Notwithstanding the MCD's decade-long dismal performance, the BJP's big win in the recent poll signifies a vote of confidence in the Prime Minister's commitment to a ‘New India'
Notwithstanding the Municipal Corporation of Delhi’s (MCD) decade-long dismal performance mired in sloth, squalor and graft, the BJP’s big win in the recent MCD poll signifies a vote of confidence in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s perceived commitment to a ‘New India’ to emerge in tune with peoples’ aspirations. Delhites, grievously disenchanted with the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Government and despaired of a discredited Congress, are hopeful that the MCD, in coalesce with Modi sarkar, will usher in a swachh city in letter and spirit.
The real onus of clean, efficient and effective governance in the capital city having now devolved upon the Union Government, it may well be seized as an opportunity to evolve a promising paradigm of urban management to set the pace and example of civic administration across the country. In a way, Delhi has been hailed as the country’s most pampered child — its current per capita income is around three lakh rupees; almost thrice that of the country’s.
According to 2011 census, of a total of 3.34 million households in Delhi, 3.31 million had electricity; 2.62 million had safe drinking water; and 2.99 million had toilet facilities. Getting access to the rest is a herculean task and requires effort. About 49 per cent of the capital’s population is in slums and unauthorised colonies. The city goes on piling over 5,000 tonnes of refuse every day. The number of jhuggis have shot up from 12,000 in 1951 to half a million now. The capital city has 7.5 million registered vehicles or more. More than 2,000 people die in traffic accidents every year. Mega-scale migration is Delhi’s special woe. Migration has steadily risen from a level of 38 per cent during 1961-71 to around 60 per cent today.
With people pouring into the city and cars pouring on the roads, the outlook of environment looks grim. It is ironic that leaders keep harping on Delhi being the ‘World’s most beautiful city’, while for an ordinary citizen, it is just a polluted metropolis with crime, grime and chaos — sitting on a garbage volcano, often engulfing virus and scourge.
The need of the hour, therefore, is for various agencies, involved in the affairs of the city, to seriously rethink about its governance structure and optimally pool all resources with coordinated and harmonious strategy to address the city’s gargantuan problems. Delhi has an enlarged municipal corporation which is saddled with too many unwieldy intervening institutions (272 municipal councillors, 70 MlAs, seven MPs, besides North Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC), Cantonment Board and the Union Government) for land and policing. All these bodies often find themselves in overlapping jurisdictions; and sometimes contradictory goals. The utter lack of coordination among myriad agencies is apparent. In the past, feuds between AAP-ruled Delhi, the BJP-led MCDs and the Union Government have been rife.
The enormity of resources required for regeneration of the decaying metropolis — re-fixing its delinquent infrastructure, housing, health, education and environment — allows no room for any irrational largees or freebies. Abolition of property tax, for example, as advocated by some political outfits, is highly irresponsible, if not maniac, a thought. The priority for the civic body evidently should be to make a perceptible impact, to get all streets and settlements duly cleaned and lit up. Cleaning the over-flowing drains during monsoon will help minimise vector-borne ailments and earn public approbation.
The MCD must resolve to have Delhi swachh by year-end, and after that it should focus on its schools- teachers and facilities. One primary directive from the party high command must be for the councilors to be proactively accessible, they must regularly meet people in their wards, and interact with Resident Welfare Associations. Along with ensuring effective and sustainable sanitation — collection of garbage, disposal of waste, maintenance of public toilets, cleaning of roads at night — appropriate long-term arrangements must be devised. Mechanisation and privatisation appear inevitable.
MCDs have a formidable force of safai karmacharis, but can one count even a fraction on the workers doing honest work at dutyIJ High wages with little accountability for actual service delivery has made the public sector agencies an obvious target for patronage hiring, which also results in massive over-staffing. Doing departmentally is awfully expensive; job is not even done. It is pointless for the MCD, for instance, to own, maintain and operate its own fleet of dumpers and other vehicles, most of which remain dormant, idle and sick.
Conservancy services deserve a senior-level exclusive administration. Waste management demands professionalism, technology and commitment. The use of biotechnology can help in the treatment and disposal of waste; information technology can help in city planning and service-delivery options; energy saving and cleaner technologies in urban transport; high-tech, low-cost materials in building and housing. Technology can assist the cities incorporate user-based charges for access to roads, electricity, and water. Major economies have been achieved by sharing service areas such as billing and tariff collections, cable laying and maintenance, and other common services and management overheads.
In our country, inspectors are known not to inspect; they only extort. A structured, mandatory inspection system is the very sine qua non of effective delivery. In Surat, during the term of Commissioner SR Rao, every official had to spend five hours in the field, out of which half the time was to be spent in slums, working in heat and dust, grime and filth. This not only is a better way of management but also increases morale of the team.
The growth of a city like Delhi is not unexpected. Innumerable blueprints have been made and master plans sketched but most of the infrastructure investments have been misallocated — too much for new investment; not enough for maintenance; too much to low priority projects; not enough to essential services. Infested with hawkers, vendors encroach the vital spaces, including pathways and pavements. The city needs an effective mechanism for regulated clusters of clean kiosks to be built and leased. Equally important is to ensure that large, busy market and religious places are made vehicle-free. Adequate parking facilities at vantage locations are a clear need, and so are community parks and children’s play areas.
As China envisions three big urban clusters — along the Pearl River, Yangtze River, and the Beijing-Tianjin corridor — each with 50 million people or more, the NCR should also aim at relieving pressure off Delhi. Efforts must be made to make Delhi as a Common Economic Zone, with rationalised inter-State tax structure, uniform financial/banking services, telecom facilities and power supply, integrated education policy, health policy, rail, road transport network, water supply and drainage system.
(The writer is senior fellow, Asian Institute of Transport Development, and a commentator on social issues)