#dnaEdit: Delhi's municipal workers strike an example of what's wrong with Indian cities

The week-long strike by the 90,000-strong staff of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi — a section of municipal doctors’ association pulled out from the strike on Saturday — is a striking example of what is wrong with Indian cities at a time when there is so much talk about smart cities and accelerated pace of urbanisation. The national capital is clearly a victim of political and administrative power games. The victims are the citizens and the employees of the local urban authorities. This is the second time that the sanitation staff has gone on strike in a year. Non-payment of salaries to the staff is the legitimate provocation for the latest round of protest. 

There are three layers of government in Delhi. There is the Delhi municipal corporation, which has been trifurcated into the south, north and east corporations in 2012. There is the Delhi government. And there is the central government which controls parts of the capital’s administration like law and order through the Ministry of Home Affairs. It is indeed a case of fragmented authority, and it is indeed the root cause of the travails of the residents of the metropolis. While the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP)-ruled Delhi government is in perpetual battle with the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre, there is friction between the AAP government of Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and the BJP-dominated municipal corporations. As the Centre controls the purse strings of the Delhi government in some ways, the Delhi government in turn controls the finances of the municipal corporations. This is the crux of the problem of non-payment of salaries and wages to the staff. 

There are, of course, the political manipulations and bickerings at the heart of the financial crisis. The Congress government of Sheila Dikshit, which ruled the city for 15 years, had split the corporations to weaken the BJP’s hold on the local bodies. But the unintended consequence was that two of the corporations — in the east and in the north — are in continuous financial doldrums because the poorer neighbourhoods under their jurisdiction fetch little by way of taxes. It is the corporation in the south that seems to be the well-off municipal body, reflecting rather starkly the rich-poor divide in the urban spread of the city.

Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal is waging his own political battle against the corporations by blaming their financial woes on their corrupt ways. The BJP leaders in the corporations deny the charges, and claim that Kejriwal is refusing to release Rs3000 crore to the civic bodies as recommended by the Delhi Finance Commission. They are naturally unhappy with Kejriwal’s offer of Rs551 crore to tide over the crisis of payment of salaries, and they are demanding that it should be in the form of a grant. Meanwhile, Delhi’s Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung has offered Rs300 crore to deal with the problem.

But the main issue remains unsolved, which is that the Municipal Corporation of Delhi — though it has been trifurcated — should have enough funds at its disposal to pay the sanitary workers, doctors, nurses, paramedics and teachers. It should not be reduced to the status of a supplicant. This requires radical rethinking of local governance. While there has been vocal debate on empowering panchayats and zilla parishads, not much attention has been paid to empowering municipalities. The Delhi municipal corporation crisis should help in talking about city governments. There can be no smart cities without efficient urban governance.