Mumbai: Vasant Hebale, who lives in Mumbai’s western suburb Goregaon and is the secretary of his housing society, is at his wit’s end with the construction activity going on around his complex. The noises continue into the night. “I don’t know what to do,” he said.
“There are many issues, like illegal construction, encroachment, no footpath, but there are no corporators available. When I approached my local ward corporator, he told me he can’t do anything since he is no longer a corporator,” said Hebale.
Over the past three years or so, around 24 corporations in the state of Maharashtra — including major cities like Mumbai, Thane, Pune, Nashik, Aurangabad and Nagpur — have reportedly seen their terms expire. The elections to the municipal bodies were initially postponed due to Covid, however, there are no indications that these elections will be conducted in the near future.
Meanwhile, with no elected representatives, local democracy in these cities has broken down.
According to the state Election Commission website, the terms of five municipal corporations — Aurangabad, Navi Mumbai, Vasai-Virar, Kolhapur, and Kalyan-Dombivli — expired in 2020.
This was followed by BMC (Mumbai), Amravati, Solapur, Nashik, Pimpri-Chinchwad, Thane, Pune, Akola, Nagpur, Ulhasnagar, Chandrapur, Parbhani, Latur, Malegaon, Bhiwandi-Nizampur, Panvel, Mira-Bhayandar and Nanded — all of which are awaiting elections since 2022.
Last month, Sangli-Miraj municipal corporation joined this list.
These corporations are now being run by state-appointed administrators.
“An administrator is a stop gap. They oversee matters in a situation where processes have failed,” said Shishir Joshi, CEO and founder, Project Mumbai, an NGO that identifies and finds solutions to governance issues.
“In their primary task to do damage control and firefight, or put core things in order, local needs become collateral damage. Primarily because they are too far removed from reality. The administrator knows he is a stop gap and is less interested in the new subject at hand, causing delays and damages which are sometimes unfathomable,” added Joshi.
According to Milind Mhaske, CEO of governance NGO Praja Foundation, there is a “stagnation” that is happening in corporations.
“Maybe in the short term, things are happening at their usual pace, but one person cannot take policy decisions and have the vision to think it through in the long term. The impact will be felt in the future,” he said.
Corporators are a direct link to the public, and are responsible for and accountable to the people. Their responsibilities include, but are not limited to, drainage, water and electricity supply, gardening, town planning, public health and sanitation, waste management, and maintaining public amenities like street lights and bus stops, among others.
“A common person, especially from an underprivileged background, doesn’t have the resources to reach an officer the way he/she can reach the corporator. If something is not getting done, then they can at least insist and get the work done by their corporator,” said Anasuya Kale Chhabrani, president of Swachh Association, a Nagpur-based NGO.
Currently, around 10 petitions related to local body polls are pending in the Supreme Court, including on the issue of OBC reservations in urban bodies, and the erstwhile Maha Vikas Aghadi coalition government’s decision to increase ward numbers with respect to population growth and Shinde-Fadnavis government rolling it back. Both have been challenged.
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The need for corporators
The BMC, India’s richest civic body with a budget of over Rs 50,000 crore, has been without a public representative since March last year.
According to Ramesh Prabhu, chairman of the Mumbai-based Maharashtra Societies Welfare Association, there are 227 wards in Mumbai, each of which have 200 or more societies with over 10,000 people residing in them.
“Now if this is the situation, and if you don’t have grassroot-level representation, then issues will be difficult to handle. Corporators are given funds and if they are not there, what kind of development will take place?” said Prabhu to ThePrint.
However, Nitin Nikam, president of the Tilak Nagar Welfare Association, frustrated with the politics corporators usually play, said that their absence or presence doesn’t affect the work.
“The corporation work has been going on for the past two years. It hasn’t stopped anywhere. Corporators only work for themselves. At least one layer of corruption is not there. For democracy, this is not good, but the politics they play is very frustrating,” he told ThePrint.
Most of the time, a narrative is built that governance is more important than democracy, said Mhaske of Praja Foundation.
“So, the narrative is that even if there is no representation, people are concerned with services and that ‘we don’t have good elected representatives anyway’. But I think this is a defeatist attitude. If we want to strengthen democracy, we have to create two layers where representatives are aware of local issues and available to locals reaching out to them,” said Mhaske.
Kale Chhabrani believes that with no corporators the administration also tends to get carried away.
“Officers are working, but what I am seeing is that they have become arrogant. People’s issues are not solved at the pace they should be and things are done at the administration’s mercy,” she said.
There is also the fear of having just one administrator running the show. Administrators, said Project Mumbai’s Joshi, are like “steroids”. “They can provide immediate relief but could have damaging side-effects,” he said.
Mhaske agreed. “With just one man or woman as administrator, there is too much power that is concentrated in one person’s hands, which corrupts the system as there are no checks and balances and no one to question them,” he said.
Some have complained of administrators’ lack of accountability over funds.
“Administrators don’t award funds to the wards uniformly. But now they are acting as per state government’s wishes since they have been appointed by them. This is a sad state of affairs,” said ex-BMC corporator Ravi Raja of the Congress.
With corporations under state-appointed administrators, ex-corporators, especially from Opposition parties, complain that decisions are being taken according to how the chief minister wishes.
For instance, during the split in the Shiv Sena, the BMC had sealed party offices located within its headquarters, however, Guardian Minister of Mumbai (Suburbs) Mangal Prabhat Lodha re-opened his office inside BMC last month. Here, ex-corporators of the BJP sit and even meet people and get their work done, a privilege not given to the Shiv Sena (UBT), Congress, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), or Samajwadi Party (SP).
Speaking to ThePrint, Ankush Kakade, a former Pune corporator and now a spokesperson for the NCP, also pointed out that not all corporators get work done as they are supposed to.
“Corruption also breeds within the system, I agree. So not every corporator works efficiently but most of them work when they are in power,” he said.
Issue of funds
With civic body elections delayed, former corporators complain of lack of funds required to get work done in their wards.
“Many people still come to us to ask us to repair the drainage line, or give them water connection, or have the public toilets cleaned. But we have no funds at our disposal,” said former BMC corporator Vishakha Raut of the Shiv Sena (UBT).
“Whether we are in power or not doesn’t concern the public. People still have expectations from us. In my area, the slum population comes to me with issues like sanitation. How can I avoid this issue? So, we have to write letters to MPs, MLCs to release some funds,” she added.
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Demand for elections
Speaking to ThePrint ex-BMC corporator Raja said that the delay in elections is not good in a democracy since there is a difference between functioning like a corporator and an ex-corporator.
“Being a corporator means we have access to documents, we have authority, and can get work done taking into account people’s suggestions. But today, the administration can work on its own without anyone asking anything,” said Raja.
Other former corporators, too, continue to face hurdles in getting work done since the administration, they allege, doesn’t listen.
“Now I have been a former mayor and a former standing committee head so I have certain pull within the administration, but what about that one-term or two-term corporators? Nobody is hearing them out,” said Vikas Jain, five-term corporator from Aurangabad, and part of the Shiv Sena (Shinde camp).
“In my city, development work has stopped in the past three-odd years because the proposal is not sent to the administration. For example, if work needs to be done for water supply or on a drainage pipeline, the administration would not know as they don’t go around visiting the wards as much as we do. People are suffering,” he said.
Former corporators from across parties demand that elections be held so that they can be reinstated.
“Most corporators are residents of their elected wards and hence have greater connection with their voters. And even the public goes to corporators for issues like water supply or electricity. Now, for example, if electricity supply is not there, that’s an issue that MSEB (Maharashtra State Electricity Board) will handle, but people will remind their corporators to get it done,” Kakade said.
There needs to be pressure to get such work done, said Prabhu. “Government officers are sometimes there, and sometimes not there. We can at least put pressure on corporators since they are available 24/7,” he said.
Importance of citizen committees
Area Locality Management Committees (ALMs) were established in Mumbai with the aim to embody the voices of the community and act as observers and proactive agents for those in executive positions.
In corporations, though, there also exist a range of committees covering areas like health, education, town planning, and environment. These committees serve as the bedrock for discussions, bringing together citizens, ALMs, NGOs, public representatives, subject matter experts, and representatives from political parties to discuss a wide array of topics. However, with the expiration of a corporation’s term, these committees are also dissolved, which can be a problem.
Raut gave the example of the civic-run KEM hospital in Mumbai, which needs its MRI machines repaired, but an alleged nexus between hospital administration and private labs has stalled work on this front.
“Now, if the health committee was in place, then these issues would have been discussed and even the media would have raised it. But in absence of any BMC committee, no accountability is there,” she said.
“Historically, in larger cities, there is enough evidence to prove that such committees show how a democracy can be strengthened by empowering such groups of people. The problem arises when strength and empowerment lead to corruption,” said Joshi.
Raja said that during the meetings of such committees, discussions would take place to decide which work needed to be prioritised over others, but now funds are given to any work randomly, as per the administrator’s wishes.
Kale-Chhabrani, though, hopes that in the last few years, corporators have learnt their lesson. “I hope they now know that they don’t work for themselves only and are representatives of the people,” she said.
(Edited by Zinnia Ray Chaudhuri)
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