Rahul Gandhi, in a tweet, ‘Promises Direct
Election of Mayors To Build "Smart Cities"’, reads the news
headlines. The tweet from Rahul Gandhi said that good leaders were needed to
build smart cities and hence suggestion that the Mayor, who is directly elected
is answerable to the people who elect him/ her. This understanding of Rahul
Gandhi is true. Urban policy makers and scholars have long argued, and among
them passionate policy maker late Mr. K C Sivaramakrishnan (who was urban development
ministry’s secretary at the centre), that there would be responsible urban
governance if mayors were directly elected by the city’s residents.
Direct elections have to be accompanied by
financial and legislative powers as well. In the current situation, the city
governments are extremely poor, and do not have financial wherewithal to make
any significant investments without the funds coming from the state or the
central governments. Many cities, particularly the small and medium ones, have so
poor financial situation that they are barely able to meet salary expenditures
of meagre staff (in conditions of under-staffing of the municipal governments).
Thus, direct elections of the city mayors have to be accompanied by enabling
them with financial powers, to enhance their financial base as well as take
decisions about expenditures. Currently, in most municipal bodies, the
municipal commissioner, a representative of the state government, and through
whom the state level ministers, in many cases the Chief Minister, decide the
expenditure priorities at the city level and interfere in the city’s affairs.
Cities do not have power to decide on which items expenditures should be made.
Another enabler for the mayor to work is
the power to make legislation. For example, the city does not have power to
pass its Master Plan, i.e. plans for physical development; the state government
approves these plans. Or the city’s government does not have power to decide
taxes; the state government decides as to what taxes and at which rates should
be levied by the city government! Compare this with cities in China, where the
city government decides taxes. At one point in time, Beijing city was levying 31
fees on an average, only 14 of which were legal, on McDonald restaurants over
and above normal taxes (Wong 1998). Fiscal decentralisation and powers to the
cities to collect taxes is one important aspect of high levels of
infrastructure investments in the cities of China.
In India, virtually, city government does
not have any powers. In that case, the direct election of Mayors would have
limited impacts. A good example of such direct elections was in Simla wherein
the Mayor and deputy-Mayor were directly elected in 2012 due to amendment in
the state legislation. Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu
too have direct elections of mayors. But, this would not mean better municipal
governance or ‘smart municipal governance’.
The news item also states that “Ahead of
the 2014 national election, the BJP had promised to build 100 smart cities. But
while 98 cities have been selected by the government for the flagship project,
and Rs. 500 crore allocated for each, critics say progress in the project has
been tardy.”[1]
Tardy it is; the implementation of ‘smart cities’ programme. According to some
estimate, there has been offtake of only 17% of the stated allocations under
the smart cities mission (SCM). Some expenditures under what is called a
project of the SCM, are from other programmes such as Atal Mission for Rejuvenation
and Urban Transformation (AMRUT).
An aside on AMRUT. The name of the
programme should have been Atal Mission for Urban Rejuvenation and
Transformation. But, then it does not give us a neat ‘Indianised’ acronym.
Scholars have argued that ‘smart cities’
would require ‘smart governance’. Which is true. But, direct election of mayors
is a first tiny step towards it. Smart governance would require many urban
reforms, two of which have been mentioned above.
What is a ‘smart city’? Everything done in
a city is called smart. Sabarmati riverfront development is smart; leave aside
10-12 thousand people displaced and lives of many ruined. Research is available
on the disruptions in lives of those displaced. Metro projects is also called
smart. We do not know the long term financial implications of the metro
projects. Whether these will lead to reduction in private vehicular movement in
the cities and thus resulting in reduction in air pollution is unknown. In
fact, the results are going to be too far away in terms of improving local air
quality. If there is any lesson on this issue to be learnt is to follow what
Chinese cities have done and how many years after which the results with
regards to reduction in emissions from transport could be seen.
Smart city as an idea, comes from
envisioning of city using real-time data for city management systems. For
example, if the data on sewerage systems is digitsed then its clogging at any
point could be monitored and quickly responded to. There could be warning about
traffic congestion to decide on time and route of travel. To some extent,
google maps is helping in this. The city governments or their transport departments
have little role to play. A smart city would have a real data base for levying
property taxes. It could warn residents about inundated areas during heavy
monsoons. And so on. But, to be able to put in place data-dense city management
systems would require city level data. There is very little city level data
today in Indian cities. In last few years, whatever data was available online
has vanished.
Another idea of ‘smart city’ is
environmentally, socially and economically sustainable cities. This idea,
coming from the cities of developed countries, to a great extent from the
experience of American cities, wherein, the cities have sprawled due to real
estate and car-industry driven suburbanisation. Indian cities too are following
this pattern of real estate industry driven suburbanisation. A developer/
builder buys land from farmer (s) and creates a large real estate development
away from the city. The city is then forced to build roads and provide other
trunk infrastructure. Which then leads to increase in land and property prices
and the developer/ builder rakes in moolah, with no ingenuity of theirs but
manipulation and political connections. The land prices increase so much that
cheap lands for the housing of the urban poor have to be found on the city’s periphery.
That is where many of the housing under the Prime Minister’s Awas Yojana (PMAY)
– Urban, are located in many cities. The poor located in such colonies struggle
to commute, access education and health, and other urban amenities, for a long
period of time; just because, the sprawl creates speculative profits of the
real estate developers/ builders. This is hardly ‘smart city’.
The smart cities in India, are hardly about
data-intense urban management or about sustainable cities. Labels such as ‘smart’
are used with almost no content. Thus, everything is ‘smart’ in any programme
of the city, as already mentioned above. Thus, picking garbage is called smart.
Recycling garbage is smart. Building footpaths is smart and e-payment of
property tax is smart. Since everything is smart, the term smart cities has
lost its meaning. Term smart has become empty of its meaning. Because even ‘jumla’
is smart. In such a situation, direct election of mayors, although a good move,
would yield very little in actually making cities smart. It would have meaning
only if the term smart were to mean, equitable and sustainable cities.
References
Wong, Christine (1998): ‘Municipal Finance
in China: The Development of Extra-Budgetary Revenues’, paper presented at the International Municipal Finance Forum
organised by World Bank, Washington DC, April 15-16.
