The buck should stop at mayor for civic ills

The buck should stop at mayor for civic ills
TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Bangalore: Who governs Bangalore? Unfortunately, the question has no one answer. The lack of an empowered and democratic urban government system with a powerful mayor at the helm when Bangalore has added more areas to its kitty worried several experts who had gathered at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (IIMB) for a seminar on ‘Mayoral System and Effective Urban Governance’.
The seminar was organised by a twoweek-old Urban Governance Group, formed under the Centre for Public Policy, IIMB, and the state government. Administrators, elected members, activists and educationalists from across the country brainstormed over how Indian cities function without powerful mayors.
“Whom would you pin responsibility on? Who should visualise a future for the city? Why do we have different agencies doing different things when they can all function under one head?’’ asked A Ravindra, former chief secretary.
Presently, our elected representatives have no authority to govern the city. Executive powers are vested with the corporation commissioner for civic works. The bureaucrat posted here is answerable to state and cannot be held responsible by the citizens. Besides, there are other wings like the BDA, BWSSB, Bescom, and BMTC that carry out municipal works.
“We need to take a re-look at the city’s governance. We’ll send the deliberations of this meet to act as catalyst,’’ said Gopal Naik, chairman, Centre for Public Policy. “We need to improve and coordinate infrastructure development for road and transportation network, water and power supply, apart from upgrading civic services. In the last few years, we have clearly made the city messy,’’ he said.
Many participants, including MLA N L Narendra Babu, felt a directly elected mayor would be apt for the city. “But there should be checks and balances like committees that would approve the decisions. It should be easy for people to approach anyone, anytime for their problems,’’ he said. But senior bureaucrats like urban development principal secretary K Jothiramalingam and Kolkata Municipal Corporation commissioner Alapan Bandyopadhyay debated on the direct elections of mayors as it could mean decentralisation of powers. “People should be advised to approach specific people for problems,’’ Bandyopadhyay said.
Political interferences and lack of financial powers also seemed to bother officials. “While the state itself has limited taxes, the civic body is left with just property taxes. Sadly, the options in the Act that provides for 200 percent collection of property tax for life in case of deviations and irregularities are never adopted,’’ said Jothiramalingam.
toiblr.reporter@timesgroup.com
SOME OPTIONS
Make mayors more powerful either by direct elections or by indirect elections and give them longer tenure Bring all civic agencies under one leader — mayor Empower the mayor with the equivalent of a CEO’s powers and the commissioner, the COO’s powers. What the mayor visualises, the commissioner implements Increase private-public partnership Give financial powers to corporations. Collections should not consist only of property tax