Why restructure?

This blog is in continuation with this thread and its contents

Lets also define what exactly is "managable" by the city council. How do you arrive at a quantitative estimate of what it takes for the city to handle Water, electricity, waste, infrastructure, Fire, Law & Order, Traffic, parks, open spaces, culture. What is the staffing & SLA's it can provide? What does it cost? What is the revenue per square feet a typical city provides? What is the current revenue per sft within the BBMP limites by ward & what is the potential then? 

Here is a consultation paper on decentralization & municipalities

We need to go bakc and see on what basis 7 CMCs were mearged with BBMP and made 198 wards with also 100 villages added.        Can any one post on this which may be 6 /7 yrs back and then we can see whats happening now with respect to this assumptions and also as Sathya suggested on which is proper size for BBMP to manage, we should look into this. Just spliting is no soultion for Bankrkrupt and Corrupt BBMP

This word is being used in the sidewalk case also. There atleast there is IRC standards that put numbers, what does this word mean in creating municipalities?

Here is a good report on the 198 wards written in 2009. It raises a pertinent question on who should be responsible for the delimitation. Should it be the state election commission? Will they be able to determine sustainablity issues in the resulting municipality beyond election related goals? Secondly delimiting wards is different from creating municipalities. In this regard, here is a report from before the current committee was formed. What is scientific? 

It has unmanageable because of corruption. They are not able to match revenues with expenses. Some streams of revenues which never fill the coffers of BBMP:

(1) Property Taxes: Most property owners do not pay taxes. In some cases, the officials are lax and ask owners to grease their palms while tax is being paid to BBMP. Even the most honest man is forced into the vortex of corruption because of these venal babus.

(2) Betterment Charges for new layout- The issue of non collection of betterment charges was being dragged on and on for over 15 years. The municipality increased the rates by three times with no scientific basis for the calculation. This issue required the attention of the honourable high court as well.

Please add to this list if you can think of other streams of revenue. These  normally never make it to  the BBMP coffers.

Bifurcation is going to solve nothing. 32 Boroughs of London have 150K to 300K pop each, by corelation in Bangalore we should be looking at 30 cities or 6 wards per city. just for the BBMP zone. We shouldnt be looking at just the BBMP region but the greater Bangalore region including 9 TMC's other than BBMP. That will take this thing to a whole new level. We need a common model and process for all. 

I think it comes back to what does it take to carve out. First is to set aside space for open space (min 30sq.m./person), parks, garbage sorting/disposal, Civic centers (Assembly/Fire/Police/School/Hospital). What is the radius of support that can allow a reasonable quality of service to be provided without overburdening. What is the radius which will allow emergency services like ambulance/fire to come within the golden hour. What do you folks think is the first step in how many cities should there be?

Per this BBC youtube report the Boroughs of Greater London Authority are talking about Federating governance. 

Mail from a committee member (edited) on what lines the recommendations could take

Briefly put, we are applying our mind to the following:

 

·         Goal – Improve quality of life in Bengaluru for decades to come (maybe I need to add the adjective ‘impossible’ to my cause list J)

o   Accessibility of quality services by all citizens; Accountability of Elected reps and Service providers

o   Among Top 50 global cities on liveability 

·         To examine whether this is better served by Multiple City Corporations in place of the monolithic BBMP spread over 198 wards and 800 sq kms

o   Can pure administrative decentralisation in the current set up do the job? Or

o   Is political devolution & decentralised administration the way to go?

o   And if Multiple Corporations, how many appropriate? Basis? Key parameters to be reckoned while splitting the BBMP

·         If we are to have multiple Corporations, how do we tie up the regional arrangements across Corporations and the entities in the Bengaluru Metropolitan area (the BDA area of 1219 sq kms)

o   Is MPC (Metropolitan Planning Committee envisage in the 74^th Constitutional Amendment) the way to go? 

o   Directly elected Mayor in the region, a la Greater London? 

o   What will be the responsibilities of the Corporation and the Regional Authority?

·         How do we build Accountability measures for Elected reps and Service providers?

o   Starting at the ward level and work up the chain

o   Are services better handled by the Corporations? Or by ‘centralised’ agencies who effectively work as vendors for their specific domains be it water, sewerage, energy, roads, etc. 

·         How do we get the larger regional area to work as a single composite city experience while we have multiple devolved and decentralised Corporation units?

o   And while we are at it, how do we attain the nirvana of citizen participation?

Here is the link to the 74th amendment. It deals with the devolution of powers to the municipal corporations. What are these powers? How much has not been done in the case of BBMP?

Is the conclusion from Praja then that beyond postponing elections there is no reason to split BBMP? If so then we should put a final say in the matter as recommendation rather than letting them revisit this every elections. Even that can be a recommendation from Praja.

Is the conclusion from Praja then that BBMP is eminently managable with the current jurisdiction if the 74th amendment was implemented? What are then the specific powers that still need to be devolved to the municipal corporation that has not been done. Can we list them down?

There is no need for us, in this forum, to presuppose the split. While the committe has been given that agenda, we are free to recommend to the committee, as desribed in the original post, that if there need be no division we state that, but understand fully well what it implies. 

Apparently whitefield wants their own republic as they dont get more roads for their cars, and signal free corridors, uninterrupted highways to the airport etc. Apparently the 26,000 crores that they generate is enough for them to live off and not have to give it to the rest of the city. There are 2 very good outcomes from this outcry.

One is Whitefield get to choose to do what they care about, me sitting elsewhere don't get to tell them what to do, its their destiny. If they choose wide roads & car traffic and no cycles or trains, so be it. If they want out of BBMP to be able to do this we should enable it under common guidelines that can be applied to others asking for it.

Two, they don't get to ask for facilities and highways out of their area and expect others to deal with the externalities of their decisions, expecially since they believe their revenue is not worth sharing with others. Other ward/area residents will have to vote on making highways/facilities for people thru their area which don't directly benefit their wards. The other wards may even choose to levy a tax/toll on the vehicles in some way to compensate for taking on the externalities. So the way forward IMO is give wards the power to make decisions for their area but not the power to dump consequences on others.

1. Splitting like mysorepak without data collection is not the way. 

2. Lay down guidelines & bench marks for governability. What is the minimum & maximum population that can be managed by a council of x.

3. What is the revenue & cost per square meter that is currently being generated by each ward and what is the potential revenue in those wards.

4. Determine what are the powers of the corporations vs BMRDA. Shared functions vs exclusive functions

5. Whatever it is it has to implement 74th amendment & adhere to MPC & RPC guidelines.

Anything else?

So before the restructuring committee could submit its report the govt had decided to split BBMP into 3 zones. The committee quickly puts out an interim report saying there is a need for around 12 corporations to manage effectively but atleast 5 and need more time to gather proper data. Govt ignores and says 3 because they dont care about actually fixing anything its just politically convinient for them to do this. We the people are idiots, if we have even an ounce of morality we will stop this and ask on what basis are you making these decisions which affect our livelihood.

Meanwhile, cilck here to read the interim report. 

Murali,

Pls don't put lot of hopes on this report business that Dr. Ashwin and others take up on many occasions. My hunch is it will go the same way as his hard work on "De-congestion Committee" last year. Reality is , even Ashwin is embarrassed when queried on his suggestions and outcome of those presentations. It's just an eye wash. May be a way to keep some people busy with work.

If there is a will there will be action, if not, only reports.

Read Chapter 6  Page 81  :

6.11

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The rapid growth of the city in the last decade has placed considerable stress on its physical infrastructure as well as the credibility of its governance. It has also been accompanied by a tide of rising citizen expectations. This pressure for reform was initially addressed through the formation of 7 City Municipal Councils and 1 Town Municipal Council in areas beyond the BMP. However, this proved inadequate to cope with the problems of metropolitan growth and theeffective delivery of services. Therefore, the government decided to constitute a single large municipal corporation by integrating the 8 ULBs as well as the contiguous villages. Thus the BBMP came into being in January 2008 and the municipal area expanded to almost 800 sq km with a population of over 6 million people. The delimitation process underway is expected to result in 145 wards. The key objectives for the formation of BBMP as set out in the Government Order are :

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a) Improve and co-ordinate infrastructure development for

; road and transportation network, water supply and UGD,

SolidWaste Management etc.,

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b)Upgrade quality of urban civic services etc.,

c) Strengthen administrative capacity to ensure better

enforcement of various rules/regulations and better co-

ordination in service delivery etc.,

http://www.bpac.in/wp-con...

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p { margin-bottom: 0.25cm; line-height: 120%; } p { margin-bottom: 0.25cm; line-height: 120%; } Complet contradictory of present BBMP bifurcation.  Present committee should read this in total