ESG Open Discussion on
Invitation to an Open Discussion
on
The Karnataka Municipal Corporation
(Ward Committee) Rules, 2013 - Draft
on
Wednesday, 4th September 2013
4.30 pm to 7.00 pm
at
Ashirwad, St. Mark's Road Cross, Bangalore 560001
Background Note:
With
the intent of devolving power to the people, as a measure of enhancing
accountability and transparency in urban governance, and to decentralise urban
administration, the Parliament of India passed the Constitutional 74th
Amendment (Nagarpalika) Act in 1992.
Twenty one years have since passed, many Governments have come and gone
in Karnataka, but not one made it a priority to operationalise Article 243 S of
the Constitution relating to: “Constitution and
composition of Wards Committees, etc.-”
the bedrock of decentralisation of urban governance. Citizens, consequently, have been denied
their Constitutional guarantee of participation in decision making in urban
affairs and suffered widespread mismanagement of urban issues and
concerns.
Meanwhile,
cities have grown beyond their environmental limits and urban problems have
become extraordinarily complex. If the
manner in which urban planners and administrators are dealing with the crisis
is any indication, it reveals that they simply no clue how to. Not uncommonly, various consultants are flown
in and out promising relief and change, all of which are as transient as the
proposals themselves, not to forget the frequent foreign junkets key decision
makers help themselves to, burdening weary tax payers, and with nothing to
report back on. Business and political elites, meanwhile, have opportunised on
this void to leverage and secure benefits.
As a method of capturing key decision making spaces, unaccountable and
unconstitutional decision making bodies such as Bangalore Agenda Task Force and
Agenda for Bangalore Infrastructure Development have been foisted on the
wide public, and which have promoted projects that cost the poor dearly and
even displaced them economically and physically as well. The long standing demand to ensure Ward
Committees function so that the wide public could legitimately involve in civic
administration in a deeply representative manner, and thus influence and shape
decisions and change circumstances for the better, has floundered for
attention.
When
residents of Mavallipura, a village north of Bangalore, resolved not to allow
Ramky (a PPP operator) to dump a major chunk of Bangalore's waste in their
village commons in July 2012, the metropolis' streets accumulated hillocks of
putrefying waste. This brought home to the city's residents an experience that
the hapless villagers had been suffering every day for more than a decade. All efforts by the Karnataka Government to
promote Bangalore as a 'world class city' through such shows as Global Investors
Meets came to naught. Instead, the city
became infamous world-wide as a garbage city! Reactions of government agencies and
functionaries in attending to this crisis were technocratic at best, and
draconian at worst: recall how over 700 police were deployed to forcibly and
illegally dump garbage in Mavallipura during August 2012 under the instructions
of then Deputy Chief Minister Ashokaa, which failed.
The
colossal failure on the part of the Government resulted in the Mr. Justice
Vikramjit Sen, then Chief Justice, and Mrs. Justice B. V. Nagarathna of
Karnataka High Court intervening in the matter by responding to Public Interest
Litigations filed by Mr. G. R. Mohan (WP No. 40450/2012) and Ms. Kavit Shankar
(WP 24739/2012). The Court held the State Government and Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara
Palike (BBMP) accountable for this sorry state of affairs reminding them it was
their fundamental duty to provide a clean and healthy city for all and warning
such failure to deliver would be punished.
Environment
Support Group joined this litigative effort (by way of W.P. No. 46523/2012,
accessible at: http://tinyurl.com/mpde8d9) and drew the
attention of the Court to the fact that garbage mismanagement was essentially a
result of misgovernance, lack of transparency and accountability in civic
administration, the prevailing resistance in administration to allowing citizen
participation in municipal affairs and centralisation of powers that was
resulting in massive corruption. On the
elevation of Mr. Justice Sen to the Supreme Court in December 2012, the PILs
have been regularly heard by the Division Bench of the High Court comprised of
Mr. Justice N. Kumar and Mrs. Justice B. V. Nagarathna. This Bench has issued a series of
unprecedented and progressive directions with the intent of fundamentally
resolving the solid waste mis-management problem perpetually (the
directions may be accessed here: http://tinyurl.com/pqwc2rc).
Responding positively to ESG's submission that without establishing Ward
Committees to ensure direct involvement of citizens in civic affairs there
could not be a solution to the garbage crisis, especially given the lack of a
mechanism to honestly and effectively monitor this operation on a day to day
basis at the locality levels, Justice Kumar and Justice Nagarathna in January
2013 directed the Karnataka Government to immediately constitute Ward
Committees by issuing the following direction on 10th January 2013:
“It is in the absence of this committee
functioning in each ward, probably the task of removal of garbage which was not
a problem for the last 5 decades has assumed gigantic proportions in the last
couple of months. Therefore, in order to fix the responsibility on the persons
who should ensure proper solid waste management it is necessary to constitute a
Ward Committee forthwith.”
Such
intense monitoring by the Karnataka High Court has ensured that Ward Committees
were constituted and the Draft Rules on operationalising the Ward Committees
were issued on 11th January.
But by the time the State got around to formalising these Rules,
Assembly elections were declared, and the Draft Rules lapsed. Despite the formation of a new State Government
in May, there was considerable delay in reviving the legislative process to
make Ward Committees fully functional.
The Court once more stepped in and directed the State to get on with
this task with due dispatch. As a
consequence the Draft of the Karnataka Municipal Corporation (Ward Committee)
Rules, 2013 has now been issued on 27th August 2013 by the Karnataka
Urban Development Department. The
Department has called for comments, suggestions and objections on these Rules
over a period of “fifteen or thirty days from the date of publication in the
official Gazette”. It is essential that these Draft Rules are shaped with
extraordinary care and attention to detail, as they would influence, inform,
shape and determine the manner in which Ward Committees function. This will also have a very strong bearing on
the functioning of Area Sabhas (the sub units of Ward Committees), that would
have to follow.
This
is an historic opportunity for us to collectively work to ensure that
decentralisation of urban administration becomes effective and not merely a
notional and ritual exercise. It is
important to note that the Ward Committees have a whole range of functions, and
that it is not limited to monitoring solid waste management alone. The 12th
Schedule of the Constitution lists a variety of issues and concerns that Ward
Committees could be involved in, and the list of items (which is illustrative)
is accessible at: http://indiacode.nic.in/coiweb/amend/amend74.htm.
Imagine issues and initiatives that Ward
Committees could be directly engaged with: securing water access to all;
enhancing greenery and biodiversity; protecting and rehabilitating lakes and raja
kaluves; preparing ward traffic management maps to promote public
transport, walking and cycling; ensure markets are accessible to all; promote
livelihoods and housing for the poor; regulate land use, and tackle
encroachment of public spaces, and illegal and unmanageable building practices;
promote progressive (and inclusive) cultural, aesthetic and educational
activities; make each ward fully
accessible taking into account the needs of children, elders and of physically
and cognitively challenged; developing effective fire and emergency services;
preparing disaster management plans; etc.
The Draft Ward Committee Rules provide for such roles and even more
fundamentally proposed that the Ward Committee will have to:
“prepare five year ward vision plan as per
a Performance Development System (PMDS) based on human development and social
infrastructure outcomes at ward level. Targets need to be set and outcomes
indicators developed for measuring, monitoring and review need to be based on
performance of those indicators. The
Area Sabhas need to be involved in setting targets and reviewing municipal performance.”
Now is the time to imagine our city, our ward, our neighbourhoods, and streets as inclusive and progressive spaces, providing for social and economic upliftment of the poor, of promoting syncretic cultural processes, of overcoming a range of ills that have dogged our societies and of keeping our tryst with that destiny which we were promised over six decades ago. In this backdrop, ESG invites you to Open Discussion on the Draft Rules to constitute Ward Committees in Karnataka.
A
copy of the 19th August 2013 amendment to the Karnataka Municipal
Corporation Act instituting various penalties for violating Municipal Solid
Waste Management Rules, 2000 and other related norms can be accessed at: http://tinyurl.com/ksdfsxg
We
also request you to assist us in assessing the extent to which BBMP is
complying with High Court directives in managing solid waste by participating
in a brief and quick survey, which may be accessed at: http://tinyurl.com/oqtg9r5.
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