We're back to bijli, sadak, paani

Ahead of elections, fierce debates have broken out in resident welfare associations (RWAs) in the country’s most famous high-tech Millennium City that somehow manages to thrive on the most low-tech quality of civic infrastructure. The argument is to vote or not to vote given the deteriorating state of Gurugram; to do your duty as a citizen or to expect elected officials to do theirs. Undoubtedly, the city, which started from pretty minimal standards of civic amenities in the first place, has hit a new low: Garbage going nowhere, roads that make village lanes look like Formula 1 tracks, noxious overflowing sewers, water shortages despite a fortuitous rise in the water table … you get the drift.

But the real culprit has a tenuous connection with the Member of Parliament who gets elected to represent the Gurugram constituency in the Lok Sabha. Instead it’s an institutional failure that is causing the ructions. Elections to the Municipal Corporation of Gurugram, a body that has never been renowned for efficiency, have been delayed for the past year and a half. With no one really in charge, energetic RWAs have resorted to organising noisy dharnas at MCG House to galvanise its bureaucrats into addressing their problems. These protests, complete with slogan shouting and placard waving, are certainly cathartic; they even yield well-meaning responses but these are too incremental to make an appreciable difference.

To be sure, the fact that such local issues are looming so large in a Parliamentary election is a symptom of the lack of substantive new issues in this current seven-phase, 44-day election campaign, the second longest in independent India’s history. The acche din of “development” appears to have lost momentum, and redistributive justice embedded in nyay is an improvisation of the garibi hatao theme, which has had its day. Ironically, the current discourse among Gurugram RWAs takes us back to a slogan that may have prevailed in that close parliamentary election of 2004: Bijli, sadak, paani. The fact is that rapid urbanisation in the post-liberalisation era has altered the dynamics of middle-class urban voter demands. Where it was once politically correct to support politicians who vowed to eliminate poverty, the focus now is on maximising wealth and comfort, and that includes a standard of civic amenities. They want, if not Indian Shining, at least moderately liveable urban environments.   

But the RWAs’ well-intentioned no-vote campaign may be misplaced. The fact that most of India’s emerging cities are models of poor governance has less to do with who is elected to Parliament than with the structures of municipal governance and autonomy. Most municipal corporations are broke. Their revenue-raising abilities are limited to property tax, water tax, and toll tax, which urbanites often take delight in evading (even as they expect western standard utilities). But even these sources of funds are limited. According to a study by the Reserve Bank of India, local taxes account for just about a third of a municipal body’s revenues. The rest comes from fund transfers for the Centre and states. Some 70 per cent of these resources get eaten up in salaries, pensions and administrative costs. When you have no money nor the means of raising larger sums, the ability to deliver services is non-existent. Add in unchecked and blatant petty corruption, especially lucrative in the growing privatisation of contracts for the provision of urban infrastructure, and the scope for accountability vanishes.  

This creates a vicious circle of underfinancing and poor quality infrastructure. But as history tells us, poorly managed cities are political time bombs. With 40 per cent of India’s population heading to the cities by 2036, according to the World Bank, the stresses on urban infrastructure will multiply manifold. The Bank reckons India’s urban local bodies will need to invest $15 billion a year for the next 15 years for cities to come up to speed. Where will such humongous sums come from? The obvious way out of the financing conundrum is to tap the markets through municipal bonds, an instrument that is strongly recommended for middle-class investors for its relative safety and decent returns. But given poor governance mechanisms in municipal corporations, cities that have issued them have, predictably, found few takers.

Given this, Gurugram’s hard-working RWAs would do better to lobby — even hold dharnas — for early municipal elections. That’s where the circle of accountability begins. Enforcing service delivery by elected officials would be a good starting point for establishing the sort of efficiency and incorruptibility that could encourage investors to put their money in the municipal bond market.  Meanwhile, it may be worth lining up at the hustings, which may be a good idea for those who have a view about the future of India.