The state of Maharashtra manufactures 1.2 crore PET bottles every day reported a leading daily recently. News related to plastic waste has been making the headlines every other day ever since the state government banned a wide range of one-time-use plastic items including carry bags, plates, spoons and packaging. The ban came into force from the last week of March. The ban is recognition of the huge impact of such waste on the environment and the waste handling mechanism of local bodies. PET bottles are just one category of stubborn waste which add hugely to the waste management infrastructure local bodies have to set up. Plastic throwaway cutlery and Expanded Polystyrene (Thermocol) are others and these have been banned too. While allowing some kinds of PET including milk pouches, the government has mandated strict measures to ensure these are recycled. Waste management is clearly among the municipal services which provide major headaches to city administrators not only in some cities, states or countries but everywhere. The bulk of the effort is always directed at ‘managing’ the problem, often with the search for new technologies and efforts to encourage recycle and repurpose. But the impact we have seen, is clearly insufficient. There needs to be constant effort including regulation to ensure that ‘generation’ of waste is curtailed and minimized. The plastic ban in Maharashtra is an effort in this direction and has thus found support from all quarters including some of those adversely impacted.
Waste management is a very visible and impactful area of municipal ser-vices struggling to keep pace with cities’ requirements. With rapid and relentless urbanization over several decades, the demands of the city populations have grown exponentially. Pressures have been created not only by the growing numbers of urban dwellers but also due to the rapidly changing (some even say irresponsible or unsustainable) lifestyle choices of citizens. The result is a large and often growing gap between the demands for services and their provision by municipal bodies.
Other gaps
While waste management is very visible, manifested in the heaps of garbage in many cases and media headlines, other services too are affected. Urban mobility is one.
There is very rapid growth in the number of two-wheelers on our roads. Preliminary estimates put the sales during 2017-18 at over 20 million units. That’s a mindboggling 54,000 plus each day. Such growth is adding greatly to congestion, air-pollution and issues of road safety. It indicates the inability of public transport services to provide efficient, effective and affordable mobility options for citizens. The issue however, is a complex one. Pricing dynamics make the use of a two-wheeler far more affordable than public transport buses for example, on a per kilometer basis. Add to it the door-to-door connectivity and zero wait-time offered by personal transport and the choice seems clear. And this, while many public transport bus services are faced with huge operational losses. Any attempt to raise fares is met with declining ridership. Therefore solutions could include large doses of regulatory (steeper parking fees and limiting access to some roads for private vehicles) measures along with differentiated/targeted services (air-conditioned buses could discourage car use) with more focus on last-mile connectivity.
Quality public healthcare and education is clearly not accessed by large sections of the populations. Even the less-privileged are turning to private facilities even in the face of prohibitive costs. Public facilities in these areas are perceived to be laid back, inefficient, delayed and of poor quality. Access is another handicap. These facilities need to be located closer to residents’ homes. Several national, state and local level measures have ensured that children are continuing to enroll in public-run schools. But are they learning much? Parents of even weaker sections are enrolling their kids in private schools. By some estimates, nearly half of urban children and a fifth of rural ones attend
private primary schools. Local body presence in primary education is mar-ginal at the national level. In 2015-16 these accounted for just 8.5 percent of enrollments although they account for 15.04 percent of schools. Local bodies in some states did better though (AP 43.15%, Gujarat 48.21% and Telangana 31.71% of enrolments). Between 2007-08and 2015-16, enrolment in classes I to V in public schools actually fell by 23m while the number in private ones rose by more than 14m (www.udise.in). Some local leaders are making efforts to prop up municipal schools and encouraging citizens to use these. These are welcome efforts.
Measuring the gaps
In order to institutionalize the measurement and thereby the management of urban services, the Ministry of Urban Development had several years ago developed the Service Level Benchmarking (SLB) mechanism. Under this mechanism, four areas of municipal services namely, Water supply, Sewerage, Solid waste management, and Storm water drains are considered and the ULBs performance on a total of 28 indicators under these four heads is measured. The handbook published by the ministry lays down the suggested frequency of measurement against these indicators, the frequency of reporting, jurisdiction and other guidelines.
Technology to aid better services
Policymakers see great opportunity for leveraging information technology tools for betterment of municipal performance in general and service delivery to citizens in particular. MeitY articulates its vision for technology in municipal administration as follows:
The Municipalities MMP aims to leverage ICT for sustained improvement in
efficiency and effectiveness of delivery of municipal service to citizens.
The key objectives of the MMP are:
1. To provide single window services to citizens on anytime, anywhere basis
2. To increase the efficiency and productivity of Urban Local Bodies (ULBs)
3. To develop a single, integrated view of ULB information system across all ULBs in the State
4. To provide timely and reliable management information relating to municipal administration for effective decision-making
5. To adopt a standards-based approach to enable integration with other re-lated applications
This MMP is one with significant citizen interaction, given that municipalities provide a large number of basic services for millions of citizen living in urban centres across the Nation. (www. meity.gov.in) Most municipal bodies have already implemented the access-ing of bills and payment of property taxes online. This happens with great ease. Many also have mobile based apps for citizens to report problems in the city like leaking water pipes or damaged roads. But there are many more areas some are working on to use technology in order to improve governance with transparency and accountability.
Citizen engagement, grant of building permissions and parking and toll management are just a few examples where municipalities could deliver significantly improved services using technology. Several examples of tech driven services in these areas exist, both nationally and internationally which could enable easy implementation.
Citizens and the city
It is high time that while expecting municipal administrations to improve livability of cites, citizens participate more actively in the process. Efforts in crucial areas such as waste management, water conservation and road infrastructure do not yield desired outcomes because of sub-optimal citizen behavior. The way public assets like bus shelters, electric junction boxes and road furniture are defaced with posters and notices is just one example to show that many citizens do not care about the city and its services. High quality speed-breakers and ‘no parking’ signs are very often ripped out so as not to ‘inconvenience’ some. This needs to change.
Reforms Architecture
Municipal governance reform is another plank on which rests the ability of the local bodies to meet the aspirations of the ever-growing urban populations by catering to their demand for services. During the last few years, substantial progress has been made in the early stage reforms. Almost all the states, for example, have set up state finance commissions and municipal cadres, large numbers of cities have secured credit rating and about 100 cities have stepped up user fee collection beyond 90 per-cent. Further reform measures are being rolled out. Here the central Urban Development Ministry has laid down what the states need to achieve while leaving states to innovate and work out how to achieve these. The first set of new reforms looks at finance and service delivery. Audited accounts which show an increasing trend in revenue, recovering over 70 percent of revenue expenditure and publishing service coverage levels for water and solid waste are among the targeted areas.
Further measures seek to deepen the reform process by nudging the municipalities to raise finances through issue of municipal bonds, professionalizing the municipal cadres, putting in place a transparent land-titling law, strengthening decentralization and shoring up own revenue receipts.
As we move rapidly to greater levels of urbanization, cities are likely to encounter new challenges including those that will make greater demands on municipal administrations all over. There is all-round realization of this and several efforts are underway to support and enable the municipal bodies to rise to the challenges.
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