Offstumped – Commentary on Indian Politics

The Narendra Modi lead BJP yesterday made a clean sweep of the Municipal polls in all 6 major cities of Gujarat.

The TOI had this to say:

The BJP will have two-third majority in Ahmedabad, Surat, Vadodara, Rajkot, Bhavnagar and Jamnagar municipal corporations — an unparalleled feat in the history of civic elections in Gujarat. The results are also a further setback to the main opposition party, Congress, which has steadily lost ground in the nine years of Modi rule

While the Narendra Modi experiment of fielding 12 Muslim candidates met with tepid response with just 1 one of them getting elected, the local body sweep is an indication of the degree to which Urban voters in Gujarat have consolidated behind the BJP.

It is a sign of the times that Municipal elections in Tier-2 cities are attracting the kind of national media attention assembly elections once used to atttract.  As the center of gravity of Governance continues to shift away from Delhi and the state capitals to Tier-2 cities, towns and villages Local Governance assumes a never before significance.

The Congress Party has clearly marked the politico-ideological space it wants to occuppy with its emphasis on Centralized Welfare Schemes and Rights based Entitlement Programs. This one-size-fits-all approach to Governance of the Congress Party is doing little to devolve power to Local Government. On the other hand this approach is further diluting the Constitutional division of power with the proliferation of quasi-constitutional interventionist avenues in the name of creating space for “Civil Society” and NGOs.

This Centralized approach of the Congress Party leaves the field open for an alternative to emerge and strongly identify itself as the Party of Local Governance.

It is ironic that despite the BJP running local bodies in Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore  (3 out of top 5 Indian cities) the Party has barely distinguished itself from the Congress on the issue of Local Governance. The ABIDE initiative in Bangalore and the debate in the run up to the local elections in Bangalore held much promise but have fallen woefully short. In the Hyderabad Municipal polls the BJP barely distinguished itself marking its growing irrelevance in a city it once represented in the Lok Sabha.

This clean sweep in Gujarat is an opportunity for the BJP to lead a nationwide movement for greater devolution of power to Local Government.

Perhaps Mr. Modi needs to talk less about the Gujarat model and more about the Surat Model – “Care for your City like Surat does” (source: Indian Express Sept 29, 2010).  

The Surat success story needs to be told, re-told to create a latent demand for free and autonmous Local Governance that is invested in the local community and is directly accountable to the local community.

The city of Surat, home to 42 per cent of the world’s rough diamond cutting and polishing, faced its worst-ever crisis in 1994 with the outbreak of plague. It has been a remarkable comeback. In 2008-09, it won the “best performing city” award from the ministry of urban development. In 2010, a Government of India study ranked Surat third on its sanitation score across 423 Indian cities. Surat has made full use of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) in working towards its urban renewal, bagging 34 projects worth Rs 2,429 crore under JNNURM.

What is strikingly different and refreshing is Surat’s focus on the quality of life of its residents and not just on hard physical infrastructure. The slogan “the city that cares” may well have arisen from adversity, but it has become a way of life for the city’s administrators.

Use of mobile phones to provide real time information on vaccinations for babies is an m-governance initiative of the Surat Municipal Corporation (SMC) which should reduce costs of healthcare for parents. Those who provide their mobile number at the time of registering the birth of their child are issued alerts to vaccinate their child for preventable diseases according to the schedule prescribed under the national immunisation programme. The alerts are personalised and child-specific, in contrast to the usual standardised print and electronic blurbs, and have evoked the desired response. The service is low cost for the SMC and involves no cost to the citizen. Over 2,00,000 text messages have been sent since the start of the initiative in 2009 covering nearly 50,000 parents who have availed of the vaccination alert on SMS initiative.

In Project Yashoda, healthy mothers donate milk, and after proper pasteurisation, the milk is stored and passed on to newborn babies. Started in December 2008, the human milk bank has received 43,000 ml of milk from 570 mothers, and 450 babies have received 39,000 ml of milk from the bank.

The SMC conducts medical camps in low-income localities every year during the monsoon season (every Saturday in the months of July, August and September). In 2010 so far, 78 medical camps have been held with 4,700 doctors attending on 13,000 patients, and conducting 218 surgeries. Medicines are provided free of cost to patients visiting the camp. A health exhibition to educate people on the prevention of disease is organised on the sidelines of the camps.

The city has taken many initiatives to serve its senior citizens. A number of gardens have been developed for them in residential areas. Known as Shantikunj, these quiet corners are exclusively for senior citizens. Newspapers are provided free every morning at these gardens. The SMC has also built a senior citizen centre, at a cost of Rs 1.3 crore, with a meditation hall, a room for medical checkup, reading room, conference hall, and a hall for multi-purpose activities. Over 20,000 senior citizens are expected to avail of the services offered by this centre. In the spirit of caring, the rebate on property tax for senior citizens was introduced in 2007-08 at 5 per cent, and raised to 10 per cent in 2009-10.

Surat’s Veer Narmad Central Library has a collection of over 2,50,000 books and an e-library of over 1,500 e-books. The SMC has built 47 reading rooms and actively manages these to inculcate the habit of reading amongst its citizens. To cater to the needs of its visually-challenged citizens, the library also houses a collection of over 2,600 Braille books in Gujarati and English. The facilities include free membership, audio equipment and free home delivery of books.

The city that cares also fares well on the cultural front. It has been focusing on building infrastructure aimed at making it an attractive place to live in. An institutional complex with a science centre, an art gallery and museums was built at a cost of Rs 44 crore, and was inaugurated in November 2009. It includes a planetarium, a city museum, a science gallery with over 51 exhibits, an auditorium and amphitheatre. The admission fee ranging from Rs 30-80 per person is moderate and contributes towards maintenance of the complex. The SMC is now building a performing arts centre to provide rehearsal and performance space at low cost to learning and budding artists.

Since 2007, Surat has been celebrating a heritage week from November 19-25, creating awareness of history and tradition through activities like heritage walks, seminars and exhibitions. The SMC has created a heritage cell, formed a heritage conservation committee and set up a heritage fund to protect and promote its cultural history. Over 2,800 public and private properties of heritage value have been identified and documented through an extensive survey. The SMC is now working with local architects and other agencies to finalise the blue print for the development of the Chowk area in the city as a heritage square. A 400-year-old historic water tank — the Gopi Talao — in the heart of the old city, is being restored to conserve heritage as well as environment.

Surat is a highly flood-prone city with more than three-fourths of its 3.8 million population in the coastal plains at risk from the overflowing of the river Tapti. In 2006, the river flowed into nearly 70 per cent of Surat causing unprecedented havoc. A recent study has highlighted that slums and low-income settlements of Surat which are located close to the river are extremely vulnerable to floods. To counter the threat, the SMC has set up the Surat City Advisory Committee to prepare a strategy for resilience. Surat is one of the 10 cities selected under the Rockefeller Foundation’s Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network. Under this initiative, local institutions and experts have come together to study climate change impacts on health, energy, transport and housing, with a focus on the more vulnerable sections of society.

Citizen-focused initiatives have also been successful in attracting greater community participation in city management. Ward committees constituted in March 2008 meet once a month to discuss development issues and recommend works and activities for priority attention. An online system for registration of grievances and redressal has been started since July 2009. Of the 2,500 complaints received during July 2009 to September 2010, 2,300 have been resolved.

Surat received the “most inclusive approach” award from the ministry of housing and urban poverty alleviation in 2009 for its initiatives for the urban poor. Forty-two thousand houses are being constructed for the economically weaker sections of society. Between 1980 and 2006, over 12,600 sites and over 7,400 built houses were allotted on lease basis to the poor urban households. In the last two years alone, over 12,000 households from slums have been rehabilitated in well-planned colonies.

Filed under: ABIDE Bangalore, Local Governance, Narendra Modi, Nitin Gadkari, Bharatiya Janata Party, Congress, Gujarat, Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission, Local Government, Narendra Modi, Surat, Surat Municipal Corporation