It is becoming increasingly clear that India is losing the race to give itself urban spaces which can both accommodate the burgeoning numbers that want to live in them and offer the quality of life that becomes a modern nation. The inadequacy of even the country’s foremost urban body, Mumbai’s municipal corporation, was highlighted last month when, in the face of the terrorist attack, there was uncoordinated response from different agencies, with the city left literally fatherless. This was in sharp contrast to the initiative the then mayor of New York, Rudi Giuliani, took in September 2001 to coordinate its response to the terrorist attack there.
Cities have a life and energy of their own and they cannot be run by remote control. India’s urban local bodies are run by different governance systems. In some of them the local body is superseded and a state government official as municipal commissioner runs the show directly for the state administration. In others there is an elected body and a mayor, changed by the corporators every one or two years, but effective administrative power still lies with the municipal commissioner. The most representative system in operation so far, in cities like Chennai and Kolkata, has a mayor in council under which the body has substantial powers and the councillors elect a mayor in the same way that MLAs elect their chief minister. But the heavy hand of the state government is visible even in this set-up and the feeling is growing that, for urban bodies to come into their own, they should have directly elected mayors with a proper five-year tenure.
Such a mayor would be the undisputed leader of the city administration, not beholden to corporators for his continuation in office. This elevation of the status of the mayor is likely to give the position much better political standing and draw to it ambitious politicians who see themselves leading the country one day. Such a leader will take ownership of the city and its administration and put in a performance that will add to his credentials for national leadership. A parallel is again drawn with New York where both its recent mayors, Mr Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg, have presidential ambitions. In India, only Chennai briefly enjoyed the privilege of having a directly elected mayor, and it is not surprising that it has one of the best administrations. The fact that the state government ended this experiment tells its own tale.
A directly elected mayor will fight for space and executive authority and seek the decentralisation that should have come about with the 74th amendment of the Constitution. A mayor with considerable administrative authority will be able to give his city a proper administration. In fact, experts familiar with the goings on in India’s town halls say that, to make an impact, the mayor needs to run the place like a CEO with expertise from outside the government bureaucracy. This is the only way in which a modern city will be able to deliver its key services: law and order, public transport, municipal services like power, water and sewage, city zoning and building regulation, and crisis management capability. Once a city is well run, its revenue-earning potential will be unleashed and enable it to attract substantial capital to fund extensive development. The national urban renewal mission has initiated the rating of many municipal bodies but this will not be able to obtain the best leverage unless a city’s underlying cash flow is made visible.