Urban Governance Index | Why Indian cities need better governance

(Image: Reuters/Francis Mascarenhas)

Is Delhi better governed than Mumbai, or the other way around? Are Tier 2 cities more efficiently governed than metros? Which cities ably managed COVID-19 or the migrants’ crisis?

Urban governance is at the heart of how we live in cities, and everyone agrees there should be better urban governance; but discussions pause at that because the concept carries different connotations for people, or data is insufficient. That’s why India’s comprehensive Urban Governance Index launched last month is significant.

Three years in the making, it maps 40 cities and the National Capital Region-Delhi on four themes spread across 42 indicators to index how democratically and financially empowered city governments are. This directly impacts delivery of basic civic services, especially to the poor and the state of urban infrastructure, according to the Mumbai-based think-tank Praja which authored the UGI. The four themes are: empowered elected representatives and legislative structure, empowered city administration, empowered citizens, and fiscal empowerment.

This UGI ranked states — not individual cities — because some states had multiple cities in the reckoning and the purpose was partly to examine how many of the 18 urban functions mentioned in the 74th Amendment have been devolved to city governments. An empowered city government is, of course, best placed to effectively and efficiently govern, but states have been historically reluctant to devolve power. Odisha (Bhubaneshwar) topped the index, Maharashtra (Mumbai, Pimpri-Chinchwad) was placed second, and Kerala (Kochi) was fourth. Jharkhand, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Manipur and Nagaland were at the bottom of the index.

Urban governance is a young concept, it evolved in the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and UN-HABITAT in the last two decades, and the first international UGI for 24 world cities was published in 2005. Since then the concept has been widely embraced. The UNDP defines urban governance as the exercise of political, economic and administrative authority to manage a city at all levels and comprises formal and informal mechanisms, processes and institutions. The international UGI maps cities on five parameters: effectiveness (of services), equity, participation, accountability, and security.

The UGI developed by Praja does not mimic this, but goes beyond to use the lens of democratic empowerment. For example, it points out that none of the state municipal Acts have the right to recall of elected city representatives, civic ward-level committees which allow people’s participation exist in only 12 cities, city governments in 16 states do not have a procedure for conduct and business rules, and 17 states do not have an independent or appropriate authority to introduce and/or revise local taxes and charges.

The UGI correctly focusses on empowerment — both of city governments and citizens — and pivots the discussion on governance rather than on government. Governance is not government; it includes formal government structures but also informal mechanisms that citizens and the private sector use to leverage influence. Its quality determines the quality of life for citizens across classes and geographies in a city. For example, eight cities in the list did not have city governments during the pandemic making COVID-19 management difficult; only four cities had control over public health while the rest had to follow their state governments.

The challenge now is for citizens groups to use the UGI to work towards increasing empowerment at the city level, which includes making citizens’ voices heard on critical issues. This is easier said than done, but the UGI offers a starting point for committed groups to push for greater participation. Local responsibility and responsiveness work best. Kerala’s cities showed that the migrants’ workers crisis last year was best managed at local level with each city reorganising its resources to respond to it.

The test for state governments is to devolve greater power to the city's administration and elected representatives. The UGI is unlikely to instantly make them do so, but the metric enables citizens to hold states accountable. Why, for example, should the redevelopment of Mumbai’s eastern waterfront — spanning nearly 28 kilometres or seven Marine Drives — be decided at the Centre or by the state government? Why should this not be an issue that Mumbai debates and its municipal corporation become an active stakeholder in decisions?

The UGI flags off a crucial aspect of urban governance: financial empowerment. City governments tend to be financially dependent on state governments which restricts their functioning, reduces accountability to citizens and makes them susceptible as political extensions of state governments. Studies recommend that cities evolve their sources of finance for more efficiency in administration and greater accountability to citizens. However, India’s taxation structure leaves little with city administrations; the GST regime has increased dependency on state governments.

The Urban Governance Index can be a road map to better managed, more inclusive and sustainable cities if citizens and governments engage with it.