The Urban Local Bodies (ULBs), that is, municipal corporations, councils and local bodies constituted and given the responsibilities to govern the cities and their citizens appear helpless in front of these challenges. This helplessness is not born out of indifference but out of systemic paralysis, driven by acute financial starvation and rigid administrative bottlenecks. If India is to survive the climate century, we must urgently implement corrective measures to transform these municipal institutions into our primary, frontline defence against climate change.

 

At the core of this municipal helplessness lies a crippling fiscal crisis. Indian cities are the engines of the nation's growth, contributing roughly 60% to the national Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Yet, the revenues actually generated and retained by local governments represent a microscopic fraction of that immense wealth, according to a Ministry of Urban Development 2011 report. Instead of possessing independent financial power, Indian cities remain profoundly dependent on state and central governments for intergovernmental fiscal transfers. These funds are notoriously unpredictable, heavily bureaucratic, and strictly tied to rigid, pre-specified projects.

 

Complete loss of fiscal autonomy severely curtails a city’s ability to plan and implement infrastructure development for long-term climate resilience. A city that is continually asking another level of government for operating revenues can't afford to invest in new urban green corridors, modernise its old drainage systems with automatic, climate-adaptive controls, or revive urban wetlands.

 

Consider the case of Varanasi. A careful study of the city's budgets indicates a classic structural trap: it depends on property tax for the bulk of its internal revenue, with unpredictable grants from the state. The city, with a fast-changing landscape, is extremely climate-sensitive, from violent heatwaves to seasonal floods of the Ganga. The city's own revenue is only sufficient to pay basic waste collection and administrative salaries. 

 

Moreover, as in most tier-2 and tier-3 cities in India, Varanasi is completely untouched by the municipal bond market and is not able to tap into institutional money for large-scale adaptation to climate change. Asking local authorities to deal with systemic climate threats without adequate funding is a step in the wrong direction.

 

In addition to the fiscal constraint, Indian urban governance is also constrained by a disjointed and structurally paralysed administrative system. The landmark 74th Constitutional Amendment Act was conceived to bring in a vibrant, democratic, and powerful local self-governance. However, in practice, there is a longstanding deadlock between the elected and the central bureaucracy, which has become ineffective and institutionalized, and has been going on for decades.

 

In most towns and cities in India, the mayor is more of a titular ceremonial figure, and the actual executive and financial responsibility lies firmly with the municipal commissioner, an executive officer appointed by the state government from the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) cadre. Because the commissioner answers upwards to state political leadership rather than downwards to the city's residents, he or she remains structurally insulated from local democratic accountability.

 

Consider the case of Mumbai. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has a budget of Rs 80,951 crore for the financial year 2026-27, which exceeds that of some small states, making it one of the wealthiest municipal corporations in Asia. However, its governance arrangement reflects the stark tensions between the execution of the plan from above and the planning at the local level for the climate. 

 

The fragmented accountability becomes very apparent when Mumbai is inundated during intense monsoons. The elected corporators blame the state-appointed executive leadership, leaving the citizen to traipse through a maze of overlapping jurisdictions among the municipal corporation, metropolitan development authorities, and coastal management boards, which rarely overlap.

 

A unified command centre at the municipal level must be established to prepare cities for the climate storm. This calls for a complete shift in the governance model – giving the mayor considerably more powers, putting longer-term limitations on their tenure, and making urban planning departments more permanent and populated by climate resilience, hydrology, and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) professionals, rather than generalist administrators serving short-term, non-permanent terms of office transferred from one office to another. 

 

What does the ‘climate mandate’ of an Indian city entail? Historically, the role of the city government was seen as limited to the extent of the ability to maintain clean streets, collect garbage, and manage basic stormwater drainage. This inheritance challenge is a precarious relic in the times of climate change.

 

A modern urban climate mandate requires a complete reimagining of municipal responsibilities. It means moving: 

 

From Basic Drainage to Active Decarbonization: Transitioning from simply building concrete gutters to designing sponge cities that absorb rainwater, mandating energy-efficient green building codes, and transitioning municipal public transport and street lighting to renewable energy.

 

Moving from Reactive Disaster Management to Proactive Local Governance: Rather than responding to a flood or heatwave with relief distribution, shifting towards making use of predictive spatial modeling and localized heat action plans to prevent vulnerable populations from becoming victims of extreme heat.

 

Urban local bodies are no longer low-level service providers with respect to water and sanitation. They need to be raised, supported, and treated as the first line of Indian defence against climate change and economic stability in the future.

 

The era of reactive disaster management has come to an end, and the time for local climate governance has started. The process of giving a structural financial independence to urban local governments is to be systematic, it is to be just what they deserve, and it is to be a centralised administration, exactly what they need – and urgently need – to begin the hard work of retrofitting our urban landscapes. It is only then that we can hope to make some of our evermore exposed urban centres into climate-resilient bastions that will ensure our people's safety and our future.