The State Budget has laid out a series of projects. Bengaluru has a decent listing of promised projects. The challenge is in timely and effective implementation and this brings us to the human resources challenges that we face across our civic agencies, particularly the BBMP. The World Bank has popularised the term ‘capacity building’ which assumes that we have the internal resources which can be improved. Alas, that is not the case.The Government has Cadre & Recruitment (C&R) rules that govern job title, description, employee qualifications, experience, etc. These are obsolete and not kept pace with the requirements of our times. The BBMP C&R rules have not been updated for decades. This needs to begin with department reorganisation based on functions.
Many roles require specialisation – some examples are environmental engineers, town planners, infrastructure specialists. We currently lack these resources or even a clear description of the kind of personnel needed. The staffing strength provided are also not in tune with the needs of the civic agencies.
Most in-house employees lack urban expertise. There are no induction programmes and employees are not given job-oriented training. Retraining resources will take time and energy. Further we have the bane of officers on deputation – their domain knowledge is suspect and job commitment is low since they know they will move on.
We need a professional cadre of human resources, a new ICS (Indian Civic Services). Lateral recruitments at senior levels with professional qualifications and experience is imperative if urbanisation is to be managed well. We should be open to having the Corporation Commissioner from outside the services. Professional heads of departments and specialised positions based on well-defined skills and competencies could be hired from outside the government pool.
People management is an important function. The city needs professionally manned Human Resources cell to oversee, plan and manage the HR function including manpower planning, organisation design, recruitment, performance management including promotion, training, transfers, etc. There are concerns about the efficacy of the current recruitment process. The candidate selection process should be outsourced to independent, reputed academic institutions. Regular performance assessment with annual review process and skill-based certification is needed.
The private sector has evolved human resources practices. We should cross pollinate the learning from these organisations into our civic agencies. If we don’t find a way to raise the bar of our human resources in civic agencies, goals of liveable city, smart city, dynamic city, etc. will remain a pipe dream.
(The writer is an urbanist who is part of the BBMP Restructuring Committee)