New Delhi: India’s urban governance architecture is failing its cities with “symbolic” mayors, fragmented authority, weak finances and capacity gaps which undermine the ability of urban local bodies (ULBs) to deliver basic services, a new NITI Aayog report has warned. At the heart of the problem lies the office of the mayor.
“Mayors generally do not play a significant role in city administration in the absence of having adequate executive powers,” said the report, ‘Moving Towards Effective City Government–A framework for million-plus cities’. It added that in most cities, the position is reduced to a “largely symbolic stature”.
Real authority, it says, rests with municipal commissioners or state-controlled agencies, creating a structural disconnect between elected representatives and governance.
The problem is made worse by uneven electoral systems and short mayoral tenures. In many cities, mayors are not directly elected and serve terms as short as one year, leaving little room for continuity or accountability.
The result, according to the report, is “weak political leadership, fragmented mandates and absence of clear role demarcation”, which undermines effective governance.
The report, released in April, says these issues point to a much deeper structural crisis in India’s urban governance framework.
“Currently, the mayors of our biggest cities do not decide on, forget half, on even one-fourth of the matters that a city government is supposed to handle, that affect the citizens’ lives directly, of whom he/she is a leader,” Anand Iyer, Chief Policy & Insights Officer at non-profit Janaagraha, told ThePrint. “This is not effective governance.”
Janaagraha is a non-profit organisation dedicated to improving the quality of life in India’s cities and towns.
Despite the 74th Constitutional Amendment, which intended to empower local bodies, city governments remain “inadequately empowered to perform their mandated roles” in actual practice, with limited control over core areas such as urban planning, water supply, and transport.
One of the biggest concerns flagged in the report is the fragmentation of authority across multiple agencies.
“No single institution is responsible for overall urban outcomes,” the report states, pointing out that parastatals, or state-owned bodies, and other state departments continue to control essential services. This division of responsibilities weakens accountability and complicates service delivery.
“Dispersed responsibilities across parastatal agencies and the State departments they report to restrict city governments largely to operations & maintenance aspects and constrain the ability of municipal governments to effectively oversee the delivery of the basic urban functions,” the report states.
The report cites Bengaluru as an example. While the municipal corporation handles functions such as waste management and roads, critical services like water supply, transport and planning are controlled by separate state-run agencies. This leaves citizens blaming local governments for failures “even in sectors over which they have no effective control”.
“There needs to be a single point of coordination between multiple organizations handling services in a city, even if they are needed technically. Currently, they report variously at the state government level,” Iyer said.
“The coordination logically and practically has to be at the city level, with the mayor and other elected leaders of a city, with the Commissioner and other officials supporting it.”
Another issue highlighted by the report is the lack of finance, which worsens the problem. Urban local bodies suffer from “weak own-source revenues, inadequate and unpredictable financial devolution from states and high dependence on tied grants”, it said.
According to the report, city governments rely heavily on state transfers, which are often irregular and tied to specific schemes.
State Finance Commissions (SFCs), meant to ensure fiscal decentralisation, have largely failed in their role. “Delays in constitution, inadequate institutional support and weak implementation of SFC recommendations have resulted in ad hoc and uncertain fiscal transfers,” the report says.
As a result, city governments struggle to invest in infrastructure and improve services.
The report also highlights severe staff shortages and a lack of technical expertise in urban local bodies. Many cities face an acute shortage of professionals in areas such as urban planning, engineering and finance.
Frequent transfers of municipal commissioners and heavy dependence on deputed staff further weaken institutional continuity. “Shortfalls in recruitment, high dependence on deputation, frequent transfers, and limited investment in training collectively weaken institutional capability of ULBs,” the report states.
Taken together, these issues have created what the report describes as a “persistent and systemic deficit” in urban governance, affecting planning, service delivery, accountability and long-term development.
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NITI’s recommendations
To address these challenges, the NITI Aayog has proposed a broad reform agenda, starting with strengthening city leadership.
The most significant recommendation is the introduction of a directly elected mayor with a fixed five-year tenure.
“Genuine empowerment of the third tier of government requires a unified city governance structure led by an empowered, directly elected Mayor,” the report states. This would give the mayor a direct mandate and clearer accountability.
Backing the recommendation for a fixed five-year term, Iyer said frequent leadership changes hurt governance continuity.
“Every year, if a CEO of a company is changed, how do you think that company is going to deliver on progress?” he said, arguing that city governments need stable leadership and longer tenures to improve governance and service delivery.
The report also calls for giving executive authority to the mayor, making them the “head of the city government”, with municipal commissioners reporting to them.
To avoid concentration of power, it proposes a mayor-in-council system where elected councillors would oversee departments such as water supply, transport and finance.
Another major suggestion is to bring parastatals and service delivery agencies under municipal control. The report suggests that all such agencies should “function under the administrative control of the municipal corporation”, thereby ensuring unified governance and accountability.
On finances, the federal think tank stressed the need to strengthen municipal revenues and ensure predictable fund flows. It recommended the timely constitution of State Finance Commissions and proper implementation of their recommendations.
The report also calls for devolving key functions—including water supply, bus services, sanitation, solid waste management, fire services and urban planning—to city governments, aligning authority with responsibility.
Recognising the scale of reform needed, the NITI Aayog has proposed beginning with India’s 47 cities with million-plus population, which account for nearly one-third of the country’s urban population and about 60 percent of gross domestic product (GDP).
Ultimately, the report says urban governance reform is essential to India’s long-term growth ambitions.
“Strengthening urban governance would go beyond only sectoral reform and needs to be considered as a foundational requirement for achieving India’s economic, social, and climate imperatives for Viksit Bharat @ 2047,” the report states.
(Edited by Sugita Katyal)
What about the role of District Collectors? It is they who decide everything that happens in their district and cities are part of their district. They should be sufficiently supported – not the mayors who are there only to pocket the commissions out of tenders.
Either add more support to collector or create a district environment officer on par with collector. Mayors will not solve cities’ problems.