Local govt reforms can create new vision for India’s cities of the future

livemint.com:

This is part of a special series of articles by the country's foremost voices, ahead of Union Budget 2024, aiming to draw attention to the critical reforms that can help India in its journey to become a developed nation by 2047. It is now proven beyond doubt that India needs a new imagination of how to govern her cities. The last decade finally saw the emergence of the city as a political agenda and a significant increase in investments in urban infrastructure and services. But the narrowly focused, mission- and scheme-led development of our cities across both the Union and state governments is not delivering the desired results.

We are faced with worsening quality of life and inequity on our streets and in our neighbourhoods despite larger budgetary outlays by governments and increasing prosperity of city dwellers. Urban India’s challenge is primarily of systems and institutions, rather than of infrastructure and services. The latter is a consequence of well-designed and well-functioning systems and institutions.

We need, therefore, to invest in robust “city-systems" to break out of the present status quo in our cities. City-systems are a unique combination of three interlinked but distinct dimensions of democratic governance in cities. First, participatory governance institutions in neighbourhoods which foreground voice and agency of citizens through transparency and citizen participation.

Examples include ward committees and area sabhas, or even slum dweller associations in Odisha or the older Kudumbashree groups in Kerala. Participatory governance activates a virtuous cycle of engagement between citizens and governments leading to better prioritization, resource allocation and project execution. In a fast-growing,