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The IUP Journal of Governance and Public Policy III(4): 19-33 (2008)
IMPROVING THE STATE OF URBAN GOVERNANCE: THE
EMERGENCE OF PARTNERSHIP MODEL IN INDIAN CITIES
Abstract
As cities in the developing world are coming under the grip of the forces of
demographic transition and of economic liberalization, they are being engulfed
by a number of problems. In addition, the pressures of globalization demand
them to be more competitive and also seek city governance more responsive to
the economic development. Yet, unfortunately, most of the cities are not well
equipped to tackle these problems and this leads to a failure of public
institutions like local government in delivering the amenities in an efficient and
effective manner. There is an institutional vacuum in making the service
delivery process becoming more efficient and responsive to the citizens’ needs.
Partnership models that feature diad/triad of relations between the
stakeholders may emerge to steer new governance structures. This paper
discusses such models emerging in the Indian cities of Bangalore and Mumbai
as illustrations worth examining in the context of improving urban governance.
Key words: Urban areas, civic services, urban governance, partnerships and
initiatives
BACKGROUND
Governance, in the modern times, has been becoming an important means for
achieving several objectives relating to the progress of the civil society at various
levels – village, city, state and nation. While good governance could be
considered an end or objective, it differs across the societies; importantly, the
process and the method of attaining improvement in it has not been uniform
but rather presents a spectrum of different paths, strategies and innovations.
Although improvement in governance has been thought of and perceived
differently in the developed and developing worlds, it has been rapidly emerging
as an important means for bringing about a change in the desired direction (of
achieving development); by this way, it is also becoming an area of convergence
in which both developed and developing societies could learn from experiments
and use it for transforming respective societies. Nevertheless, differences exist
in the way each of them looks at, the approaches taken and how each of them
uses governance in achieving overall objective of development. For example, the
post-modern societies of the developed world have a different set of problems
that need to be addressed and they have different mechanisms of achieving
better governance (mostly, centred around information distribution and use),
whereas the developing societies are yet to find appropriate mix of modern
instruments and methods vis-à-vis traditional ones.
Developed countries have an advantage over developing countries - they have
already attained a very high rate of economic development and have developed
the institutions that can allow them to experiment with various improvement
2
channels and instruments. Whereas, in developing countries, the development
levels achieved are low and the institutional transformation from traditional
feudal-colonial structure to modern prudential democratic-economic structure
has still a long way to go. These differences do matter in the transformation of
cities as well, when cities are becoming major concentrations of population. The
influx of rural population into urban areas was experienced by developed
countries in the early phases of industrial development and swept them into
predominantly urban societies, which is now taking place in developing
countries but with the absolute terms much larger than that of developed
countries. As most of the cities in developing world are unprepared for such
transformation, the challenges that they are facing are increasing. Evidently,
they are experiencing a decline in the quality of life they used to enjoy, since
greater number are using public goods and services.
Apart from the pressures of in-migration, cities are declining because they lost
the capacity either out of sheer negligence or due to the lack of resources.
Owing to the focus on short sighted policies and planning, they ignored the
imminent challenges that they would face in future and neglected the function
of deploying resources for attaining higher levels of service delivery and
continuously improving on it. This is an important aspect of the traditional
cities for their lagging behind others in the competition towards delivery of
better goods and services for the overall improvement of quality of life and for
improving economic growth. As a result, developing societies and cities are
searching new models for better service delivery and improving governance.
Governance is more challenging also because the approaches towards it and
governance structures themselves keep changing, demanding a much rapid
change on the part of local governments. The failures of public institutions in
providing efficient and effective governance can lead to the emergence of new
models and institutions to fill the gap1. Alternative models like public-private
partnerships between public and citizens as well as private groups can emerge
in such situations. These innovations are worth observing in order to emulate
elsewhere, nevertheless with different structure, objective and methods. In this
paper, the cases of such innovative models in Bangalore and Mumbai are
presented as some illustrations worth looking.
Importance of Governance in Democratic Societies
Urban societies have been facing a variety of problems in various countries;
their nature and magnitude are different in different countries. However, it is
also important to understand the role played by the political institutions that
dominate the delivery of public goods and services in many respects. There is a
consensus on the fact that the political institutions based on democratic
principles would ensure the delivery of public goods and services to the people,
as the elected representatives would act in the interest of general public when
they were entrusted with executing this task. This democratic means of
allocation of goods and services by the political constituents has been
considered as the best means of organization of the society, given the common
pitfalls associated with the extreme systems of anarchy, comprising in-fights
and conflicts, and dictatorship, comprising control of resources in one hand. By
this way, it can be viewed as a rational choice vis-à-vis these extremes, and
1 Virmani (2005)
3
democratic system might appear to be the only system through which the needs
and desires of the people were met. However, when one deeply examines how
this supposedly good system works actually, it really does not give the same
impression, which is the kind of opinion of most of the people.
There is a real difference in the peoples’ expectations and the actual
performance in the delivery of public goods and services, even in democratic
societies. The democratic political structure can itself bring-in rigidities and
inertia into the system. As a result, the delivery process turns itself into a
rather slow delivery mechanism and caters not to the needy. This is primarily
due to the creation of the bureaucracy as an execution system, which was
supposed to contribute its best towards the delivery of public goods and
services; unfortunately, it has been hindering any real development by
thwarting the delivery and distribution of public goods and services (Jain 2003).
In the developing country situations, it is much more difficult for a common
man to access basic amenities like water supply, power supply and sewerage,
while keeping aside the needs like shelter. The bureaucracy, world over, has
been an impeding factor of development, with the level and intensity differing
amongst cases, as it has become subservient to the political parties in power
rather than the general public. The politicians are short sighted and concerned
about winning elections rather than improving the public good. The
accountability thread of democracy with the elections resulting in a candidate of
trustworthiness and delivering capacity do not go in line with the way the
parties function; development is only secondary objective, the hue of the
political party and popular image are more important.
This deviation of the players of democratic institutions from what they have
been assigned has been resulting in chaos and the outcomes are haphazard and
ill-suited. These operational facts are also severely undermining the strength of
and faith in democratic institutions. By this way, the whole process of
governance in democratic societies faces this major challenge of how to keep
every player in alignment of his or her role. Governance reforms are required to
ensure that these fundamentally non-aligning forces are corrected through
alternate institutional pressures and monitoring in order to ensure that the
development wheel keeps moving and some minimum progress is achieved in
the due course. Cities are different places than countries where the
concentration of public goods and services are very high and the delivery of
these by the local government agencies matters significantly in the quality of life
enjoyed by them. However, cities are also the entities where the different
sections act in a different manner, not in cohesion all the time, and the conflicts
become the political agenda rather than the development taking that place.
Indian cities are no exception to and no different from the generalized text
depicting the status of developing countries cities. The current paper does not
dwell upon finding the causes and results; it rather discusses the emergence of
new means of improving governance sought by cities in India, while featuring, in
particular, the innovative models and their initiatives in large cities like Mumbai
and Bangalore. It also distinguishes how these two are different but unified in
their attempts to throws lights on the experiences. This section provided the
importance of governance in transforming societies in general and urban
societies in particular, while also attempting to outline the importance of
governance in democratic societies. However, before proceeding to the
illustration of Indian case cities, the concept of governance and its specific
4
application to cities need to be analysed and understood more deeper which is
what attempted in the next section.
INTRODUCTION
Governance is a rather broad term used in different contexts with different
meanings. Rhodes (1997), for example, identifies seven different uses of the
concept of governance under different settings2:
as corporate governance, relating to companies
as the New Public Management, with its focus on ‘steering rather than
rowing’
as ‘good governance’, a reform agenda of the World Bank and other bodies
as international interdependence generating new modes of governing
as a ‘socio-cybernetic system’, focusing on mechanism of coordination
as a way of governing through networks
It is the last concept of governance that concerns with public/development
policies of nations and cities, which is also of concern here. In this approach to
governance, (social and political) institutional networks are formed in policy
making and evolving governance structures in a complex manner in a
synergistic (or, antagonistic) manner so that the policies and decisions are made
(or, not made)3. Thus, the main elements of governance approach essentially
are2:
(i) Its focus on the complexity of government i.e., multiple agencies, institutions
and systems linked complex patterns of interaction and marked by increasing
problems of coordination;
(ii) the focus is on alternatives to hierarchy
- identifying systems of rules
- identifying alternative organisational forms, notably networks;
(iii) It is seen as a change, both in practice as well as theory.
The governance approach directs attention to these diverse bodies and the ways
in which they relate to one another and produce government. It is concerned
with organizational forms and the relationships between them – with networks
and networking – but also with the underlying structure of shared meaning and
values through which these relationships are sustained2. It seeks to build up
an understanding of the structures and practices that are there. While this
definition might be structural, the roles of various hierarchies and geographies
in influencing decision making are also very important4. Even community-level
initiatives towards the revival of slums, settlements and neighbourhoods have
shown how community participation can lead to an overall better performance
of the project and improvement the delivery of services5.
The structural definition of governance is sometimes not adequate, particularly
when the objective is to improve governance in new ways, which is touted as
‘good governance’. This concept of good governance caught the attention of
2 Colebatch (2002)
3 Rhodes (1997), Colebatch (2002)
4 Jones Lang La Salle (2004)
5 World Bank (2004)
5
several nations and states – both developed and developing – and several
interpretative applications were made – notable among them are the e-
governance initiatives of several nations and cities. Conceptually, good
governance means: less government (or, less regulation), more market (private
provision of services) and better policing (or, reducing scope for corruption).
However, good governance has to be directed not to less government, but to
better connection – within and between government and other bodies. The
problem is essentially not the extent of government but the likelihood of
stalemate and frustration when different elements of governing collide with each
other or simply fail to meet. The good governance agenda directs attention away
from the sub-division of authority and work towards the accomplishment of
outcomes. It calls for the attention to questions of distribution – not only of
wealth but also of opportunities for the exercise of political competence – both
voice and choice6.
Urban/City Governance
Urban/City Governance is somewhat a broad term reflective of how various
constituents of service delivery are organized to increase the welfare of all
stakeholders. It can only be measured relatively, and somewhat subjectively,
how effective the institutions are in terms of efficiency, equity, participation,
transparency and accountability. It therefore requires a periodic strengthening
of these important aspects of city management in order to ensure their delivery.
The urban or city governance definition and process are essentially those
pertaining to governance in general i.e., central to the concept of city
governance is the notion that a multitude of actors are involved in the city
governance process. However, initiatives towards better governance can come
not only due to the pressures of urbanization but also with increasing financial
constraints and fragmented responsibilities many cities are realizing that only a
collegiate effort can improve city and its competitiveness (Jones Lang La Salle
2004), thereby the cities can discover the virtuous circles (see Figure 1).
6 World Bank (2000) cited in Colebatch (2002)
6
In this context, city governance is more concerned with a network of system of
governance rather than government, in which all sectors (public, private and
other social organizations) and geographies (cities, regional and national)
interact in the decision making process in order to produce an efficient and
effectively managed city as well as promoting city at global level7. This
perspective has important implications for city strategists, planners and real
estate players, because, once adopted, it involves all of them in a complex and
networked process of decision making that can shape and change the future of
their city. In fact, the realization of this is leading to the emergence of new
networks that create new platforms for discussion and debate on how to make
the cities better governed and what resources are required to make it happen.
As Figure 2 illustrates, city management stops being the result of hierarchical
authority to be re-oriented towards the collaboration, management and
coordination of all local forces, energies and players. It is these partnerships
which need to be forged, developed and directed (or, assume the role/niche) in
order to improve the overall city governance.
7 Institute of Governance 2003, cited in Jones Lang La Salle (2004)
Good
Governance
Investment
Attraction
Competitiv
eness
Figure 1: Virtuous Circle of City Governance, City
Competitiveness and Investment Attractiveness
Source: Jones Lang La Salle (2004)
7
Having understood the concepts of governance and urban governance, we will
now evaluate the structural changes in India – policy, planning and institutions
– and how some city governance improvements have been taking place.
Structural Changes in India and Attempts for improved
Urban Governance
India had traditionally followed the mixed economic model with public sector
leading the economy and public spending determining the welfare of the society.
There was a significant deviation in this approach through economic policy
changes in 1991 that were brought as a necessity to make India emerge as a
strong economy in line with competition from other countries. These policy
changes have paved ways for changes in other aspects of country’s
development; for example, cities can now make decisions autonomously and use
their finances to provide better services. There has been decentralization of
power and more private participation in the areas hitherto considered to be in
the domain of public sector. These policy changes are reflected below:
Community
- Individuals
- Consumers
Private Sector
- Investors
- Corporates
- Developers
City Authorities
- Local Authorities
- Development
Agencies
- Promotion
agencies
Good City
Governance
Entrep
reneur
s
NGOs
Union
s
Corporate initiatives
PPPs
Government
organisations
Citizens
Associations
Neighbourhood
groups
Figure 2: City Governance: A Networked System
Source: Jones Lang La Salle (2004)
8
Table 1: Changes in policy context
From
To
Centralised System
Decentralised system (73rd and 74th
Amendments
Command economy
Market economy
Low environmental awareness
High environmental awareness
High deficit spending
Structural adjustment
Government domain over
infrastructure and housing
development
Incentives for privatization of
infrastructure and housing
development
High subsidy regime
Users pay principle, low subsidy
Close-circuit departmental working
Sharing of information through
information technology and
participatory decision making
Source: Jain (2003)
Urban planning is an important function of the local governments in which the
authorities will have to plan allocation of land for various uses, particularly for
housing the population, and ensure that the basic infrastructure services such
as transport, water and sanitation, health, education and recreation are well
planned and provided to the citizens. This is nevertheless a huge task given the
organizational, financial and technical skill base required are enormous;
therefore, they call for alternative governance mechanisms for achieving it. It is
the planning process which theoretically determines the scope of governance
and the implementation of plans which demonstrates the strength of
governance (or, enforcement). Nevertheless, the planning practice has also been
changing towards more public and private participation in the planning process.
This is reflected below:
Table 2: Changes in planning practice
From
To
Focus on statutory planning
Performance oriented planning; focus
on implementation
Government does all
Public-Community-Private
Partnerships; Corporatisation of Urban
Local bodies; Contracting out
Meeting basic functional needs;
planning as a social function
Emphasis on quality and innovative
demand driven planning
Rigid legislation
Legal reforms facilitating participatory
planning and flexibility
Monopoly over urban information
New urban information systems,
computerization and
telecommunications
Source: Jain (2003)
As India is undergoing demographic change accompanied by a change in its
economy, rapid urbanization is gripping the country after 1980s, and
particularly after liberalization in 1990s, many new challenges are now made to
local governments, particularly those relating to the planning and governance of
cities (Jain 2003). Yet, the cities have not done enough in terms of improving
their methods of governance and building governance structures that can
anticipate changes and prepare themselves for the same. The capacity of many
of the local governments to plan and manage their cities is very limited and, as
9
a result, they are not able to keep up with the challenges of the increasing
demands. However, there are some traditional methods and modern methods
that are being attempted in improving governance in Indian cities, which we
discuss hereunder.
Improving Urban Governance through Municipal Reforms
As cities become larger, they have to find the new ways and means of ensuring
the delivery of certain basic services: one such traditional way followed by
several cities across the world is by turning to private parties for achieving it
cost effectively. Greene (2002), for example, provides an account of award of
contracts given to private parties for service delivery in the cities across the US
and elsewhere. Service contracts, management contracts and delivery contracts
are becoming the methods of inviting private sector participation in the routine
and non-core functions. Although they have been quite successful in achieving
the cost-effectiveness, it has been pointed out in few cities and countries that
this came out with the increase in corruption in the form of contract giving
made highly discretionary. Another approach to achieving this is through
restructuring of civic finances. Ferrer et al (2003) illustrate one such example
in Venezuela. Cities can identify new methods of revenue generation/ increase
and cut down the costs provided the accounting systems are changed to identify
assets and reduce liabilities. Also, with a declining financial support from
upper level governments, cities can generate revenues through user charges and
from market borrowings in the form of bonds as it was done in Ahmedabad8. E-
governance is a modern method of governance which takes the governance
closer to the citizens and makes them empowered due to the enabling
information technology, it has been widely used in improving the governance of
Hyderabad. Although its reach out to digitally divided urban poor is
questioned, it has transformed the city to a great extent.
Apart from delegation to third parties, another form of decentralisation taking
place is in the form of delegation of authority of service delivery and fee
collection and/or sharing with the local body. The local resident associations
and neighbourhood associations are now coming forward to assume this
function and recover the costs through agreement with local governments. This
local level management and decentralization of powers and services has been
successful in case of services like waste collection and street cleaning. A classic
example of this is the network of Advanced Local Mechanisms (ALMs) in
Mumbai, which undertake ward-wise cleanup of the city on regular basis.
However, this decentralization may be cyclical and centralization may come to
the fore again if the local government thinks about the losing revenue and rising
costs due to relatively stable organization. Recognising the need for the
decentralization of governance, the Government of India has also delegated the
decision making powers to local government bodies through 74th amendment of
constitution and this has to percolate downward to the neighbourhoods. The
neighbourhood groups need to be established and empowered to make certain
decisions so that the delays do not take place in the delivery of essential
services. This will not only lead to better services and empowerment, but also it
revives the public participation in the design, delivery and management of
public goods and services and thus brings in political acitivisation. This is
necessary for ensuring accountability in threadbare democracies.
8 Jain (2003)
10
This shift in fact has also led to the spurt of several NGOs and CBOs coming up
to undertake the responsibility. However, this does not mean no work / power
for central authorities; rather, they have to carryout the strategic planning and
coordination with the local bodies. Non-profit initiatives are now assuming the
role and responsibility in partnership with local governments in preparing
development plans, vision plans and strategy plans. However, their
implementation is in the hands of public authorities. Here again, non-profit
organizations are stepping-in to leverage private support and work in
partnership with concerned authorities. Moreover, the formation of
independent monitoring groups with wider range of citizenry is acting as a good
way of accounting, the examples of which are explained in the subsequent
sections. The following sections essentially illustrate how such new models are
emerging in the cities of Bangalore and Mumbai.
Partnership models of Urban Governance in Bangalore
The partnership models in cities take form in different cities and use different
methods. In Bangalore, a spurt of non-profit initiatives led to re-activation of
urban governance. Bangalore Forward and the Bangalore Agenda Task Force
undertook several initiatives and contributed to an overall improvement of the
city. Besides, the Public Affairs Centre has also emerged both as a think tank
and an independent monitoring group.
Bangalore Forward is a private non-profit partnership initiative working towards
better Bangalore between the private corporates and the state government. It
works closely hand in hand with the Bangalore Agenda Task Force (BATF),
which was established by the state government as a statutory body comprising
both government and citizens to coordinate and monitor urban development
activities in Bangalore. An important element of it is the stakeholder meetings
held in public to bring-in accountability of the seven major service providing
agencies in Bangalore, which have a greater stake in the development of the
city. Bangalore Forward has also undertaken several initiatives that led to an
overall improvement of Bangalore city governance. Important among them is the
creation of a Fund Based Accounting System (FBAS) developed for the
Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BMP) (detailed out in Box 1).
Box 1: Fund Based Accounting System
Fund Based Accounting System (FBAS) was taken up for achieving reforms in
municipal accounting, and thereby enabling it to provide its core services
efficiently and enhancing its financial capacity. It also led to other
improvements like improved organization performance, better transparency and
accountability and efficient resource mobilization/utilization. The Bangalore
Mahanagara Palike was following cash based / single entry accounting system
which had severe limitations in financial planning and control and that made it
vulnerable to un-accounting or under-accounting of its assets. FBAS uses
double entry method of accounting and coupled with appropriate information
technology and management systems led better management of municipal
finances while improving transparency and accountability of operations. The
FBAS received financial support from the private corporates, who funded the
11
prototype system development, as well as the municipal corporation, which
ultimately adopted the system.
Source: Ramanathan and Ravichander (2002), India Together (2003)
Besides FBAS, Bangalore Forward undertook initiatives such as PROOF
campaign to make citizens aware of the municipal budget and the spending on
various segments. Besides, some initiatives towards making visible
improvements in the city, were taken:
(i) improvement in traffic and road infrastructure – flyovers and
underpasses at critical junctions, more and better bus stands, low
floor disabled friendly bus services
(ii) improvement in civic amenities – designing methods for door-to-door
garbage collection, better modern toilets and
(iii) improvement in urban environment – parks renovation (with active
support of private sector), improvements to pavements/pedestrian
ways in market areas and civic facilities provision in slums.
Interestingly, in all these initiatives, private corporates as well as individuals
have contributed. Although the absolute share of contribution could be less
than that of government, yet it demonstrates the potential of engaging private
sector in city development. All of this has led to an active support of media (TOI
2003) and the general public. There was an overwhelming percent of citizens
(66%) who now perceive that the Bangalore city infrastructure and amenities
have improved in just one year (Banglore Forward 2003) and there has been a
consistently increasing share of population positively perceived about
developments in Bangalore, which is reflected in the report cards published
based on the surveys (Bangalore Forward 2003). However, it is the independent
system of report cards (see box 2) commissioned by the Public Affairs Centre, a
non-profit policy research organization, that led to different stroke of improving
Bangalore.
Box 2: Report card system in Bangalore
Public Affairs Centre (PAC) constituted a report card system on Bangalore’s
public services in which users provide feed back on the quality, efficiency and
adequacy of services and the problems they face in their interactions with the
service providers. This assessment was done with the objectives of (i) to
demonstrate that citizen feedback on services could be used to rate the
performance of public service providers and to highlight the aspects of their
services that needed improvement (ii) to sensitize the public at large about the
state of public services and exert pressure on government and service provides
to improve the quality of services and public accountability in general.
Moreover, it could also as a benchmarking device when it is carried out
periodically. The first report card was published in 1993 and the second was
published in 1999. Both the report cards reported the widespread public
dissatisfaction with the service providers with only one of them receiving
satisfaction by over 50% of the people. Majority of them reported the
beaurocratic delays and hurdles and the prevalence of corruption. The report
card was an eye opener and the service providers came under public eye
through such system, which pressurized them to improve the performance.
Source: Paul and Sekhar (2000)
12
Partnership models of Urban Governance in Mumbai
Mumbai has actually found some novel institutions emerging in response to the
failure of local government to deliver goods and services to the satisfaction of
citizens. While partnership models in Bangalore were impacting city governance
strong and fast in Bangalore, their impact in the case of Mumbai has also been
somewhat weak. This is partly because considerable time was spent on
understanding and groping with the issues concerning Mumbai and that the
size of the city itself is very large.
Bombay First is a private non-profit initiative that was formed by the private
corporates under the umbrella of the Bombay Chamber of Commerce &
Industry with a vision of transforming the city into globally competitive city
through improvements in economic growth, infrastructure and the quality of
life. It drew inspiration from London First and structured its organization on
the lines of London First. The mission of Bombay First, however, has been
larger - to address the issues and problems confronting the city through
partnerships with government, business and civil society. Even in terms of
methods, Bombay First has proposed to use research, catalysis, advocacy and
networking as the means of achieving the mission, whereas London First uses
the means of dialogue, expert assistance and advocacy to influence the
decisions.
Bombay First, under the guidance of Bombay City Policy Research Foundation
(BCPRF), began its work with a comprehensive diagnosis of the city development
– its economic and social structure, the causes of decline of certain activities
and infrastructure, possible solutions and pilot scale projects. Bombay First
also undertook small projects and pilot studies to demonstrate the potential for
improvements in civic services, particularly on the fronts of solid waste
management (specifically, medical waste management), design and management
of public spaces, creating road signage system and initiatives for maintaining
cleanliness and hygiene. These have inspired several NGOs (like Clean Mumbai
Foundation and NETRA to assume new roles of community based advocacy
groups) and spurt the networking activities e.g. Action for Good Governance
Network of India (AGNI) and NGOs Alliance for Governance and Research
(NAGAR).
The BCPRF also directed it to undertake initiatives towards making better
policies and informing citizenry. This led to the publication of the first Fact
Book on Mumbai (2000), which is a statistical compendium of data on all
aspects of the city development, and the newsletter/ journal – The CITY, which
features articles based on opinion as well as factual data in a thematic manner
(this was revived and phenomenally improved during 2002-2005) relevant to the
cities problems. The Comprehensive Transport Study (2000) and the
International Financial Centre (2002) are some of the important sectoral
strategy documents that provided some directions to take forward the city on
the fronts of infrastructure and economic growth. This process has culminated
in the preparation of a Vision Plan for the city in partnership with McKinsey
(details provided in Box 3).
13
Box 3: Vision Mumbai: Transforming Mumbai into a World-Class City
For a long time, Mumbai’s development was thought to be the development
plans of the MCGM (Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai), which was land
use allocation plan. There was no way to understand Mumbai’s economic
development provide some interventions that help to sustain and surpass it.
Recognizing the need for strategizing an overall plan envisaging the economic
growth driven by sectoral growth, Bombay First together with McKinsey & Co.
prepared a Vision Plan for the development of Mumbai. The Vision Plan
envisaged the transformation of the city on eight growth levers – economic
growth, transportation, other (social) infrastructure, housing, financing and
governance. The vision/aspiration of the city development was set out through
consultative workshops while making use of the outcomes of benchmarking
analysis against other major International and Indian cities. This vision was to
be achieved over a ten year period with the formulation new structures for city
management involving all concerning service providers and agencies as well as
private sector, thereby improving the qualitative and quantitative aspects of
civic governance considerably. However, in order to keep the ball rolling, the
plan envisaged the 23 quick-wins that were needed to be undertaken on a very
short term basis, say 1-2 years, and completed. Vision Mumbai report has
influenced the thinking about the city and its governance and raised the
aspirations of general citizenry, which is now leading to pressure on civic
authorities.
Source: Bombay First – McKinsey (2003), Nallathiga (2005)
The Vision Plan has set the momentum for Mumbai’s transformation on fore
front. A Task Force formed to look into recommendations examined them in
detail and came out with Mumbai Vision, which approved most of the
recommendations made in the Vision Mumbai report. An important
development in this regard is the constitution of the Citizens’ Action Group
(CAG), comprising government, businesses and citizens, as a monitoring and
review group concerning with Mumbai’s development. It has thus emerged as a
partnership institution to air the people’s agenda and receive the feed back.
Apart from the CAG as an instituted group to monitor city development
activities, another monitoring mechanism was commissioned to PRAJA, a non-
profit initiative, by the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM). It is
in the form of Project Performance Report and Complaint Audits, which are
explained in Box 4.
Box 4: Citizen interface improvement initiatives in Mumbai
The MCGM has evolved a system of interface with public to check the
department-wise and ward-wise performance and to take some remedial actions
to improve the service provision in partnership with PRAJA. The first project
performance survey was carried out in 2000 and continued in 2001. This
expressed the public perception of MCGM at large in terms of the
responsibilities the citizens believe it is obliged to and the relative satisfaction of
the services of seven of its departments – water supply, traffic/transport, roads,
sewerage, solid waste management and license. Performance of wards was also
planned to be measured using the citizen satisfaction scores.
14
Apart from measuring the citizen satisfaction, a complaint audit system was
established in all 24 wards in the year 2000. The data was derived from BMC-
PRAJA Online Complaint Management (OCMS), an electronic interface between
citizens and MCGM through internet. These complaints were categorized
according to their nature, ward and departments. Moreover, the redressal of
the complaints both the proportion of complaints redressed and the speed of
redressal were also checked through the surveys and so do monitoring of the
general perception about the MCGM. This system provided the citizens to have
an electronic interface to explain the problems and get them redressed and
while doing so to express their satisfaction with the way they were dealt and the
outcomes.
Source: Executive Summaries of Reports of PRAJA (2005)
Conclusion
The phenomena of urbanization, globalization and liberalisation have been
resulting in an increasing pressure on service delivery in the cities of developing
countries that are engulfed by vast number of problems. Unfortunately, most of
the cities are ill equipped to tackle the problems and pressures because either
inadequate planning of cities to tackle growth or because inadequate resources.
Moreover, inefficiencies built-in through traditional models of service delivery
led by the government caught with failures in service delivery. This calls for
alternative approaches/ models in which different partners can play a role in
ensuring that such failures can be addressed. However, right kind of policy
environment is equally important and reforms are needed for correct incentives.
The partnership models of governance show cased by Bangalore and Mumbai
show the way for other cities on how such partnerships between public, private
and civil society sectors can be forged. The success of these institutions lies in
(a) undertaking initiatives to improve city governance and to ensure service
delivery (b) bringing together the stakeholders under one platform to work
towards a common vision (c) discussing public policies and reporting citizen
opinion on service providers functioning. These are perhaps emulation- worthy
in other cities as well, but they need to be well structured and target oriented to
be effective. The learnings from these innovations should keep helping us in
finding the new pathways towards progress in city governance.
About the Author
Mr Ramakrishna Nallathiga is currently working as a Knowledge Manager at
Centre for Good Governance, Hyderabad which is located on Dr MCR HRD IAP
Campus, Road No. 25, Jubilee Hills, Hyderabad – 500 033. He works in a wider
range of research areas viz., urban development and policy, infrastructure and
environment, reforms and governance. He has several publications and papers
to his credit. He can be contacted at: ramanallathiga@yahoo.co.uk
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