Beyond the Shobha De-Shiv Sena spat, the Telangana decision is really an opportunity to debate if Mumbai -- and indeed all metros -- need devoted city-state governments. In the light of the reignited debate, we reproduce an article that first appeared in the May 1-15, 2011 issue of Governance Now..

As a young IIM graduate, starting a career in investment banking, I definitely wanted to be in Bombay, indeed the Maximum City in the mid-80s. Alas, 25 years later, and wiser in the ways of how governance, or the lack of it, can make or break a city, I would change my opinion. Mumbai may be the world’s sixth largest metropolitan region, but it is almost certainly the worst administered of the six, which shows in the poor quality of life. A McKinsey study in 2003 called Mumbai a classic case of urban decay. As recently as October 2004, prime minister Manmohan Singh declared, “When we talk of a resurgent Asia, people think of the great changes that have come about in Shanghai. But we can transform Mumbai in the next five years in such a manner that people will forget about Shanghai and Mumbai will become a talking point.” Over six years later, has this statement been acted upon?

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What could have been…

Manmohan Singh said in 2004, “I have a dream that we can do it. I believe we can become number one through modernisation, expansion and development and make Mumbai the number one city in our country.” A dream indeed!

The sad part – from its leading position in the 80s, Mumbai could well have gone from strength to strength. It could have been the ‘urbs prima’ for South Asia, the megacity all others would strive to emulate.

It had everything going for it. But just when the Indian economy moved up the pace of growth several gears, other cities, Indian and regional, gained from the new opportunities thrown up in the 90s and later. Mumbai could not gain from India’s rapid economic growth; indeed, there has been a decline in several sectors as well as the city’s proud cosmopolitan culture. The city of dreams seems restricted to the Bollywood feel-good fare. Reality is more phantasmagoric. Today, most 20-somethings would probably start their careers in Delhi-NCR or Bangalore, or even a smaller metro like Hyderabad or Ahmedabad. Mumbai would be an unwilling choice.

What went wrong?

You could choose from numerous options: lack of proper planning, inadequate creation of infrastructure, very poor project execution, elitist priorities
rather than benefiting the poor, obsolete laws on land usage (e.g. urban land ceiling and rent control), chauvinism and xenophobia, corruption and lack of accountability, growth slowing down, quality of life deteriorating, inadequate investment, rapid increase in population, mushrooming of slums, prohibitive real estate, high cost of living and doing business and so on. In general, these are described as deficiencies in the areas of planning, governance,  implementation, housing, transport, climate change and security. The consequences include an inadequate transport structure, high real estate prices, unplanned and haphazard development, rising seawater, and a confusing multitude of agencies running the city. In addition, some 60 percent of the city’s population lives in slums.

We needed to create several sea bridges between the island city and the mainland – the Mumbai trans harbour link (MTHL) and more such links were needed. Today, Maharashtra state road development corporation (MSRDC) and Mumbai metropolitan region development authority (MMRDA) are sparring over who will build the MTHL. Any enlightened city planner and city government would have wanted MTHL to be a purely rail bridge. But elite planners and decisionmakers wanted a road bridge, and now are condescending to consider a road-cum-rail bridge! This elitist thinking has
been displayed in the Western Freeway project – the daily traffic on the Bandra-Worli sea link is comparable to two or three local trains at peak hour! The same money could well have air-conditioned all the local trains in Mumbai.

Similarly, the move towards Navi Mumbai was an excellent idea, foiled only by the state government that refused to move from the most expensive real estate in the world. Indeed, the long and successful tenure of chief minister Vasantrao Naik was singularly impactful in creating Nariman Point where it is, instead of towards Navi Mumbai. This was surely the biggest folly of urban planning, concentrating all transport to the tip of an island rather than dispersing it. In recent years, the Bandra-Kurla Complex as well as other dispersed office complexes at various locations have been eagerly accepted by business.

‘The ring that rules them all’

My choice for what went wrong: the city government, that should be managing the city, is completely disempowered by the state government. This is happening in all megacities in India. At the state level, the evidently poor governance that we have seen, especially since the mid-90s, and the era of coalition governments for the state has spelled doom for Mumbai.

This is Mumbai’s tragedy. Most global mega-cities are run by their powerful city governments, not a federal or state government. Indeed, the city government of Mumbai is hard to find. According to one estimate, there are 17 agencies involved in running Mumbai, all with their little fiefdoms. The Mumbai rail vikas corporation (MRVC) has a list of over 30 agencies running Mumbai. Any comparable global city has one city government that takes complete control, responsibility and accountability for running the city. An example from India is the relatively smaller Chandigarh, which is run by its city government, not by the Punjab or Haryana governments. While there is some justified criticism of Chandigarh’s non-inclusiveness, it is one of the bestrun cities in India. Contrast it with Delhi, where the chief minister is a supermayor, but there are numerous agencies she doesn’t control, leading to suboptimal outcomes seen most recently in the run-up to the Commonwealth Games. Or even Bangalore, which is frittering away its edge due to political developments at the state level.

But all Indian state governments deny any robustness to our city governments. Urban governance in India displays two ubiquitous features – a confusing multitude of agencies with little accountability, working very often at cross-purposes; and a complete lack of capacity, largely due to an emasculated city political executive, under a dominant state government. In the present system, the city serves as a parallel revenue generation mechanism, for political expenditure to be incurred in the rest of the state. That is also why we have the spectacle of a chief minister deciding floor spaces indexes (FSIs) for a city! Compared to any major city, the rest of the state is politically always much more important for the chief minister. Most of us don’t even know the indifferent, titular mayors in our cities.

It is always difficult for the Maharashtra chief minister who has to look after the state’s 288 MLAs to focus on a megacity, with just 28-odd MLAs from Mumbai’s urban agglomeration, depending on how we include various urban pockets. He cannot possibly listen to Mumbai’s seven MPs, when he has a total of 48 MPs to contend with. Hence the political executive at the state level will always have more political stakes outside Mumbai, rather than within it. In such a scenario, decisions on Mumbai are taken by people who have no accountability to the city. Further, decisions will be taken so that revenue is generated for deployment in the rest of the state. We are not talking of direct and indirect tax collections here, to be used for government spending!

Maharashtra’s chief ministers had been from the Congress till 1985; indeed, Vasantrao Naik held the post for 12 years, from 1963 to 1975. During this period, Maharashtra was generally regarded as well-governed. From 1995, however, the state saw coalitions, and the disintegration of Mumbai started gradually. Even so, in the first government in 1995, Nitin Gadkari was both PWD minister as well as MSRDC chairman, delivering the Mumbai-Pune expressway and numerous flyovers in Mumbai. Today these two positions are held by different individuals from different parties. Similarly, the home minister of the state does not have great expertise in urban policing, which calls for very different mindsets and skill sets. This conflict between requirements of a megacity and the environment of a much larger geographical area means that dysfunctionalities are certain. Indeed, the poor delivery performance of the coalition governments in Maharashtra since 1995 has been like the coalition governments in Jharkhand since 2000 or Karnataka since 2004. This political deficit has played havoc with Mumbai.

Greatness of Mumbai

Even today, Mumbai has the best citizen services in any Indian megacity. Public transport - the suburban railway as well as BEST buses - are what set our city apart. Mumbai, as noted architect-planner Charles Correa so lucidly points out, is the only Indian city shaped by its mass transport system. The two arterial railway systems shaped the development of the city, which was slum-free till the early 50s. The traffic police in Mumbai are by far the most efficient.

Most Mumbaikars would not know the meaning of ‘invertors’ – they are not used to power cuts. Getting a simple ration card or enrolling in a voter list is not the degrading experience it is in other cities. In business or in the government, there is a professional attitude, rare in the rest of India. For finance professionals, there is no better place (unless Gujarat’s GIFT city turns out to be a better option in the next decade). The ‘spirit of Mumbai’ is vibrant and thriving, even though poor governance is taking the sheen off it.

Negatives

Today, few youngsters would like to start their careers from Mumbai. There is crumbling infrastructure. There is xenophobia and hostility towards outsiders. There are few startups, whether in new companies or careers. This is ironically decreasing economic opportunity for the new generation of blue-collar Mumbaikars.

But the big story is real estate. Mumbai has artificially been denied supply of cheap real estate, by the egregious creation of Nariman Point, as well as the refusal of the state government to move out from South Mumbai to Navi Mumbai. In recent years, the execution of the Mumbai Trans-Harbour Link could have been a game changer, but was not to be. Consequently, supply of new housing is restricted, and effective demand can only come in at distant suburbs.

Mumbai has priced out the middle class. Only if you are very, very rich, can you afford to buy a house in Mumbai. Real estate is the true economic driver of Mumbai, the suffering of millions who overpay, so a few can make uperprofits, and lubricate the political system as well as the mafia. This is the single biggest obstacle to better governance for Mumbai. Which state government would like to let go of such a milch cow? And which set of ministers and bureaucrats would voluntarily yield control to a city government? Hence, along with the negatives on Mumbai on what went wrong, the real estate tragedy is perhaps the biggest. It is also the main reason how the state government’s political executive would view the revenue potential of Mumbai.

Citizen’s initiatives

A group of well meaning and illustrious citizens formed Bombay First in 1995 with the goal of making the city a better place in which to live, work and invest. Their political understanding of how global cities function is limited – they have never engaged with the city government, while talking only to the state government. Bombay First has not changed its name, while the city has changed its name as well as politics. In 2003, Bombay First commissioned McKinsey to prepare a study that assessed Mumbai’s strengths and opportunities and created a vision for transforming the city. The resultant ‘Vision Mumbai 2003’ report was subsequently endorsed by the state government. Today, the Mumbai transformation programme (MTP) comprises more than 40 projects to improve economic growth in Mumbai, reduce poverty and enhance quality of life for residents, especially slum dwellers. The projects are coordinated and monitored by the Mumbai transformation support unit (MTSU), which was established in 2005 as a special unit of the All India Institute of Local Self Government with the support of the Cities Alliance, the World Bank and USAID. Alas, the dynamic secretary- special projects, appointed in September 2003, thought better and decided to quit the IAS altogether in 2008. The MTP is in danger of suffering the MAFA fate – mistaking articulation for action.

The saddest comment – there is no role at all for the city government in Bombay First’s organisational design. Such well-meaning initiatives overlook “the most important ring of them all”. Most members would turn up their nose at interacting with the mayor of Mumbai; how many of you would know who the current Mumbai mayor is?

Even the 2007 Committee on Developing Mumbai as an International Financial Centre, has a specific section on urban infrastructure and governance in its report. It wistfully asks for an empowered city manager, once again ignoring political realities. Such reports have seldom proposed practical political solutions, relying instead on regurgitating normative bureaucratic structures.

What should we do?

Indians are good at the ‘normative’ (what should be) and quite content to ignore the ‘positive’ (what is). Thus, informed essays by noted urban experts are completely ‘normative’, since they often lack the experience of being part of running a city. They all ignore the ‘positive’ – largely revolving around the political executive.

Their essays are essentially wish lists, having little connection with political realities. Our mega cities are larger in population than some of our states – Uttarakhand has 85 lakh people, Himachal Pradesh 60 lakh and Goa 13 lakh. The eight megacities – Mumbai, Delhi NCR, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune and Ahmedabad – are of a larger or similar size. While there are numerous urban experts who talk about technical solutions, perhaps the best solution for autonomy is political, for no mayor can take on the chief minister.

Time for mayor-CMs

Carve out the eight largest megacities in India into separate states that would elect their chief minister (essentially a city mayor) directly. Let this elected person be the executive head and deliver as per her or his mandate. Let such a CM have a free hand in deciding her or his executive team in the government from among the civil services or outside. Let such megacity-states have no political relationship with their earlier parent states. All the para-statal bodies created by state governments to bypass city governments will automatically merge into the latter. This is one of the 13 reforms desired under the Jawaharlal Nehru national urban renewal mission (JNNURM), but seldom practised (jnnurm.nic.in/nurmudweb/reforms.htm). The national urban renewal plan has mandated that all para-statal bodies, such as the MMRDA and MSRDC, within urban limits and other bodies be merged into the city government.

This has been a requirement since 2005-06. In reality, this has not happened anywhere. There is no constitutional barrier to doing this; we’ve seen formation of new states in 2000. Surely the central government can take the initiative, and help the megacities. Erstwhile state politicians would hate to lose their revenue generating mechanism. But city politicians and citizens would gain significantly. Let the politics play itself out, but perhaps, millions of urban citizens deserve better than to be held hostage to a few myopic political incumbents. The 28 MLAs and seven MPs of Mumbai have far more to gain than safeguarding the interests of the non-Mumbai MLAs and MPs.

Having seen the three new states do much better after 2000, and an older example, Gujarat, take rapid strides after separation from Maharashtra, one would positively suggest that should such megacity-states be created, in less than a decade, Mumbai and all other Indian megacities would transform themselves.

In case a separate megacity-state is not possible immediately, our efforts could be on getting the state government out of the city and empowering the city government. However, this is not going to work, since no political and bureaucratic structure has ever yielded power voluntarily. Hence the megacity-state option is perhaps the only workable option. The status quo-ist will immediately question the lack of capacity in the city
government – but then the British had said the same thing about Indians before yielding to our freedom struggle. Perhaps we need a new autonomy/freedom struggle for megacities to attain political and administrative autonomy from state governments. In fact, almost a century ago lawyer and historian Max Weber, who is currently known as a sociologist, noticed that towns in Europe had been quite autonomous of the control of feudal lords from the countryside. Later on historians discovered that such autonomy was central to the growth of capitalism in Europe. Today we are finding that the set of norms which characterise the capitalist economy, especially norms pertaining to civic responsibility and those regarding the sanctity of contract, too were rooted in the autonomy of the towns.

Direct elections

The elections for the CM-mayor should be direct, and in two stages. The rationale is simple – in our Indian brand of democracy, the CM of a state is the most important leader in the executive. Almost all citizen services are provided by the state or city government; the central government doesn’t meaningfully interact with citizens on a regular basis. This is especially true for megacities. Hence while the central and other state governments may be indirectly elected under parliamentary democracy, for megacities, it is essential to move to direct elections of the top political executive. A twostage election would ensure that all the contending candidates in the first stage face the voters, and the candidates coming first and second have a second round of election as a face-off, so that the directly elected CM-mayor would come in with a positively absolute majority (exceeding 51 percent) of votes cast.

The immediate advantage is that such a direct, two-stage election would rule out divisive appeals. The successful politician would appeal to all segments and be inclusive, rather than pursuing a sectarian agenda. This would add to the social harmony of our megacities.

Such a directly elected CM-mayor would have the necessary authority to really change megacities. There would be a more efficient executive, without constant worries on stability, and how some corporators could conspire and bring the city government down.

Consider the experience of Seoul in South Korea. A 27-year veteran of Hyundai decided to enter politics. In his 2002-06 tenure as Seoul mayor, he
transformed the megacity. Today, Lee Myung Bak is the president of South Korea. This is the kind of leadership we need to turn Mumbai around. It is a truism that leadership matters, and perhaps in India, with our uniquely feudal democracy, leadership matters even more.

Don’t rotate!

Perhaps equally important, such direct elections should not have rotational reservation. Leadership is important anywhere; in city governments, it is going to be even more critical. We have had the 74th constitutional amendment in 1993, and most city governments have had three elections since then, with the mayor’s job being rotated among SCs, STs, and OBCs. Now that one full cycle of rotational reservation is over, it is high time we moved on beyond such rotations.

For those who do not appreciate the deleterious consequences of rotational reservation, consider this: the reservation for the post of mayor rotates among various caste categories, such as unreserved, scheduled castes, scheduled tribes and other backward classes. Even within these four categories, there is a third reserved for women. Hence it is almost certain that an incumbent mayor will not even have the chance to run for office again, since rotational reservation would make her or him ineligible. This is a veritable disincentive for political leaders to run for office. Several commentators suggest that rotational reservation is meant to preclude the possibility of talented, grassroots politicians rising up the system to challenge the progeny of political dynasties. And if rotational reservations were such a good idea, they would have been introduced for prime ministers and chief ministers by now.

In conclusion

To reiterate the main issues:

* Compulsions of the state governments, particularly the coalition governments, are leading to poor governance in Mumbai and other megacities
* Megacities are not allowed autonomy and responsible decision-making by state governments
* The eight megacities need to be separated and made into full-fledged states
* The CM-mayor of such megacities should be elected directly, and without rotational reservation
* We would see visible and appreciable improvement in our megacities due to the above

As realists, we should understand that the above points are going to be vociferously opposed by all the rent-seekers who benefit from letting Mumbai and our other megacities decay. The entire state’s political class is going to resist separation of megacities. It is going to be enlightened decision-makers at the national level, who can look beyond such narrow perspectives, who will make it happen.

Obviously, such national decision-makers would require a lot of pressure and persuasion from the political leadership belonging to Mumbai and other megacities, as well as citizens’ groups such as Bombay First. The challenge, then, is with these two categories, not urban planners.
Else, one thing is certain. If Mumbai and other megacities don’t get the city governance act together, the future is bleak. The next two decades will see Indian megacities assume even greater importance. We owe it to our future to take up this political solution now.

Pathak has spent eight years in investment banking and infrastructure finance, and 16 years at senior levels in government.