Integrated Governance for Large Cities

This was essential as urban centres are the growth engines for the countyr’s as economy, already contributing over 50 per cent of the country’s GDP. According to Mr M Ramachandran, Secretary, Ministry of Urban Development, the task on hand was a significant one, specially as the country today has the world second largest system of urban settlements. “With over 5,161 towns and cities, we today face challenges on all urban governance issues, beit drinking water, urban transport, solid waste management or housing.

What is important that there should be commonality in all development efforts, targeting all sections of society.” Integrated Governance: Accepting that market forces were going to shape the urban structure of the future, the speakers agreed that there was need to take governance in urban centres to the local level, bringing the governors and those governed onto a common platform.

“Today, the recommendations of the 74th Amendment on giving more powers to urban local and bodies and panchayats have yet to be implemented by many states. And, if people at the local level are not involved in the development process, growth will not be inclusive,” added Ramachandran. Our current model of governance does not provide for any institutional involvement of citizens or devolution of decision-making to the lowest unit, he added.

Agrees Dr Jairaj Phatak, Municipal Commissioner, Municipal Commission of Greater Mumbai, “today,MCGM presents one of the best and largest models of urban governance in India. This has been possible as we have implemented a number of steps that take governance to the people. While the first phase of such changes involved only the inner administration processes, in the second phase we have significantly increased the citizen interface.” As a result, today, there are a large number of services that have been available to Mumbaikars through the use of ICT technologies. And, recognising the fact that not everyone is IT-savvy, MCGM has also significantly simplified the procedures and norms to ensure faster service delivery to all citizens.

And, while enabling the citizens, this has enabled us to check malpractices that were associated with such services in the manual mode.” Concurs Prakash Rane, Managing Director, ABM Knowledgeware, “it is not only technology that has enabled easier availability of services to the citizens. Instead, it is the blending of administrative reforms with ICT that led to this paradigm shift in the mode of delivery of government services.”

However, he conceded that we have just opened the doors to more citizen interface in governance, with the major challenge being in capacity-building, both within government departments and among citizens as also in overall awareness about such initiatives. Taking the technology point a notch further, Niraj Prakash, General Manager-Public Services, SAP, said that it was necessary that for IT-enablement of governance, work on both the back-end and the front-end takes place simultaneously.

“Also, the technology that is adopted must be relevant to the needs of the services being offered and by the people it is being offered. We should be able to integrate such technology with other process being used by different department and even upscale the services that are made available.”

Accepting the role that ICT could play in improving governance, Mr Ramachandran said that it was because of this that the Central Government was considering issuing benchmarks for IT enablement of urban local bodies like it has issued in the case of drinking water, solid waste management, sewerage and drainage. More importantly, he pointed out that the challenge before urban planners was how to improve and expande the economic and social infrastructure of cities, ensure access to basic services at affordable prices, including security of tenure in land and housing, and strengthening municipal governments and their functions.

“Balanced development matters not only for the sake of social justice, but also for social cohesion and economic development. Inequalities within cities have the potential to turn into social protests and generate instability. It is, therefore, at this level that such issues need to be addressed.”

A major reason for such exclusion, the speakers noted, was because they lacked the group identity that came naturally to the rural poor given the small size of their habitations. “This prevented them from taking advantage of the cluster approach or the self-help group approach to access various financial services,” pointed out Sanjay Bhargava, Chief Mentor at the Eko Group.

This was even though the urban poor were located in areas where proximity to banks was not an issue, with most major urban centres having more than one bank branch in a radius of 5 km. What was needed here, the speakers emphasised, were measures that enabled the urban poor to establish a link with the banking an insurance sectors. Stressing that the insurance sector was ready to extend coverage to the urban poor also, M Ramadoss, CMD, Oriental Insurance Co Ltd, said that they were restrained in this regard by the regulatory framework that governs the sector.

“Today, in case of any insurance product, it is mandatory that the premium is paid in advance for the policy to become effective. And, this is something that is not possible for the urban poor to do.” Here, he stressed that, if a suitable linkage developed between the urban poor and the banking system, the banks could help the accountholder by financing the cost of the premium.”