Bengaluru: BBMP Administrator T M Vijay Bhaskar, speaking at a seminar on smart cities organised by the Smart Cities India Foundation (SCIF) at the World Trade Center here on Wednesday, said Bengaluru was too big a city to be governed by just one administrative official, and for results to come, more people would have to have a hand in the City’s governance.
“People in Bengaluru expect a lot from the BBMP (Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike) head. Each householder would have 10 problems at the very least and they expect the commissioner to solve all of them. That is why you need three or four commissioners. Now, just one person looks after the entire city and this can’t continue if governance has to be the top priority. We need decentralisation of power and authority,” he observed.
Poor revenue:
Mumbai’s revenue is three times that of Bengaluru, and thre fore the Bengaluru’s budgetary allocations are constrained, leading to limited civic amenities. The Budgets being framed have become unrealistic and the outcomes poor as the BBMP doesn’t get revenue in line with the budgets being framed.
“We are trying to prepare a realistic budget. When we compare Mumbai’s revenue with Bengaluru’s, our city has a long way to go. The reason we may not have done as well as Mumbai is because we don’t have rich revenue sources like Mumbai,” Bhaskar said.
Bhaskar added, “Bengaluru’s revenue from entry tax is Rs 300 crore, while Mumbai’s Octroi revenue is Rs 7,700 crore; Bengaluru’s revenue from development planning is Rs 370 crore, while Mumbai’s is Rs 5,000 crore. Given the vast differences, Bengaluru’s budget has to be realistic. We are trying to prepare a budget of around Rs 5,411 crore knowing well that we don’t have deep revenue pockets. If, for example, your revenue is Rs 3,500 crore, can you have a budget for Rs 9,000 crore?” Vijay Bhaskar asked, adding that he has set up a team to check development works slated for the City. All works would be uploaded online to maintain transparency.
The BBMP, according to him, is short of financial managers. “Personnel are important. If you look at the city managers, 75 per cent are from outside. What ownership and commitment can they demonstrate to the City? How much will they know? We have to change cadre and recruitment rules to ensure that the City has core managers who have worked in the City and who know the City,” Bhaskar explained.
The Palike administrator made the point that people from outside Bengaluru were shocked to hear that “the fastest growing city in India” was slack in its revenue generation compared to its expenditure. “No one seems to believe that a city which has very good office space and retail trends is not able to make enough money to grow.”
Smart City a western concept, should be inclusive, says ex-CS
On the other hand, former chief secretary and urban development expert A Ravindra has said that, the concept of Smart City is western and needs to be adaptable to the Indian context to be successful.
“It should also be inclusive and include the poor and the middle-class and not just the elite. It should be affordable and sustainable too,” he said, speaking as chairman of the Smart Cities India Foundation (SCIF) which organised a seminar on smart cities at the World Trade Center here on Wednesday.
An ambitious initiative of the Central government, the Smart City project has been allocated Rs 48,000 crore in the Union budget. The Smart City concept has become important because the number of Indians living in urban areas shot up to 377 million in 2011 from 76 million in 1961 and is likely to go up to 600 million by 2031. There is competition between five cities—Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Pune and Hyderabad—to become the Smart City Capital of India, Ravindra added.
Bengaluru has an edge over other cities as it has a high per capita income, more than $10,000 millionaires and 60,000 super rich. But the Smart City concept can’t be only for this section. “The concept has to address the socio-economic inequities for it to sink deep and be sustainable in the city. There also has to be re-development of old areas. Then there has to be focus on concepts of alternative living like solar energy and rainwater harvesting. All of these will enable us to root the Smart City concept in the Indian reality,” Ravindra said.
The former bureaucrat expressed anxiety about public and private partnership (PPP). “In domains like Smart City, the PPP has not worked to a great extent. We have to try it out on a smaller scale before moving to the larger domain. But so far, the PPP has been disappointing. We have to find ways to refurbish it.”
