Why are our cities in a mess today?

Populations of cities are rising, more are coming in because cities continue to attract people for jobs and because of increased economic activity. One standard question would be: What is the government doing about this?, asks M Ramachandran. 

Basic civic services are not available to everyone, the quality and level of service remains poor, there is increasing confusion on city roads, slums are on the increase and a general sense of confusion prevails.

This seems to be the city resident's standard comment on living conditions today.

Populations of cities are rising, more are coming in because cities continue to attract people for jobs and because of increased economic activity. One standard question would be: What is the government doing about this?  

Before we attempt to answer this, let us examine the key reasons why most of our 8,000 cities and towns are in what could generally be called an urban mess.  

In most cases, urban planning and creation of master plans for developing cities did not happen the way it should.

Till recently, the situation was that out of the 5,161 cities we had according to the earlier census, two-thirds did not have a master plan at all.

So, one can imagine the confusion that continues to prevail in the absence of a set scheme of development.

Even where master plans came into existence, enforcement was weak. On top of this, state governments, particularly powerful chief ministers, proactively presided over decision-making on individual land use change requests from cities.  

It was only after about 45 years of independence that we could give constitutional status to our third level of governance.

But, that remained a half-hearted effort because proper empowerment of these urban bodies did not take place as it was constitutionally left to state governments to take a call on how much power, funds and functions were to be transferred to these bodies.

And this agenda still remains pending.

Hence, the scenario where mayors and chairpersons continue to complain about not having enough powers.  

Basic services like water supply, solid waste management, drainage and sewerage were entrusted to urban bodies. But, either due to lack of funds or the will to prioritise what should come first, these bodies could not ensure 100 per cent access to services.  

Urban roads and mobility remained a subject within the domain of state governments and because the voices of cities did not matter much, the focus and attention was just not there.

The backlog was so huge, that it is no wonder the high powered expert committee that looked into the issue of resource requirement for cities came out with an investment requirement of Rs 17,29,000 crore for urban roads and Rs 4,50,000 crore for urban transport.  

Housing is another area where nothing much happened because assessing demand city-wise and adopting a target-oriented approach to meet requirements was not prioritised.

As a result, slums expanded. So much so that, in a major city like Mumbai more than 50 per cent of the population lives in slums. Housing is still not a subject assigned to urban local bodies.

It was only recently that the central government paid attention to this and set a target of housing for all by 2022, which means building at least 20 million new units for those who are without homes.  

Though subjects were assigned to urban bodies, the seriousness and keenness to allow these bodies to undertake their functions varied from state to state.

They do not have enough resource generating capacity, as a result of which most of them are dependent on devolution of funds from states and the Centre.

Also, many of these did not try seriously to generate revenue based on the items entrusted to them and levy user charges and provide satisfactory delivery of services.  

These bodies on their own are in no capacity to raise loans and, thus, find the resources for taking up major schemes.

Public-private partnerships as additional sources of investment could not take off, and the change in devolution of funds from states to urban bodies - expected as a result of mandatorily contituting state finance commissions every five years - did not serve the desired objective.

Allocation of resources by state governments to cities for schemes never received any priority, and there was no way concerns of cities could be heard properly at the state level.

And this despite the fact that contribution of cities to gross domestic product, tax revenues and employment generation was on the rise.

This is in contrast to the large number of rural development programmes that got introduced Plan after Plan. It is only now that the Centre has laid down basic priorities like toilets for all by 2019 with an outlay of Rs 62,009 crore, and to cover all households with water supply and sewerage.  

Over the years, not much attention was paid to strengthening the capacities of urban local bodies so that they could take up the ever-increasing challenges competently and professionally.

As a result, municipal capacities continue to be weak, making them dependent on consultants for almost anything new and different, even regular maintenance.

Further, there are no clearly stated norms as to when a state will notify a rural village panchayat as an urban body, when a new local body is constituted what is the funding support it will get to meet infrastructure gaps and what sort of division of areas and work will follow among the elected body, parastatals and other entities working within city limits.

In many states, the mayor or chairperson gets a limited term of one year, the commissioner has no defined tenure, there is no review of where the city stands with regard to service level benchmarks in basic service areas. Also, there is no clear accountability laid down for satisfactory delivery of basics services.

There is also no watchdog. There is no agenda to take care of the steady urbanisation of our census towns, which continue to be villages.

There are no proper avenues available for citizens to participate in and contribute to the process of city building.  

Broadly, these are the basic reasons why our cities do not succeed in meeting the desired satisfaction levels of residents.

The government needs to seriously take up the agenda of reforming city governance.  

The writer is a former Secretary for Urban Development in government of India and an active urban thinker and policy facilitator