Bhopal Notes :: 55 :: Tale of two “cities of lakes”

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Proverbially, comparisons are odious but there are occasions when it becomes necessary to make comparisons. I just came across a report on the way the lakes in another “City of Lakes”, Udaipur, are being taken care of. Enough has been written about the way our own lakes, including the ones that fall into the category of “heritage”, are treated. We take pride in calling Bhopal a “City of Lakes” and market it as such. We also claim that the Upper Lake is the pride of Bhopal and it symbolizes the city, to boot. And, yet the treatment that the state government and the Municipal Corporation, the custodian of the Lake, give to it amounts to nothing short of trying to kill it as soon as possible. One might add both the cities are in the list of those which are being upgraded as “smart cities”. While Udaipur has included its lakes for being “smartened up” no such decision has been taken in respect of the lakes of Bhopal by the special organization created for making the city smart.

In a recent report in The Pioneer I came across a write-up on the way the lakes of Udaipur are being taken care of and how attempts are being made to “rejuvenate” them. The lakes obviously are held in reverence as these are now treated as indicative of “inherited smartness” of the town. With smart planning and implementation, the Udaipur Municipal Corporation has already made two of the city’s lakes, viz. Fateh Sagar and Gowardhan lake, free of sewage. Two other important lakes, Pichola and Swaroop Sagar, are next to be taken up for making them sewage-free.

The report also says that a Lake Patrolling Squad has been constituted and is in position in order to prevent illegal constructions around the lakes. The municipality has, in addition, devised a scheme of cash incentives for those who report instances of illegal constructions near the lakes or of sewer drains flowing into any of the city’s lakes through “Action Udaipur App”.

The report claims that Udaipur serves as a role model in regard to immersion of clay or plaster of Paris images of gods and goddesses in the lakes after every festival. Immersions are reported to be carried out only symbolically. Apparently, this has had the desired effect and people, no less religious than those of Bhopal, are cooperating. According to the report, people are very possessive about the lakes. They willingly involve themselves in shramdaan and other activities relating to maintenance of cleanliness, etc. Therefore, it seems, they are prepared to do whatever is necessary to conserve their lakes.

People here in Bhopal, however, are keen to make merry on the lake front but have displayed a “hands-off” attitude in so far as efforts to conserve them is concerned. People’s participation was noticed only once about a decade ago when the Upper Lake was in dire straits. The effort led by the chief minister to deepen the Upper Lake proved to be futile as the work involved was much beyond what five hundred-odd pairs of hands could achieve.

 In none of the aspects referred to in respect of the lakes of Udaipur has the Bhopal Municipal Corporation able to either initiate action for improvement of quality of the waters of the Upper Lake, a source of drinking water, or to prevent illegal encroachment/constructions around it. In fact it has turned a blind eye to these illegal activities and has itself commenced illegal construction within 500 metres of the Full Tank Level. There is no action seems to be in the offing and eight drains continue since one-does-not-know-when to empty their various contaminants, including sewage into the Lake. The Corporation does not seem to have even mooted the problem before the state government for diversion of the  drains or installation of sewage treatment plants.

Besides, the authorities are still struggling to prevent immersion of plaster of Paris images in the Upper Lake. Every year it is the same story. Either the orders are not disseminated clearly or artisans are resistant to change, being non-cooperative; control on the size and material to be used for the images continues to elude the administration. Somehow the Municipal Corporation of Bhopal has failed to elicit cooperation from general public in regard to conservation of the important water body. On the other hand, the Udaipur Municipal Corporation has incentivized reports/complaints from the common people regarding efforts to damage the eco-systems of the lakes.

Perhaps, our local body should draw lessons from the Udaipur municipality in respect of conservation of the lakes of Bhopal. Perhaps it understands that by simply calling the town “City of Lakes” and blazing it prominently in red on the Upper Lake neither conserves it or other lakes, nor does it make the town a city of lakes.

*Photo of Pichola Lake is from internet

Naive prescription for reformation of cities

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Amitabh Kant, CEO of NITI Ayog, wrote the other day in a national daily about the criticality of cities in pulling the country up by its boot straps. They are critical to most of the missions of the government that seek to boost the country’s economic growth and economically lift its people. Whether it is the flagship programmes of “Make in India” or “Skill India” or “Digital India” or “Smart Cities”, in each one of them it is the cities which would play the most vital role in rolling them out and accomplishing them. They will also be critical in tracking economic growth, job creation and delivery of good quality of life to citizens. Kant thinks in today’s world it is not countries but cities that compete for resources and investments and he thereby wants cities to become distinct units of governance and economy. It is, therefore, necessary, he says, to track the performance of cities in terms of GDP, job creation, private and public investments and consumption.

Kant laments that Janaagraha’s annual reviews show Indian cities in very poor light. While London and New York score 9+ in a scale of 0 to 10 Indian cities largely score only a poor 4. “Janaagraha”, Wikipedia says, is a non-profit that aims to strengthen democracy in the country by working for citizen-participation in urban local government. Janaagraha aims to spread awareness of the benefits of engaging local governments and to lobby the Centre to enact legislation to extend the 74th Amendment of the Constitution of India for more representative local urban government.

Kant has enumerated four key systems of good governance of cities: 1. Urban planning and design, 2. Municipal finances and staffing, 3. Effective political leadership 4. Transparency, accountability and citizen-participation. Because of the poor reflection of our cities as witnessed by the Janaagraha assessment Kant comes forward with solutions. To rectify and to overcome all shortcomings Kant has come up with “what” and “how” to achieve that. According to him, chief ministers should attach greater importance and priority to cities and also pay more attention to them. They should prepare a blue print for the city’s long-term development for 20 to 30 years. At the same time, they should devise a short term plan with sectoral objectives for 3 to 5 years fixing roadmaps and milestones allocating responsibilities for delivery. They would also be required to monitor the progress of achievements of objectives and, presumably, if necessary, take action for course correction.

Not satisfied with the current staffing of municipal corporations Kant says that the short terms of municipal commissioners are not conducive to productive work. He is also against the culture of obtaining officials/officers on deputation from the state governments. He feels it vitiates the organisational culture as, he says, the “rolling stock of deputationists” destroys the “coherence” of the organisation. He, perhaps, feels that deputationists seldom develop any stake in the organisation.

All that is well and good! True, cities are reckoned as the drivers of the econonmy. In describing the modus operandi for making cities units of economic growth, however, Kant seems to have missed out on one vital link. He has written about what is wrong with them and how to go about mending the breaches that have occurred but he has not said who will go about correcting everything that has gone wrong. To his “what” and “how” what needs to be added is “who” will accomplish what he wants to be done with the cities, critical as they are, as he thinks, to the country’s economic progress.

Kant wants the chief ministers to pay more attention to the cities. But the fact is that the city administration is already beholden to the state governments for reasons of lack of finances. Some years ago even the prestigious The Economists had opined that the local bodies in India are subsumed in the government that surrounds them. In the highly politicised environment politics in India is the art of sycophancy and every political animal tends to ingratiate himself with the powers that be. Larger interests of the city and its people are supposedly not all that important. Besides, the chief minister has his own agenda – obliging his sycophants, relatives and friends, men from industries or construction or builders’ lobbies. The last are more important as they contribute moolah to the chief minister for his personal use or for use by the party. Because of them the City Development Plan for Bhopal, for instance, has been delayed by ten years. Thus, the World Economic Forum found these sectors highly corrupt in India with mark-up of project costs being as much as 50%. Quality thus suffers: roads develop potholes within months of building/re-laying, water pipes repeatedly leak with unconscionable loss of millions of gallons of precious water and sewers breakdown. But nobody is ever brought to book.

That being the case, and the chief minister being an out-and-out political animal, that too of Indian variety, who will take care of the cities? That is a big question. In the current system every individual or the organisation has developed vested interests. They hardly ever act according to the needs of the general public. In this mess there is no accountability.  One minister in Bhopal admitted to your reporter once that the state had no system of accountability. No wonder, Indian cities are in such poor shape. 

In such perverse processes, planning and design or transparency and accountability – Kant’s first and fourth systems of good governance – are pushed out of the window. There are numerous instances of cities acquiring ungainly sprawls without any concern for urban design or planning, conservation of environment, availability of civic services, etc. The precious commodity of land is distributed using rules or bending them to cronies who have deep pockets and have no hesitation in emptying them as favours to the politicians. The cities are, in fact, milked by the chief minsters and their cohorts to fill their coffers and/or of parties they belong to to achieve aims of capturing and/or retaining power. Expecting the busy-in-politicking chief ministers to actively involve themselves in building citizen-centric cities is a dream that only Kant can see sitting in his Niti Aayog.

Kant’s two other key systems of governance – municipal finances and staffing and effective political leadership – also suffer from the malaise that has been only outlined above. State politics ensures depressed civic taxes to keep the municipality always in financial doldrums – dependent on the state. Vested interests take care of staffing. Deputations are not sinful per se; they are so only when deputation is used to fill posts that can well be manned by the municipalities’ own employees. But no, here too sycophancy and politics take over so that political lackeys could be provided with sinecures. As for political leadership one can only look up to the Mayor who, in fact, in most cases is the chief minister’s or the party’s man and yet is largely ineffective, more so if his party does not have majority in the municipal council.

Politicians have vitiated the system of governance in the country, including of the city governments. Having done so they have only one objective – that of maintaining status quo so that the system could remain a milch cow. Having seen the government functioning from close quarters, Kant strangely expects politicians to disturb the status quo to their own disadvantage - a naive thought by any stretch of imagination.