Covid-19 reasserts need for strong local governments

As cities wade through the ravages of the Covid-19 pandemic and try finding ways to manage the spiralling impacts of the crisis, it has become clear that local governments have to become stronger than ever for keeping their citizens healthy, safe, and making city systems—cutting across governance, economic development, administration and technology integration domains—more resilient and sustainable.

he second wave of Covid-19 smashed urban healthcare systems like never before. The impact on citizens was worse than the first wave. It caught us unprepared again. People across the country scrambled for medical care and medicines. The Case Positivity Rate went as high as 40 per cent in some parts. The crisis has harshly spotlighted holes in health care systems and problems in our crisis management at all levels.
In the second surge of cases, the economic impact was not as severe as last year because of flexible lockdown measures by state governments, but complete economic recovery would take time till the pandemic is convincingly controlled. We did not see migrant workers trudging along with sacks of belongings or cycling hundreds of kilometres to reach their native places as the government largely did not stop the movement of trains, buses, flights and other transport options. The government did learn from the experience of the last year.
The one thing that needs to be learnt immediately is enhancing the role of urban local governance in managing, monitoring the crisis war room at the local level effectively. The role of urban local bodies has to be enhanced in the remedial strategies, and their role must be reflected in local disaster management plans. The learning from the second surge of Covid cases shall not go waste, and cities must build robust resilience to fight the third wave if it occurs or any other similar crisis.

Local governments and crisis management

Globally, the cities with stronger local governments responded well to the health crisis. The management of the pandemic was streamlined efficiently. The ongoing crisis has raised many questions relating to local governments, their authority on various local issues, direct access to resources, etc.
Cities in India did come forward and helped citizens in the time of crisis. But the situation demanded an enhanced role from the corporations and councils as the initiatives were not enough to provide respite to them. There is no denying the scale of the crisis was such that even the resourceful cities and countries faced difficulties. In India, most urban local bodies neither have adequate financial reserves nor have special administrative powers. Both these issues need to be assessed and resolved.
Elected representatives and municipal officials are closest to citizens, and are thus best placed to understand their problems. All tiers of the governments, despite their political inclinations, have to work collectively. We have to look back, and review whether cities played a decisive role in managing the health crisis and planning strategies for providing relief to citizens.
The integrated command and control centres of many Smart Cities were transformed into war rooms, but the decentralization of monitoring and helping citizens could be localized further to reduce the burden on staff and ease the mechanism for helping the needy in time.
One such great example is that of South Korea, which used its local government institutions for containing the spread, testing and to enable access to medical care facilities for local citizens. South Korean cities used Drive-Thru Testing Initiative during the first wave in which citizens could remain in their vehicles and just drive thru a facility to get their RT PCR test done. It ensured that there is no rush in testing centres and no fear of getting infected there. This year, many Indian cities, including Mumbai, Greater Noida, Kanpur, and Ghaziabad used this idea, improvised it and asked people to come in their vehicles for vaccinations. These cities not just used designated medical facilities but also used parking spaces in closed shopping malls and cinema halls.
There are many areas where urban local bodies in coordination with district administration can proactively implement the initiatives of the state and central governments efficiently provided that the city governments are taken into confidence while making policies relating to response and recovery or maybe given adequate authority to make certain amendments to suit local requirements. City mayors and municipal commissioners must be empowered enough to take the battle head-on. They can indeed supplement the efforts of the district administration, civil society and other local institutions.
In this complete exercise, the issue of financial sustainability of local governments must be highlighted, and the cities need to continue work in this area to ensure that they can take all possible measures in time of crisis. It must be ensured that they do not face a paucity of funds in such times.

Enlarging collective efforts of urban local bodies

Many cities in India came forward with creative, supportive initiatives so that citizens can get assistance conveniently in time. All India Institute of Local Self-Government (AIILSG) supported the fight against Covid-19 by augmenting the implementation of the creative ideas from local entrepreneurs engaged in its incubation centres run by AIILSG. One such centre running with the support of the AIILSG team is monitoring the patients in home isolation and providing them required medical assistance. One engineer enrolled in Gwalior Incubation centre invented Sanitation Tunnel for hospitals and offices.
Apart from supporting urban local bodies in running their sanitation services programs and activities under the Swachh Bharat Mission in Gujarat, Jammu, Kashmir, Himachal and Uttar Pradesh, the Institute is emboldening the initiatives of the government by promoting them on various platforms.
Our efforts are also to keep representatives of the local governments informed about the initiatives taken by urban local bodies in different countries and regions within the country and globally so that cities can scale up any functional idea for benefiting their citizens. We are making all possible efforts to ensure that the knowledge and resource sharing between cities become effective. The responsibility is also on the local city leaders to be actively engaged with local government associations and international associations like the United Cities and Local Governments, CityNet, Metropolis and many more. The institutes too have published several studies on urban response to Covid-19.
Local leaders must definitely access the resources and encourage their officials to learn form the best practices and make use of them wherever applicable. In India, AIILSG has been actively working with the most prominent international local government institutions and facilitating knowledge exchange wherever required. Our efforts are to make the process more effective and thus enable Indian municipalities become more responsive and resourceful.
The summation is that if cities are not being empowered in all essential spheres to tackle crises like these, LGs could become just sympathetic bystanders for citizens in such times.