The slums in Mumbai represent the proverbial elephant in the room. Urban sociologists and economists point out that half of the country’s commercial capital lives in the slums. There was a time when planners, governments and commentators felt that urban salvation lies in removing slums. The preferred solution was relocating the slum-dwellers of Mumbai. The Brihanmumbai Corporation’s proposal to tax slum properties as well as impose charges on garbage collection and fire safety changes the parameters of the debate in a manner of speaking. By imposing the property tax, the city authorities are indirectly granting legal status to people and their dwellings which were considered to be beyond the pale of law. The new tax proposal would mean that the city government is entering into a social contract with the sans culottes and that it recognises their stake in the metropolis. The implication is that the corporation has now the obligation to restructure the slums and the dwellings have to be made habitable.

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Urban governance has been the most neglected aspect of Indian politics since Independence. Nandan Nilekani, one of Infosys’ founders, had made an apt observation in his book Imagining India that cities — during the Nehru era — were neglected and villages got all the attention. It is a different story that with more than 80 per cent of the people living in villages at the time of Independence, it was inevitable that rural India attracted attention in developmental debates. Nilekani had a point. The future even then was in the cities because Nehru dreamed of an industrialised India. Sixty-seven years after independence, the importance of urban governance is gradually getting its due. Whatever may be the romantics’ dream of bucolic paradise, most people will be living in cities across the world in the future. It has almost become a truism.

Whether it is Mumbai or Delhi or Kolkata or emerging metropolises like Bengaluru and Hyderabad, city corporations will have to assume greater responsibilities. There is also the need for politicians across the board to recognise the need to empower the urban authorities. If panchayati raj was once seen as the epitome of democracy and involving people at the grass roots to make their decisions a sign of devolution, urban government is the need of the hour to manage ever-growing behemoths. This would mean greater democratisation of the urban corporations as well as sophisticated urban administration.

The reality is that municipal corporations, riddled with inefficiency, are notorious dens of corruption. This sordid reality has to change. Citizens will have to involve themselves in local government and municipal elections should be of greater importance to people than even parliamentary ones. Cities cannot be made habitable by national-level planning and budget allocations from the central government. One of the arguments put forward by Mumbai Members of Parliament (MPs) across parties is that the country’s commercial capital makes the largest contribution to the national tax kitty and that it does not get anything in return to meet the city’s rising needs. The primary need then is to make provisions for the city governments to raise money, not just through taxation, but also through ways of tapping the financial markets. There is, of course, the great danger that with more money in the hands of city politicians and bureaucrats, there will be greater scope for misappropriation. In other words, there will be greater corruption. Systems must be put in place for citizens to monitor how the money is spent.