Is Municipal Corporation Working For People? 

Mahesh Vijapurkar

When Tukaram Mundhe, newly appointed Municipal Commissioner of Navi Mumbai’s Municipal Commission went for a morning walk, he was taken aback. Citizens accosted him with grievances about poor footpaths, bus service, water supply, drains, garbage, slums, etc. These should have been addressed to the ward offices, or come up to the Corporation via the corporators.

Apparently, something was wrong. One, the corporation wasn’t working for the city and the citizens, and the link between the elected representatives had snapped. Apparently, they would go beg and or buy votes next time, depend on ideology and not city’s welfare and get votes. In civic elections, ideologies have no place except a commitment for the city. So Mundhe made morning walks a part of his official duties.

The steps he took led to a rare denouement, in which 104 corporators voted in favour of a no-confidence motion against him last week, with only a small minority of six backing him. I cannot buy the argument that this resolution was a move to protect democratic institutions though almost all members from diverse, even warring political parties banded together. It was more to safeguard their ways where the civic chief connives with the politicians.

A no-nonsense IAS official, with eight transfers in fewer years, Mundhe got to the bottom of it all. The Rs 2,000 cr annual budget was approved without specific allocations but under broad heads leaving room for pushing funds to what was convenient to the corporators and the bureaucracy, not to provide for flexibility. Under the municipal laws, he is the administrator and mayors have nominal roles. He asserted his.

In five months, all hell broke loose. He cancelled a Rs 2 cr plan to clad a memorial with marble as unnecessary. So did he with a solar park worth Rs 167 cr because the civic body started on it without a buyer in sight; there had been no move to find one in the project plan. He decided to diver the scarce funds to public amenities after strict action improved municipalised public transport service in the city adjoining Mumbai, built to decongest the latter.

It ought not to happen in a democracy that the elected representatives are completely side lined, for civic bodies are local self-governed bodies. But the corporators had bought this upon themselves, putting the city and its needs on a lower priority. These public officials learn to strut and form special interest groups of relevance to them than commit to serve the cities they are elected to govern. Sadly, one can find a Navi Mumbai in most other cities.

Happily, at least so far, the chief minister, has not acted on the resolution though he has indicated that the commissioner may not be replaced. Under the municipal Act, the Commissioner is an appointee of the Government, and who, and for what tenure, should work there is decided not by the civic body. He has been only told to be ‘respectful’ of the elected representatives. Their egos have been shattered to smithereens by Mundhe’s purposeful civic focus.

Maharashtra has seen civic chiefs who fell afoul of the elected representatives for reasons similar to what Mundhe found. One is Sadashiv Tinaikar in Mumbai Municipality, who held corporators at bay and functioned by rules. Then there was Arun Bhatia of Pune. T Chandrashekar who quit IAS to join politics in Hyderabad was gifted a no-confidence resolution because he worked for Thane city. Mundhe and Bhatia’s transfers may be on the same scale as Haryana’s Ashok Khemka.

Politics and politicking for pelf and nothing more has been the bane of this sector – civic life – and have made cities and towns unliveable. Civic bodies are the worst cesspools. The mischief is felt and seen in illegal constructions, bad roads, etc. and visible too. It is the politician who calls the shots and even undertake odd projects of little use. Cities have hardly better citizens’ lives. Mundhe’s folly was reprioritising objectives. That’s all. It is a lesson taught to ‘democratically elected representatives’.