Just an anecdote of how babudom ruins India’s municipalities. An acquaintance from south India qualified UPSC and eventually posted to lead the municipality in my town. We met and discussed issues of the city. His zeal seemed inspiring so offered to connect him with some experts.
A Dutch friend who is an urban planner was doing research in India and she created an impressive zoning plan for the municipality. All without any charge. It was presented and I was shocked by the quality of her work. It was bang on and captured all key problems.
The main recommendations were about zoning plans and management of street vendors since it leads to massive traffic issues. The babu was super supportive too. My friend left India after her presentation hoping to hear about the progress. But nothing much moved.
Few months later I am chatting with a childhood friend who is based in my hometown and is a successful owner of many businesses. I shared with him about the project and inquired has anything improved around the area that were agreed to modeled in the first phase.
He simply laughed. Informed me how he and his partners are paying a monthly bribe in 6 figure to that babu who used the project details to bargain a “settlement” with various shop owners threatening them with municipal action on their encroachment otherwise.
Not only that, he abused the project recommendations as a pretext to also collect bribes from street vendors and their representatives. Basically his tactic was to show how he is under pressure to act owing to foreign experts!
Obviously I reached out to him but he denied it all. He blamed local mayor, MLA etc for not letting him implement the project. Later got transferred to Maharashtra over his excessive corruption and not sharing the cut with politicians.
But he found a model to make money. His wife opened an NGO that now hires “experts” to make recommendations on improving urban planning and later he use those “recommendations” to make deals with local shopkeepers and builders threatening action in the garb of urban planning.
Sadly he is not the only one. An extremely well qualified person with impressive education, a job for life, all forms of financial and social security, yet he and many others indulge in such corruption. It is unexplainable to me.
It was embarrassing whenever Dutch urban planner friend inquired about the progress. Eventually she too realised the facts. In the process, I also learnt that most Indian municipalities don’t hire urban planners or landscape architects. No wonder our cities are worst in the world
I define the core problem as: multiplicity of overlapping institutions. Numerous offices in municipalities & all led by IAS/PCS but none under an expert trained to do that job. Municipal commissioner, many additional, deputy assistant municipal commissioner etc but no experts.
Reforming babudom is important and to free municipalities, education, and healthcare from their colonial era clutches. India can’t improve unless experts lead municipality departments. Municipalities just outsourced it all to private contractors in lieu of bribes and nepotism.
This is how#SwachhBharatMission fails on the ground. Corruption in local police, corporators, MLAs makes it worse. We need powerful mayors who are answerable to local population. Cities can’t be run by CM, PM or MPs. They need local leadership through mayors and Municipalities.
As I head back, a glimpse of my view to show what urban planning can achieve. The issue is not street vendors but planning it all. Cities are hub of economic activity and creators of growth. There is space for everyone if there is planning and implementation.
(This article has been compiled from the tweet thread posted by @Ravi3pathi on April 18, 2024, with minor edits to improve readability and conform to HinduPost style guide)
