The Globalizing State, Public Services and the New Governance of Urban Local Communities in India: A Colloquium

Abstract

2005 was another important year, as the Gujarat Urban Renewal Mission was launched under the UDUHD, headed by the Chief Minister, with the Minister of Urban Development as its Vice Chairperson, and 15 other members on the Board, including the Chief Secretary and the secretaries of the key government departments. The key objective of the mission was to mobilize resources through market for financing investments in infrastructure development. Municipalities and the Corporations are governed by the Gujarat Municipalities (Nagarpalika) Act, 1963 and the Bombay Provincial Municipal Corporations (BPMC) Act, 1949, respectively. They cover almost all the functions of the urban local bodies (ULBs) prescribed in the 'Twelfth Schedule,' Article 243 of the 74th Constitutional amendment. However, the Government of Gujarat made certain amendments in Sections 63 and 66 of the Acts in 1993 to meet the requirements of the Constitution amendment. Most of these amendments are not substantial in terms of assigned functions. The major amendment is related to added reservation of seats for women and backward classes. The amended Act also provides reservation for SC, ST, backward classes, and women for the office of the Mayor. A new section was added making provision for the "Constitution of Ward committees" in the cities with population of three lakhs or more. The urban population of Gujarat is quite substantial, at 26 per cent of the State's population in 1961, and growing to 38 per cent in 2001. This study is based on data from two major cities in Gujarat, namely, Surat and Junagarh. Surat Surat, located in Southern Gujarat, on the Arabian Sea coast, is Gujarat's second-largest city as well as an important commercial and industrial hub. It is one of India's fastest growing cities, with the population growing from 317,000 in 1961 to 2.8 million in 2001. Surat became a Municipal Corporation in 1964, and today, has the highest per capita revenue of all the 7 Municipal Corporations in the state, at Rs.1,901. Surat has a Citizens' Charter and has also received an award for the country's best grievance redressal system. However, the system is pre-structured in a way that complaints related to policy decisions remain outside its scope. Junagadh A city in the Saurashtra peninsula of Western Gujarat with a population of around 250,000, Junagadh is home to Gujarat's smallest and newest Municipal Corporation, established in 2004. The city of Junagadh has had a historically low rate of growth, rising from 74,000 in 1961 to 180,000 in 2001, and has the lowest per capita revenue in the state, at Rs.107. E-governance in Junagadh is more or less on paper and the complaint redressal system is at a rudimentary stage. Sanitation In terms of sanitation, Surat saw a great deal of action in the aftermath of the plague outbreak in the city during the early 1990s and the floods experienced in the mid-2000s. This led to the construction of water treatment plants, sewage treatment plants, bunds and embankments, and new systems for solid waste management. The...

Politics of Governance: A Study of Gujarat

“…Its rank order remains sixth in MMR among all the states in 2011. This author’s fieldwork in an exploratory study (Shah, 2010) finds that often private maternity homes avoid taking complicated and risky cases. There is also a complaint that the doctors registered under the scheme also charge the patients over and above the fees from the government.…”