Needed: Smarter mayors

Only directly elected and empowered officers can run smart cities

On schedule, the government has declared another 27 cities as "smart" to take the total to 60, with more expected in the near future. Undoubtedly, the Smart Cities initiative has introduced a freshness and energy in government policy on cities. Unlike the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission, the Smart Cities initiative seeks to use not just infrastructure but also newer communication and information technologies, thereby taking infrastructure and services to the next level of quality and delivery and making cities both more inclusive and efficient. The demands of more than 8,000 cities in India are massive, and rather than scaling down the ambition, the National Democratic Alliance government seeks to create islands of excellence within each of these identified cities. This includes retrofitting, redevelopment, green-field developments and also some aspect that has city-wide coverage. In the identified areas, a combination of infrastructure investments and new technologies aimed at better government-to-government and citizen-to-government interface have been included in the tactical objectives.

The idea is that greater resources and better management will enable more liveable and inclusive cities. To make that possible the Smart Cities initiative envisages administrator-managers to oversee investments and public-private partnerships, and also oversee day-to-day operations of these areas. In the early phase, the coverage is at best a few hundred acres within each identified city - a small proportion of the total area covering a small part of the population. However, to scale up within each city and across thousands of cities will be impossible in our lifetimes unless cities themselves are able to generate their own resources and manage their own affairs.

But can these smart islands be protected from the forces of inefficiency, malaise and corruption that govern most Indian city administrations? Blocked drainage, leaking sewage, overflowing garbage, dry taps, broken roads, disease outbreaks, and rising violence are all symptoms of a systemic breakdown of urban administration across India. Each of these has solutions that require a combination of investment and management. But, most importantly, they require someone to take ownership and responsibility over our cities. The current system does not assign responsibility well enough; it does not punish poor performance, neither does it reward the good one adequately. Elected municipal councillors have little powers apart from some funds or their own persuasive powers. At the same time, with few exceptions, city administrators report to state headquarters. For too long, these city managers and municipal commissioners have serviced the needs of their state-level superiors rather than the residents of the city.

There is a well-known solution to fix this problem and there is a well-tested global model that works, from New York to Shanghai. It is time for India to have empowered and directly elected mayors; directly elected because cities cannot be run by politicians interested in other constituencies; and empowered because municipal commissioners or other such city administrators need to report to those who are directly elected by the people they are serving. Even Prime Minister Narendra Modi has acknowledged the importance of empowered and directly elected mayors. This will need to be the next major step in India's march towards making more than 8,000 cities smart, efficient and inclusive.