The state should back out of city governance
“It is tempting to judge our mayors for the little things that make city life livable, the depth of the potholes, the smell of the streets, whether or not the traffic lights are in synch. But the best mayors have also been those who act on a grand scale, building bridges, saving schools, finding the funds that cities forever lack”
– Excerpt from an article in Time magazine on the five best mayors of USA in 2005
In different countries of the world, especially in the USA, mayors of towns have ranged from being enfants terribles to absolute darlings. But they have all been characters. Time magazine called USA’s mayors “showmen, radicals, bullies and rebels.”
Our Goa hasn’t quite had its share of characters as “city fathers”. All have fallen way short of the capacity to elevate themselves from the decorative largesse the post comes with, in lieu being a foot soldier of a local politician, or a conduit for decisions and funds to be used in a doctored manner in the name of development. Clearly, Goa’s mayors have not lived up to the lineage of the word mayor, which comes from the Latin maior meaning greater or bigger. Which is perhaps why, Panjim Mayor Surendra Furtado sticks out like a sore thumb in this cosy arrangement where mayors are supposed to be enjoying their place in the sun as the decorative head of the city council and nothing more. Unlike most others Furtado has grown up in the city, hobnobbing with its social class, beyond his role as a city politician. While he has had larger ambitions of being an MLA or the state president of the Congress, choices that haven’t quite fructified, there has been no doubt that he has been an impressive civic leader of the town.
That is the reason why inspite of Furtados almost cantankerous relationship with the chief minister and the local MLA, people see merit in the causes he has taken up and the fight that he fights, because there can be no debate on the need to take up the issues he has taken. From August 30, 2013 to April 17, 2014, he has consistently written letters to various authorities from the chief minister to the defense minister raising critical concerns of Panjim, ranging from handing over military land to the CCP, land for split level parking facilities, flow of funds under the JNNURM scheme, getting a full time commissioner, enhancing the water supply to the city and so on.
That is why when the mayor has taken on his commissioner over the contentious issue of the meaningless re-digging of the Dona Paula Miramar road, the voices of the people are ringing in his support. Irrespective of the justification of this, the government cannot just usurp the right of an elected city body, by bypassing it and commencing action on the city’s roads. It’s baffling why the road had to be concretized merely three months after it was opened and closed for the laying of a sewage network. But the narrative here should go beyond whether this road digging is justified or not. The discourse has to be why the state government makes the city government subservient and irrelevant. How can projects vital to the city be executed by not just ignoring but wilfully bypassing the corporation by using the services of the commissioner who happens to be the managing director of GSIDC, which is executing the projects?
This isn’t about Panjim alone, though there are no other Surendra Furtados heading other urban bodies. The political executive should cede city governance to the elected city body, limiting itself to advice and allocation of funds earmarked in the city’s budget after wide consultations. What is happening now is that urban bodies have in a spineless fashion, become willing servants of the ruling political establishment and in cases like Panjim, where Mayor Furtado has fought, the state has emerged as a bully.
It is also mandatory to have a separate municipal cadre of trained officials with the mayor being the authority for all appointments and transfers, to allow complete functional autonomy. Ironically this was always the idea based on devolution of powers to local bodies, but has remained just that– an idea whose time has not yet come.
