water, energy, housing, infrastructure, safety, the environment, and much more. We need an integrated plan in which different aspects of governance blend together across the whole region.  Most importantly, this organisation should only plan and  have no role in execution as otherwise, like the BDA, it will end up abusing both responsibilities in a web of corruption.

Second, we need to make the BBMP responsible for more things. The separate parastatals that now exist for water supply and sewerage, bus transport, and electricity can perform these same jobs overseen by the council. That will prevent them from passing the buck when things go wrong, and help them perform with better coordination. The staff already exists. What is required is only a re-organisation of the leadership.

Plenty of people believe that if the BBMP is given more responsibilities, it will collapse. And given the mess that it is already in, it seems logical  that it might. How on earth can an already weak administrative set-up possibly cope with more?

But that brings me to part three, which is about involving the people.  Municipal administration is supposed to reach the people through ward committees that select projects for their respective areas, and oversee their implementation. If we did this properly, we would dramatically increase the number of people involved in governance, and also bring in a lot of expertise that doesn't currently exist in the BBMP. A step like this would also help a lot of citizens understand their own roles in governance.

All of this is in accordance with the law. And so, if we try it this way, we can keep making improvements and overcome the challenges that may come up. The courts too should align their interventions to this.  There is no point in telling the BBMP to fill potholes and clear the drains and remove the garbage. If the High Court really wants to set things right, it should start by ordering that the correct institutions and processes be put in place. And the state government, rather than wondering if it should supersede the BBMP, should be helping it to  do more.

The author is an urban expert

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