MCC Need to Abide by 74th Constitutional Amendment & have Ward Committees/Area Sabhas
Mangaluru: In order to bring awareness about 74th Constitutional Amendment, Ward Committee & Area Sabha, and that’s how the Mangaluru City Corporation should abide with, Praja Foundation from Mumbai, which for over the last two decades has been working towards enabling accountable governance held a State Level Consultation on Tuesday, 24 September 2019 at Hotel Deepa Comforts, Mangaluru to share their study and discuss possible policy reforms to improve the way Mangaluru City Corporation functions.
It should be noted that Citizens in every city complain about poor urban governance – garbage, potholes, lack of drinking water, overflowing sewage, illegal buildings and commercialization, disappearing greenery, mushrooming slums, etc. But they have no forum where they can voice their grievances locally and hence they run from pillar to post to get their grievances resolved. No one consults them before works are planned in their wards and they have no idea what works are being taken up and why. Citizens hardly know how their money paid as taxes has been budgeted for their ward and how it has been spent. They hear about fake bills and scams day in and day out.
But we are supposed to be a democracy, a government of the people, by the people and for the people. But the people are nowhere in the governance of their cities. But few are aware of a 25-year-old enactment, the 74th Constitutional Amendment (CA), better known as the Nagarapalika Act, that mandates “Power to the People” in urban areas. The Karnataka Municipal Corporations (Amdt.) Act of 2011, enacted to actualize the spirit of the 74th CA in Karnataka, makes it a right of all voters in a neighbourhood to participate through ‘Area Sabhas’ in planning for their Area and to point out other deficiencies.
Plans made by the Area Sabhas are to be collated at the ward level by the Ward Committees in every ward. Ward committees have 10 members who represent ordinary residents of the ward, or associations working in the ward. Ward committees are also empowered to monitor the works that are taken up in the ward and ensure that tax-payers’ money is not misspent. With a population of more than three lakhs in municipal corporation areas, it is nearly impossible for any individual municipal commissioner or mayor to oversee what is happening in every ward.
It is only when citizens demand and claim the power given to them under the KMC (Amdt.) Act of 2011 that true democracy, a government of, by and for the people can be actualized. The first step to claiming “Power to the People” is through awareness. When there is greater awareness, it is possible for people to come together and demand their rights. As more and more people, who are the voters, start demanding their role in local governance, the decision-makers will begin to start responding to the demands, as numbers are what matters to them.
The Consultation programme was attended by former MLA J R Lobo; MCC Commissioner Ajith Kumar Hegde; former MCC Deputy Mayor Mohammed Kunjathbail; MCC Environmental Engineer Madhu Manohar; Milind Maske, Guruprasad Kamble, and Meghna Bandelwar-the Director, and Project Officers respectively of Praja Foundation; Ms Gayathri Nayak- MCC Deputy Commissioner (Revenue); and former MCC corporators namely- Ms Sabitha Misquith, Ms Prathiba Kulai, Ms Mariamma Thomas, Ms Akila Alva, Ms Revathi, Naveen Chandra, Lancelot Pinto, Dayanand Shetty, Keshava Maroli, among others.
Speaking on the occasion, Ex MLA J R Lobo said, “When the Smart City was launched it was active, but sadly it has died down. The real, dedicated and enthusiastic people who wanted to take active participation in Smart city development were kept away. At present the Smart City projects are not going forward smoothly as expected, having quite a few loopholes in it. Public money on Smart City projects is misused. Spending money wisely on projects is okay, but at the same time they should benefit the public, which is lacking at the moment. Also that except for a few corporators who are active in Smart City development, but the rest are kept away. MCC also should be strengthened more, and failure of implementation and execution of plans are the main reasons for many drawbacks”.
Speaking also on the occasion, MCC Commissioner Ajith Kumar Hegde said that when he took over the post a few days ago, he was left with Rs 35 crores in pending bills, and his first job is to catch up with all the pending revenue collections and settle the pending dues. When a question was raised about the Area Sabha and ward Committee, Nigel Albuquerque, one of the Founder member of MCC Civic Group said, “Thursday, 8th August 2019 was a great day at the Karnataka High Court for all those hankering for greater citizen participation at the local level. In a Public Interest Litigation filed by MCC Civic Group, along with CIVIC Bangalore and Nagarika Shakti, (WP 53244/2018), Chief Justice Oka gave a very clear ruling that as soon as the municipal council is elected and constituted, Area Sabhas and Ward Committees should be formed immediately”
“He was not willing to give a specific time-frame for their formation, either. He stressed the word ‘immediately’! The Commissioner of Mangaluru City Corporation, who had been issued a notice to respond to the PIL, was lucky that no Council existed currently in Mangaluru as its term had ended in March 2019. But no election had been held for a fresh council and hence an administrator had been appointed. Elections are proposed only after the monsoons. The above judgement can be used to ask for area sabhas and ward committees in all municipal corporations of Karnataka” added Nigel. In response, an ex-corporator Lancelot Pinto said, “When we traveled to Mysuru and few other cities where the Ward Committee and Area Sabhas were launched, many of them didn’t last more than three-four months. So do we think the concept will work successfully here in Mangaluru”?
But many of the participants said that if Ward Committees and Area Sabhas were not successful in other major cities, that doesn’t mean that it won’t succeed in Mangaluru- no matter what we need to go ahead with Ward Committee and Area Sabha in Mangaluru for better governance and for the benefit of citizens. In the meantime during the interaction, a cross-section of former Ward Corporators inclusive of “Sadana Samiti” FAME were told in their faces by the participants of MCC Civic Group that if and when Judith Mascarenhas could do, they too can very well do!!
Here are a few discussions/suggestions by the participating members- “I had a brief with Commissioner Hegde and Deputy Commissioner (Revenue) Gayathri Nayak too. These two officials I opine will play the key role in the enforcement of the Mangaluru judgement”; “I think it was a sharing of the study to finalize the recommendations. So it’s up to them, they may have only invited those they had interacted with during the course of the study. That’s usually what some research teams do”; “Also why J R Lobo was a misfit today was because he did nothing with reference to the Institutionalizing Citizen Participation during his five-year tenure”.
Among others, one of the discussions in the meeting was how to increase the revenue to meet the expenses by MCC officials. But, they never discuss how to curtail the expenses so that need-based either capital or operational expenses can easily be met out of incremental income. For e.g. laying bituminous tar and jelly on the existing good road instead of need-based pothole, initiating de-silt in the rain storm water all over the city in the month of February / April instead of de-silt only after occurrence of artificial flood by raising more than 500% of actual bills (to make payment to gang men, Hitachi / JCB contractors, as tender process and other formalities not required in the case of flood), (that too after the collapse of building, occurrence of casualties, death to the citizens etc), installing bus stand in need-based area rather than existing two bus stand shelters, construction of new road in the place good road etc. There is absolutely no planning on how to control the expenses.
Another participant said, “About a month back, I went to MUDA, Mysore around 9:45 am and I was shocked that every official including AE was in the seat. When I asked my caseworker, he told me that there they have the biometric system and everyone should put their thumb impression on or before 9:45 am. If the same thing is adopted in MCC besides CCTV camera in all rooms of executives, then probably timely work be ensured and to some extent under table transaction can be curtailed”. “How on earth did former Commissioner Mohammed Nazeer blindly approve work, in the absence of financial approvals that have resulted in outstanding payments to the tune of about Rs 35 CR?” questioned another participant.
Another participant said, “The discussion at this seminar was about urban governance. The Praja group presented their studies. I never knew per capital spending for Mangaluru is about Rs 10, 500. Further, how is MCC doing when compared with other cities. How about we can utilize these studies for our city is the issue. May I know the reason by our group members to go into the purpose of their study, funding, use by political parties etc. Funding for info and identify any bias in studies is rational”.
In conclusion, over the last two decades, Praja has been working towards enabling accountable governance. They conduct data-driven research on civic issues, and inform citizens, media, and government administration and work with elected representatives to equip them to address inefficiencies in their work processes, bridging the information gaps, and mobilizing them in taking corrective measures advocating for change. In the past they have partnered with the Mumbai Corporation to come up with its first Citizen Charter to revamping their Citizens’ Complaint Grievances Mechanism and hand-holding them to run it in the initial years; we come up with annual white papers on the performances of civic, health, crime, education and housing issues in Mumbai and Delhi; since 2011 they have been coming up with an annual report card to rank performances of MLAs and Councillors in Mumbai and (since 2016) Delhi.
Praja is now embarking on an ambitious journey to transform urban governance, to advocate policy changes that will change the way Indian cities are governed. It will be a multi-year project in nature, with research being the bedrock to form a network and influence change. By March 2020 they will be conducting an Urban Governance Reforms Study to capture the status of urban reforms in all the states, identify levers and barriers and identify a set of recommendations. Their study will create an ‘urban governance index’ and map urban governance status in all the states of the country. As part of the study they will map and meet various stakeholders in all the states across the country and build a network which will be leveraged as a platform for knowledge sharing; equipping stakeholders; mobilizing stakeholders; and advocating for policy changes. In a nutshell, the project will enable urban governance to transform a ‘smart city’ into a ‘smartly governed city’ by influencing policy change at a structural and systemic level to democratize city governments and improve the delivery of services.”
The outcome/results of this discussion panel were- Empowered Corporation – one point governance: There should be single authority to deliver 18 services as listed in the 74th constitutional amendment in the jurisdiction of the city. MCC should act as a nodal agency; Unified planning with better coordination is needed for the development of the city. Need to empower Mayor and Councillors: Mayor should have a stable tenure of 5 years which is co-terminus with the term of the corporation. Mayor should hold signatory powers and the authority to make ACR of commissioner. Councillors should have authority to solve people’s issues of their wards, and there need to be provisions for Mayor to act as chairperson of standing committees.
Need to form ward committees and area sabhas holding active meetings and participation of people: The ward committees and area sabhas need to be formed as per provisions in the act; Area Sabha meetings should involve the participation of people. Training and capacity building: Need to conduct regular training for councilors and administration of MCC for better service delivery. Resources: The corporation should have control over recruiting and deciding their own staff and there is a need for revising the manpower and estimation of Strength; Need of Qualified and experienced staff as per requirement. Municipal Finance: The city government should have complete control over taxation. The MCC should hold the authority to revise taxes and not depend for its approval from the State Government. There is a need to optimize revenue collection to achieve full potential and to adopt new revenue sources for collection.
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