To what extent would Covid-19 yield space for urban bodies to run cities?

Cities are setting the rules that now carry life and death implications for their residents, and most of these rules are sought to be set by the municipal authorities, who have never wielded such powe

Tukaram Mundhe, the municipal commissioner of Nagpur in Maharashtra, sits in a war room every day with his medical officials to track measures to block the spread of the contagion in the city. Nagpur has opted for institutional quarantine for anyone who tests positive. That means greater monitoring. 

“We did it in March itself when we found it impossible to keep people indoors. Placing them in our care has broken the chain of transmission, though the Indian Council of Medical Research guidelines only asked for home quarantine,” says Mundhe. The city has managed to keep case fatalities below the national average. 

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