By- Aneeta Gokhale BenningerThe 74th Constitutional Amendment Act (CAA) 1992, also known as the Municipalities Act, gave constitutional status to urban local bodies with the aim of decentralising power. It came into force from June 1, 1993 and mandates that elections must be held every five years before the expiry of the term of the sitting members. Unfortunately, our elections were delayed by four years, and our “representative democracy” was kept in abeyance. We were saddled with a government of bureaucracy.Now that the local elections have been held, our representative local democracy should start functioning shortly. The 74th CAA mandates a joint, bottom-up decision-making process between citizens and their representatives at the ward-level and between the local self-government and the state government at the city-level.
In order to have an effective dialogue leading to desired results, the 74Th CAA mandates the ward/wards committee meeting once a month to monitor implementation/delivery of inputs according to normative entitlements. The entitlements include supply of 135 litres of potable water per person per day, management of garbage and sanitation of the city, maintenance and repairs of roads.The Environmental Status Report should be tabled once a year to assess the quality of both built and natural environment, identify the location of hazard like burning of garbage, dumping of biodegradable garbage such as puja flowers or left over food and non-biodegradable garbage such as building waste in water bodies, unsafe buildings, encroachment on footpaths and to quantify the extent of the damage/problem. This data should be used to create an action plan for the ward to ensure that the quality of life improves.The CAA mandates a participatory budget once a year based on the action plan created as per the ward-level requirements. Aggregation of the ward-level action plans and participatory budget at the apex level is submitted to the general body (GB.) and debated, where all ward-level functionaries, departments’ representatives and the municipal commissioner are present. Once this aggregated plan and budget are passed in the GB, it becomes the annual plan for Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) or any civic body. The ward committees monitor its implementation.The 74th CAA has specified 18 functions in the 12th Schedule assigned to municipal corporations. The civic bodies are authorised by the state govt to levy and collect taxes, duties, tolls and fees. Apart from this, the corporations get grants in aid and earmarked funds for various central and state government projects. They are also authorised to create special purpose vehicles and establish corpus funds to be used for any special purpose. All these activities are overseen by the standing committee and the GB of the corporations. These two statutory bodies are in essence the democratically elected local self-government.Joint responsibility of citizens & representativesCitizens must accept the responsibility to jointly monitor the implementation of lans at the ward-level and give their feedback. They must understand that our govt is not a “parental, provider, protector” government but a representative democracy. It gets its power from the citizens and its funding from our direct and indirect taxes. These funds must be used for socially relevant purposes. The elected representatives must be aware and accept that they must work together with the people they represent. They are the “trustees” of the decision-making power delegated to them by the people and it is their moral and legal duty not to use this power to fulfil their personal desires or for communal appeasement but must use this power with public consent to ensure that people get their “normative entitlements”, paving the path for a better quality of life in Pune.(The writer is a professor of sustainable development planning and executive director of CDSA)
