The Indian municipal financial pie is woefully narrow, and a large unfunded mandate is the city’s sad fate.
It would not be original to state that a lot of Indian cities carry an overwhelming demographic burden. For this large and growing population, they must provide services that they are statutorily obligated to perform. The Indian Constitution lists eighteen of them in the Twelfth Schedule and state statutes list many more. Many of the State Acts divide up the functions into obligatory and discretionary duties. City governments are expected to carry these out at quantitative and qualitative service-level benchmarks that the Government of India has calibrated. These stipulations are without any reference to the quantum of municipal finance that these cities can collect or access. We would again be saying the obvious that the Indian municipal financial pie is woefully narrow, and a large unfunded mandate is the city’s sad fate.
Despite this situation, some cities have digressed from their given path into areas that may look attractive or worth doing; they may even be the result of the local political urge for empire building and distribution of individual favours. Unfortunately, they are not part of the municipal charge and an attempt to take these on merely make the given ULB (urban local body) task less achievable and the ULB financially more vulnerable. I have labelled such ventures by cities as distractions since they are nothing but the display of a weakness to compromise the mandated task and an indulgence in jobs entrusted to governments other than ULBs. Sadly, state governments have been generous in allowing cities to take up such ventures and have looked the other way, mostly because the jobs that ULBs pick up were the state’s to perform.
These city distractions can be placed in five categories. The first is functional. In the area of health, for instance, the Twelfth Schedule of the Indian Constitution lists public health, sanitation, conservancy and solid waste management as municipal functions. These comprise general cleanliness and sanitation, maintaining drains and public toilets, scavenging, disposal of the dead, public vaccination, preventing and checking the spread of dangerous disease, maintaining public hospitals, dispensaries, markets and slaughter houses. In the area of education, primary education is their domain. By no stretch of the imagination does this extend to medical or higher education. However, there are cities in the country that run medical colleges, specialty hospitals, colleges and higher educational institutions like Thane in Mumbai). Other municipal bodies are desirous of emulating their counterparts like Pune and Navi Mumbai). Despite their great significance nationally, they are not part of the municipal domain. Municipal foray in these areas are neither warranted nor fair to the citizens, especially in the context of their poor performance in their obligatory duties such as solid waste management. Apart from functional overload, they cause diversion of municipal finances towards non-municipal functions, making the performance of municipal jobs more difficult.
The second distraction is political. It is expected that municipal politics, debates and discussions would centre on municipal subjects. These are plenty and can do with more informed participation that would assist more enlightened governance. However, that is not always the case. Local councillors are not satisfied with the municipal political domain. They would like to foray into state, national and even international issues. Since they are part of the national and state political parties, they are driven by their party agenda rather than by the agenda of their cities. Many of the local debates are, therefore, about events outside their cities or subjects that have no relevance to municipal tasks. Efficiency has not been the hall mark of most Indian cities. As it is, the committee system in the ULBs that was anticipated to provide a deeper analysis of local policies and more mature decision-making, actually ends up being a huge drag on municipal productivity. Coupled with these systemic infirmities, the inability of councillors to apply themselves to the rigorous grind of municipal issues is a common municipal frailty.
The third distraction is geographical. The city has physical limits that define the population and the area that it will serve. Despite the statutes clearly specifying this, some cities have a propensity to step outside their given boundary and offer services to neighbouring villages and towns. These comprise bus service, water supply and fire service — to name only a few. Each of these may display the human touch, but they are for the concerned part of the ULB financially-losing propositions. They end up as services rendered to non-ULB entities at the cost of municipal citizenry. Whenever these are rendered on the guarantee of payment, the ULBs have no powers to enter into the domain of neighbours to enforce collection of dues. They can either petition the state or take recourse to courts for adjudication. In either case, help would not be forthcoming. State-level leaders would be chary to act as judge between people who are all voters and there is no agreement between the ULB and beneficiary entities that can be legally enforced. Generally, ULBs have to write off these expenditures after a period.
The fourth distraction is psychological — catching up with what other cities are doing. If one municipal entity has undertaken to start a bus transport service, the other municipalities are also tempted to begin a municipal bus service. If one municipal corporation has ventured into providing metro services to its citizens, other municipal corporations itch to emulate its cousin and provide the same service to its citizens. While improving and adding services is laudable, the city needs to do a proper viability analysis of its administrative and financial capabilities. All cities are not equally financially buoyant. Taking up a job and then running into multiple difficulties is obviously not advisable. Unfortunately, many ULBs act in haste and are left to repent at leisure. They often learn that starting a service is easy; getting out of it is tough and politically damaging.
The fifth distraction is a deviation from priority. As cited earlier, ULBs have a set of obligatory duties and another set of discretionary functions. The unstated philosophy is that after a ULB satisfactorily performs its obligatory duties, it could take up any of the discretionary functions. In the current state of affairs, the question of taking up discretionary jobs hardly arises since ULBs are struggling to fulfil their obligatory tasks. Nationally, the municipalities are financially fragile. Despite such a position, municipalities are tempted to get into the latter category of discretionary jobs. Examples are art galleries, musical provisions, myriad welfare measures and public receptions and ceremonies.
It is necessary to highlight that ULBs are in the nature of a service delivery organisation, much like service companies in the private sector. They provide services and are compensated through taxes and user charges. Since cities are expanding — in area, demography and human and built density — they will be pressured with rising demands for rapid delivery of quality local services. Given their functional overload and financial weakness, ULBs are in no position to run into distractions. They must concentrate on enabling citizens in their day-to-day lives through the delivery of services needed on a daily basis and the ones they are asked to perform on priority. Those that are not assigned to them are not their business, irrespective of their significance in the larger scheme of things. Citizens cannot afford distracted cities.
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Dr. Ramanath Jha is Distinguished Fellow at Observer Research Foundation, Mumbai. He works on urbanisation — urban sustainability, urban governance and urban planning. Dr. Jha belongs ...
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