If cities are to be the engines of India's growth, they need better governance. The Union urban development minister has talked about the central government alone provisioning over Rs 3 lakh crore on recasting the urban landscape over the next five to six years. State governments are also expected to come in with a similar amount; this, plus urban local bodies (ULBs) raising resources, means we have a huge developmental spending agenda of Rs 7-8 lakh crore in our 4,000-plus urban areas.
What this spending will need is good city-level leadership - both elected and bureaucratic. The fact is that our third level of governance still needs substantial strengthening. Given that such major spending is provisioned, this is the right time for the Centre to take the initiative to bring about big changes to urban governance.
One of the first steps should be to look at the spirit of the 74th Amendment of the Constitution and develop an understanding with the chief ministers of all states as to what changes they will incorporate into state municipal legislation to enhance the powers and responsibilities of elected ULBs. A road map should address whether and when to have directly-elected mayors and chairpersons; and the role of para-statals like development authorities, water boards and so on.
One of the key points is which functions of those listed in the Twelfth Schedule of the Constitution (added when the 74th Amendment came into force) will be fully and effectively transferred to these bodies. Along with these functions, required funds and functionaries should also get transferred to the local body regime. Just to illustrate, when water supply is a local body function, why should a state-level water board continue to control this activity?
There is a good starting point for the dialogue. In the erstwhile National Development Council, a sub-committee of chief ministers had some time back recommended that ULBs should be empowered by the devolution of all functions listed in the Twelfth Schedule - and a framework law passed by Parliament could ensure that there is a fair degree of uniformity in the legislative and institutional framework for these bodies.
It would also be desirable to arrive at an agreement as to whether functions like those relating to urban transport and housing - which are essentially major city-level issues but currently do not figure in the Twelfth Schedule - can be or need to be added to that list.
A five-year road map can be worked out by chief ministers to implement the recommendations of the Fourteenth Finance Commission, before the next Commission becomes due in less than five years. As the FFC said, there is considerable scope for local bodies to improve revenues from their own sources by taking already-recommended steps. The measures which states need to take are listed in the report.
It is also the case that our urban bodies lack the governance capacity required for today's requirements. It is important that there is a major effort to revamp the municipal cadre structure and strengthen it. Also, the personnel must have continuous professional training opportunities. The working group report on municipal capacity-building could be the framework to take this agenda forward.
What we need is better, accountable urban bodies. Just as with the "City Challenge" competition for identifying the hundred "smart cities", as another open and transparent initiative in this direction the Centre could institutionalise an arrangement whereby city bodies' performances are ranked every year in terms of service delivery, overall performance and resource generation. Assessment of service delivery should be in terms of improvements in basic services, given benchmarks; while performance should be judged in terms of the implementation of schemes like the Swachch Bharat Mission, e-governance and housing schemes, and so on. Local bodies have to find more resources - and with better credit ratings, taking recourse to municipal bonds and such market mechanisms becomes an option. Thus they could generate more resources - which would be the third area of performance ranking.
It would encourage our cities and our citizens if the three best mayors and commissioners of the country from out of 4,041 urban bodies receive such rating awards from the prime minister once every year.
With such a spirit of constructive competition among local bodies it is also possible that city-dwellers also start taking various initiatives on their own to demonstrate their pride in their city of residence.
Once this essential dialogue takes place between the Centre and the chief ministers, the timelines jointly worked out could be incorporated in the "smart cities" mission and the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation, or AMRUT.
The writer was secretary of the Union urban development ministry
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