#GroundZero: Honestly, Is Pune A Well Governed City?

Pune Governance
Image used for representation only

 

Pune to several people’s surprise, topped the list of the well governed cities in the country according to a report released by a Bengaluru based non-profit organization, Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy.

In its fifth edition of its Annual Survey of India’s City-Systems (ASICS) Report, Janaagraha evaluated quality of governance and covered 23 major cities in India across 20 states based on 89 questions.

Other cities that came in the top five include Kolkata, Thiruvananthapuram, Bhubaneswar and Surat, with scores in the range of 4.6 to 4.5. Bengaluru, Chandigarh, Dehradun, Patna and Chennai were the bottom five cities with scores in the range of 3.0 to 3.3 on 10.

Indian cities scored between 3.0 and 5.1 on 10, in comparison to London, New York and Johannesburg that scored 8.8, 8.8 and 7.6 respectively.

Pune however topped the list for the first time.

“I honestly was amused when I saw the ranking. It made me think, oh, so what must be the condition in other cities, if Pune topped the list. We have seen many things happening at the whims and fancy of local corporators,” says Aditi Deodhar, Director, Jeevitnadi – Living River Foundation.

Like concretization of good tar roads. That happened in summer of 2016, when city faced severe water crisis owing to below average monsoon in 2015.

Sometime back, the former Municipal Commissioner Kunal Kumar ordered the stop of concretisation, but it still continues.

Recently a corporator dumped murrum in the river bed for a personal religious ceremony. When questioned that person did not even know that what he had done was illegal. That is the state of our leaders. As I said, I feel ranking is not justified and if still Pune tops, then it shows how pathetic the condition must be in other cities. It is not indicator of how good Pune is,” adds Aditi.

The 5th edition of Janaagraha’s ASICS report 2017 reveals improvement in city-systems, albeit at a very slow pace.

Adding to that, Daniel Francis, a Political Analyst and Commentator says, “I am not sure of the parameters of ranking accounted in the report. To call Pune as best governed city in India would be exaggeration.

“In the last 15 years Pune has grown three-fold without any standardized plan of development. Most upcoming residential areas are out of municipal limits and basic amenities like water and roads are not reaching ordinary citizens. Public transport has collapsed, and health and sanitation show no sign of good governance,” he adds.

The scores were given according to these criteria:

Urban Planning and Design (Spatial Planning, Urban design standards)

Urban Capacities and Resources (Municipal Finance, Municipal Staffing, IT)

Empowered and Legitimate Political Representation (powers and functions of city council, their legitimacy) and

Transparency, Accountability and Participation (public disclosure, accountability for service levels

Sharing her opinion, Anagha Paranjape-Purohit, Architect-Environmental Planner, Director at VK:e environmental and Trustee of Sustainability Initiatives in Pune, quotes, “It’s a double-edged question. While I know for a fact that when Pune is compared to other cities in India, it’s performance is considered the best. Pune Municpal Corporation is often the trail blazer of sorts when it comes to making innovative and new governance initiatives.

At the same time, having experienced city governments abroad, in US or Sweden, Pune still has a long way to go. Pune should celebrate that it tops cities in India but acknowledge that and live upto it, Pune needs to now compete with other world cities.

“There are many systemic problems that Pune has not yet addressed but I see a local governance that is quick to respond and take on new challenges. This is what probably led to its high ranking. While there are still lapses, we should be happy that city governance has reached a certain milestone of achievement,” Purohit adds.

However, Parth Welankar, a city-based Journalist does not believes that Pune is the best governed city. “I don’t agree with the ratings given to Pune. I don’t believe we are the best governed city, what with the problems increasing day by day.

“Pune city is growing exponentially, with a huge scarcity of supply in relation to the demand. Although we are better in comparison to other cities like Bangalore etc still we have a long way to go. I believe the potential of the city is not fully exploited,” says Parth.

ASICS also identified certain areas that needed to be urgently addressed for our cities to deliver a better quality of life to citizens in a sustainable manner, namely:

  • Lack of a modern, contemporary framework of spatial planning of cities and design standards for public utilities such as roads, footpaths, bus stops and other underground utilities such as water and sewerage networks
  • Weak finances, both in terms of financial sustainability and financial accountability of cities
  • Poor human resource management, in terms of number of staff, skills and competencies of staff, organisation design and performance management
  • Powerless mayors and city councils and severe fragmentation of governance across municipalities, parastatal agencies and state departments
  • Total absence of platforms for systematic citizen participation and lack of transparency in finances and operations of cities

Jaya Banerjee, Social Activist, believes, “If we are to go by this rating, it would be a shuddering thought to imagine what the rest of the city corporations must be like!

Based on the parameters that outline the evaluation process, there are numerous aspects of the city administration and its local governance that have left many Pune citizens very unhappy.

For instance, if one were to analyse the PMC audit report, it would be a dismay. One instance in the report talks about bank accounts of the PMC that are not maintained but have huge funds in them, when you ask the Accounts department in the PMC, they are clueless. So here we are raising money via Bonds, when there is money lying around that could be used.

The 2016-17 PMC budget had provisions of over 100 crores that was set aside for the purchase of buses, for waste-energy projects, and the budget this year, has none of it.

Transport and road are key factors in a city, now we all know and can see everyday, the condition of both in our city. The PMPML is running at a loss of lakhs every month since Mundhe was transferred.

Our roads are made and dug up and remade, and yet somehow the road contractor never seems to get it right. So basically, the heart and vein of the city is a mess in terms of infrastructure and traffic.

The PMCCare app is a great initiative, however ever so often complaints are closed on the app without any action taken physically. Just because a complaint is closed on the app it doesn’t necessarily mean the PMC would have resolved the issue. Sometimes it just seems like they’re trying to maintain data on the app that doesn’t match issue resolution in the physical sense.

25 projects were launched for waste management, most of which are not functional and coat the PMC 18 crore rupees.

In terms of bio-diversity, look at the Mula-Mutha river, if you and me can see the state of the river, if we may still call it so, I’m sure the authorities are aware, they seem to take forever to create a plan to revive the river.

The PMC takes no action where there is blatant abuse of rules, they seem to take very selective action. Honestly, I wonder if we are actually the best or the best of the worst, quips Banerjee. 

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#All views expressed in this article are those of the individual respondents and Pune365 does not necessarily subscribe to them. 

 

Loveleen Kaur