Urban Affairs Ministry recommends amending Constitution for larger municipal autonomy

Noting that the monetary autonomy of municipalities throughout the nation is “far from being achieved”, a brand new report by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs beneficial a Constitutional modification to handle the issues confronted by Indian cities.
While the 74th Constitutional Amendment Act — instituted virtually three a long time in the past to permit for decentralised city governance — has sufficient provisions to handle the issues dealing with cities in the present day, the report states, native our bodies’ features need to be enacted by state legislatures, “which has compromised the uniform implementation of the Act.”
“Thus, critically speaking, the 74th Constitutional Amendment cannot adequately address the problems that face Indian cities today. Even though the law has creative solutions to address the problems, it lacks proper implementation. And even when the laws are implemented, there is a lack of autonomy in these urban local governing bodies’ decision-making. For this, the constitution has to be amended …” the Municipal Performance Index by the Smart Cities Mission states.
Only 20 cities out of the 111 cities surveyed have the facility to borrow and make investments funds with out state approval, the report finds. “This is a serious blow to the goal of the 74th Constitutional Amendment Act … Inherently, major financial decisions of municipal bodies are taken by state governments, and not the municipal office-holders themselves,” the report states.
Also, the report suggests making a five-year mayoral time period throughout India and consolidating planning, growth, housing, water, and atmosphere actions to report back to municipalities reasonably than State governments throughout the nation. As the monetary autonomy of cities varies by state municipal legal guidelines, the report finds that cities with extra monetary autonomy fare higher in service and governance supply.
While cities have showcased robust fiscal duty and budgeting within the report, expenditure administration (or the measure of environment friendly utilization of Central and State grants) present decrease scores. Cities are extra environment friendly at utilising state grants than central ones, it discovered.
Also, half of taking part municipalities generate lower than 23 per cent of their complete income themselves. Half of the cities generate 80 p.c of their income by means of taxes alone, whereas 14 are solely depending on taxes for his or her income. The overwhelming majority (95 per cent) are in a position to increase solely lower than 5 per cent of their earnings and borrowings by means of alternate sources of financing, excluding state and central grants.
Highlighting the minimal paths for metropolis finance past State and Central allocation, the report suggests shifting income sources from the State to the town. It additionally recommends actualising the roles of ward committees within the planning course of, as they had been envisioned within the 74th CAA.
One of the problems highlighted within the report is a low credit standing for almost all of Indian municipalities, particularly these with lower than one million inhabitants. “Urban governance becomes heavily dependent on the allocation of State and Central grants, as lenders would also have a preference for big cities that can generate the capital to fund their borrowings from the market. This potentially also dampens the creation of cities as self-sustaining economic units of governance, that can take up challenges in urban governance by itself,” the report states.
Municipal planning has additionally been highlighted by the report as having “fallen short”.
Plan preparation surveys (together with land use plans, native space planning, and GIS mapping) discovered that 27 municipalities haven’t up to date their growth or grasp plan in a decade and solely 31 have plan implementation by means of city planning schemes.
Plan implementation analyses discovered that 91 cities would not have plans tilting legal guidelines, 78 cities would not have land pooling, and 60 don’t incentivise inexperienced buildings.
“Plan Enforcement appears to be a contentious point across all of these cities. Municipalities such as NDMC, Hyderabad and Bengaluru have scored low in this sector. As these cities have grown exponentially to meet the demand of rapid economic growth, a significantly low score in terms of Plan Enforcement could point to the presence of informal planning networks, that operate beyond the formal planning structures in place. This could further imply the lack of municipal personnel and staff to effectively implement and enforce norms and regulations in growing metropolitan hubs,” the report stated.
Contrastingly, cities carried out higher inside the Services vertical, particularly in training, and registration & permits. However, inside this vertical, well being efficiency was the “least impressive”, the report says, highlighting the rise of non-communicable ailments resembling diabetes, hypertension, cancers, outbreaks of seasonal sickness, accidents and accidents, and air air pollution circumstances.
Areas that wanted enchancment had been water and waste water parameters in addition to stable waste administration and sanitation.
Education, regardless of not being a definite authorized mandate of many cities, has nonetheless seen “considerable success,” the report says.
Certain know-how parameters, resembling digital literacy and digital entry, additionally rated very low throughout cities within the index and throughout areas.
The Municipal Performance Index discovered high cities over 1 million inhabitants to be: Indore, Surat, Bhopal, Pimpri Chinchwad, and Pune. The final 5, from highest to lowest, had been: Aurangabad, North Delhi MC, Srinagar, Kota, and Guwahati.

For cities with lower than one million individuals, the highest of the checklist is: New Delhi MC, Tirupati, Gandhinagar, Karnal, and Salem. The backside, highest to lowest, is: Itanagar, Pasighat, Kohima, Imphal, and Shillong.
Bengaluru, Pune, Ahmedabad, Chennai, and Surat have topped the Ease of Living Index of cities with over one million inhabitants. At the underside of this checklist are, from highest to lowest, are: Amritsar, Guwahati, Bareilly, Dhanbad, and Srinagar.

For cities with lower than one million individuals, the highest of the checklist is: Shimla, Bhubaneswar, Silvassa, Kakinada, and Salem. The backside of the checklist is: Aligarh, Rampur, Namchi, Satna, and Muzaffarpur.