The Big Story: Top-heavy India

The “millennium city” Gurgaon saw yet another rather un-millenial sight on Thursday as commuters were stuck – for sometimes as long as six hours – in a massive traffic on the arterial Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway. Rain has caused the Badhshahpur drain to overflow, leading to water logging and gridlock.

Gurgaon is a unique city, home to some of the India’s largest corporations and large numbers of affluent white-collar workers. It's also a case study in the problems caused by the lack of local government. Stuck in the traffic jam, many commuters were tweeting to the chief minister of Haryana state to help resolve the situation. Gurgaon’s weak, ineffective municipal corporation, whose job it should be to secure the city’s drains, wasn’t even being considered.

This is troubling.

India’s cities face a crisis of governance. In Bengaluru, daily traffic jams make the city a challenge to navigate. In Mumbai, chronic neglect is succeeding in killing of India’s financial nerve centre. The British-built local train system is so crowded and overworked that nine commuters die on it every day while simply trying to get to work. Work on a post-colonial option has been slow: completed in 2014, the tiny 11-kilometre first line of the Mumbai metro took more than six years to build.

Earlier India could have blamed the lack of money – but that is difficult to swallow for examples such as Mumbai, Bengaluru and Gurgaon. Their residents surely generate enough taxes to build roads, trains and sewers? The problem lies squarely in India’s top-heavy governance structures that has made city government a farce. India’s city governments have limited avenues to raise revenues and their powers to implement autonomous plans are restricted.

Around the world, cities are engines for growth. India needs to give its big cities effective governance mechanisms so that they can chart their own course and, in return, contribute to India’s prosperity.

Political Picks
1. Now Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Mehbooba Mufti claims that had security forces known that they were killing Burhan Wani, he would have been spared.
2. A deal between the government and Congress on the Goods and Services Tax bill could be in the offing.
3. West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee made a forceful pitch to Prime Minister Narendra Modi about the his government’s moves to undermine federalism and push the states into debt traps.
4. The Opposition and the government faced off in the Lok Sabha on Thursday on the issue of rising prices

Punditry
1. Kashmir needs its administrators to approach it with a new healing touch, says former foreign secretary Shyam Saran in the Hindustan Times.
2. The concept of private members’ bill is central to a deliberative democracy, argues SN Sahu in the Indian Express.
3. In the Hindu, former finance minister Yashwant Sinha recounts how, in 1991, he almost presented a budget liberalising the economy, only for his government to be pulled down.

Giggle

Don't Miss
The first village Modi adopted is in a shambles, the second is on the warpath, reports Dhirendra K Jha.

Retired agricultural scientist Mishra also points to the fact that agriculture has declined in the village after Modi took it under his wing.

“Till two years back this village was known for its innovative farming,” said Mishra. “But once it was adopted by Modi and expectations went up, agriculture became a casualty. Many young farmers saw in this drama a way to make quick money. They became contractors and started neglecting agriculture.”