The Hindu : Karnataka / Mysore News : Councillors' support essential for success of CDS

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Dec 03, 2004

Karnataka

Karnataka - Mysore

Councillors' support essential for success of CDS

By R. Krishna Kumar

Mitigating the impact of unbridled urbanisation in Mysore will be a challenging task to the stakeholders of the City Development Strategy's steering committee.

MYSORE, DEC. 2. The concept of City Development Strategy (CDS), involving the participation of stakeholders in civic affairs, is seen as an opportunity to prepare a plan to conserve the cultural and environmental heritage of Mysore.

The CDS was conceived by Cities Alliance and encompasses international financial institutions such as the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the G-7 countries among others. It encourages people's participation in urban management, and Mysore and Hubli-Dharwad have been identified for the exercise in the State. The CDS envisages participation by stakeholders, including the poor and the private sector, in a bid to optimise a city's resource for growth and development.

Opinion

There is another opinion that the exercise will help to create a common platform for the citizens concerned, who will have a say in what is good for the community and the city. A section of the non-governmental organisations (NGOs) feel this may also help to arrest the drift towards disorder and chaos being witnessed in recent years in Mysore owing to the "apathy" and "rot" in the local administration.

Optimism

There are reasons for optimism. For, it may help tap the best available expertise to tackle issues that are germane to the city's future such as traffic management, environment, water supply and distribution, power, and development of slums, and bring about an improvement in the quality of life of the poor in the cities. Though such expertise exists at the local level, instead of harnessing it, the authorities such as the Mysore City Corporation (MCC) and the Mysore Zilla Panchayat continue to depend on the in-house manpower to solve the civic problems. However, the success of the CDS hinges on the attitude of the elected representatives, including the councillors of the Mysore City Corporation, and the local officials, who are perceived to be unaccountable to the public. The councillors are also yet to reconcile to the growing presence of NGOs in various bodies and perceive them to be a threat to their political future.

This was obvious when none of the councillors attended a meeting with members of the NGOs on the Nirmala Nagara Yojane to be implemented with the involvement of the public. On their absence at the meeting, some councillors said: "As elected representatives, we are supreme and NGOs cannot dictate terms to us." However, they expressed "support'' to the community participation and the role of the NGOs in theory while they refused to pay heed to them or recognise their expertise in the field, in practice.

This mindset of the councillors has to be transformed as they oppose any change that would hold them accountable to the public.

This was obvious when the councillors made light of the expertise of the Mysore Agenda Task Force (MATF) and described it as an "organisation of the elite'' as they were disappointed over their non-inclusion in it, and demanded that the MATF be disbanded as it was "ineffective''.

In the light of the MATF experience when its recommendations were not made binding on the authorities, there is little guarantee that the present exercise will not be any different unless the recommendations are implemented through legal sanction.

The Urban Secretary, Ravikumar, has hinted that the recommendations of the steering committee will not be binding on the authorities. So, is it that the CDS in Mysore is doomed to fail even before it can take off? If the CDS steering committee comes out with a similar set of solutions to the city's problems, then who will implement them? These are the questions being asked.

Document

After identifying crucial issues plaguing the city, the MATF came out with a Mysore Vision Document 2020 three years ago.

It even constituted working committees. But the mechanism to implement them was lacking owing to lack of funds and non-cooperation by the officials and councillors.

Now the moot question is whether the CDS exercise will be any different from that of the MATF in the absence of any statute to devolve powers to the people on the steering committee?

Again, if funds are sanctioned by international financial agencies, will it come with stringent stipulations that may deprive the local bodies of freedom?

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