Staff shortage, financial dependency plague local governance in India | Data Premium

Most Indian cities lack transparency and do not publish accessible civic and financial data

Mega cities: The illuminated view of the Brihan Mumbai Municipal Corporation building. | Photo Credit: ROY CHOWDHURY A

An annual survey of Indian cities shows that a majority of local governments are financially dependent on their State governments. They also have limited control over who to hire and how to distribute work. The report found that only Assam empowers its city governments to collect all key taxes. Except five States — Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, Meghalaya, and Rajasthan — all the others have to get approval from the State before borrowing money.

The report, Annual Survey of India’s City-Systems (ASICS) 2023, was published by the Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy, a non-profit institution.

Table 1 | The table shows the asymmetry of the mayor/council powers across various city categories.

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Table 1 shows this asymmetry of power across four city categories — megacities (>4 million (mn) population), large cities (1-4 mn), medium cities (0.5 mn-1 mn), small cities (<0.5 mn). It shows that while megacities have more of a say over their finances, their mayors do not have a five-year tenure and are not directly elected. On the other hand, more mayors in smaller cities have a five-year tenure and are directly elected, but lack a say on the city’s finances.

The report also shows that mayors and councils have limited power in staff appointments and promotions. For instance, only a handful of States have empowered their city governments to appoint municipal commissioners. In fact, no city has complete power over its staff. Cities especially lack control over their senior management teams who are deputed directly by State governments, which makes it tough to initiate disciplinary proceedings against them if needed. The report says because of this, they are not able to build a “strong organisation or exact accountability” from the workers.

Chart 2 | The chart shows the availability of civic data in capital cities.

The report also speaks of the lack of transparency in publishing cities’ civic information which citizens can access easily. Only 11 of the 35 States/Union Territories have enacted the Public Disclosure Law that mandates publishing of key civic data. As shown in Chart 2, one capital city in India publishes its internal audit report and two publish annual reports. Eleven of them publish their minutes of meeting and 17 make available their decision making process.

Table 3 | The table shows the asymmetry of financial transparency in the capital cities of India. Figures denote % of capital cities.

More important is financial transparency, where the city has to make available its overall budget, budget for each ward, and financial statements every quarter and also annually. Data show that no city publishes a quarterly financial audited statement. As shown in Table 3, only 28% of them disseminate their annual audited financial statements. The number goes down further to 17% if only the mega cities are considered. While bigger cities do publish their city budgets, smaller cities lag there with just 40%-65% of them publishing that information. Worryingly none of the mega, large, and medium capital cities publish their internal audit information.

Chart 4 | The chart shows the vacancy (in %) in local governance.

Due to poor control over appointment of staff, the local governments suffer from high levels of unfilled posts. Data show that 35% of posts in India’s municipal corporations are vacant. The vacancy progressively worsens with 41% posts being vacant among municipalities and 58% being vacant in town panchayats (Chart 4).

A comparison with other metropolises such as New York, London and Johannesburg shows that such a crippling shortage of staff is limited to Indian cities.

Chart 5 | The chart shows the number of municipal staff per one lakh population in Indian and global cities.

There are 5,906 city workers in New York and 2,936 in London for every one lakh population compared to just 317 in Bengaluru, 586 in Hyderabad, and 938 in Mumbai. Cities such as New York also been empowered to impose taxes, approve their own budget, invest and borrow without approval.

Source: Annual Survey of India’s City-Systems (ASICS) 2023

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