Missing municipal governance

LAST WEEK, WHEN the results came for the election to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, it was the Chief Minister of Maharashtra who made it clear that he was the hero of this victory.

- TAVLEEN SINGH

Nobody saw the incongruity. Did you? Did you while watching the results stop for a moment and think that it was absurd that a chief minister should be exulting in a municipal victory? When Zohran Mamdani became Mayor of New York city, it was his victory and his alone and if he does not deliver on the promises he made, he alone will be held responsible. The buck stops with the mayor in most major cities in the world but in our colonial system of governance this does not happen. So municipal governance simply does not exist. Everything is controlled by chief ministers who have many other things to attend to.

This is the real reason why most Indian cities routinely make the annual list of the worst governed cities of the world. This is why nearly half the citizens of Mumbai live in squalid shanties that have no access to basic municipal services like clean water and electricity. As someone who has lived in Mumbai for the most part of more than 30 years, I consider myself an honorary citizen of this magnificent, chaotic behemoth of a city. But I also spend a lot of time brooding over how much more magnificent and how much less chaotic it would be if it was governed by an elected mayor instead of an autocratic, unelected Municipal Commissioner.