Last week the CM met with Narayana Murthy. An Expert Committee is to be set up to address problems related to Infrastructure and Waste Management in Bengaluru. This committee is to meet bi-monthly under the CM’s chairmanship. We have seen this ‘movie’ before. Setting up such committees, groups, task forces started with SM Krishna setting up the Bangalore Agenda Task Force (BATF) in 2000. There was a lull in the 2000-04 period followed by Agenda for Bangalore Infrastructure Development (ABIDE) during 2008-13, the still born Bengaluru Vision Group and BBMP Restructuring Expert Committee during 2013-18. This author has been part of three of these four initiatives.
Inviting citizens to be part of government led committees is a welcome move. Many of the civic problems are better addressed in a collaborative manner. However, such initiatives are seen by some civil society groups as being anti-democratic, a resource capture by the elite and by passing regular institutional arrangements. While there is merit to some of these concerns, it can be argued that if the elected leadership decides to set up such initiatives, they have the mandate of the people to do so. It is critical that members of such bodies do not have any conflict of interests, have an inclusive mindset, take citizen feedback and work within institutional structures to bring about positive change.
The government tendency in such exercises is to harp on infrastructure, waste management, traffic as improvement areas which is a myopic view. We have a severe governance and administration deficit. The Government needs to address the ‘scaffolding’ and ‘plumbing’ problem if these problems are to be fixed for the long term. It starts with thinking and passing a separate legislation for Bengaluru.
While setting up expert groups, a key issue to be addressed is the Trust deficit. Citizens inherently don’t trust government to do the right thing by them. Further, many are wary of opaque ‘expert’ committees. Hence it is necessary to have complete transparency in goals, operations and outcomes of such initiatives. The BATF model of a half yearly summit is worth adopting. All major civic agencies are part of the platform and they report publicly to the citizens about goals, promises and achievements against promises. While providing visibility and building trust it also helps coordinate activities across silos of government agencies. One hopes this expert committee pushes for a open government.
V. Ravichandar, Urbanist
Author is an urban expert,who calls himself the Patron Saint of Lost Causes
@ravichandar