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This blog is part of a series that explores the idea of citizen’s participation in urban governance through the Cubbon Park Case Study. Part one and Part two of the series were published in September.  

Even as we go to press, the issue of allowing traffic to ply within Cubbon Park, an important lung space in Bengaluru, has been sidelined by another emerging environmental crisis. A peripheral ring road is proposed to be built, which will skirt the city of Bengaluru on its eastern and northern flanks thus diverting traffic away from the city. That is a laudable objective. However, in the process of building the road, not less than 30,000 trees are proposed to be cut down. A forest area is to be sliced, disrupting the fragile ecosystem of whatever remains of the city’s suburban forests. Endangered animals like the Slow Loris, already scarce due to habitat destruction and regressive superstitions, may go extinct.

Public hearings that are mandated for the project to secure environmental clearance have been packed by concerned people, including environmentalists who predict a disaster for the city if the road is not shifted from its proposed alignment. Yet, even as these discussions are aired and argued out in the public, there is a portent of doom, around the entire issue. It seems inevitable, as has happened with several other projects of similar nature in the immediate past that in this case too, public objections will be brushed aside and the road will be built along its present alignment, notwithstanding the serious objections to it.

On another note, a few years back, I was at the training academy for IAS officers at Mussoorie, speaking about the need for a guaranteed land titling system to ensure that property rights are secured. The audience was a bright, if somewhat bored group of senior officers who had spent two decades in the service. As the discussion strayed into the issue of peoples’ participation in urban governance, the general mood in the room was one of scepticism.

‘Why do we need people to participate in urban governance? Nobody is interested,’ said a participant. If specialists are put in charge and bureaucrats are given a free hand without political interference, we would be able to deliver good governance and choose the right options when faced with choices, he concluded.

How best can democracy be modulated, to ensure that all voices are heard, and the right decisions are taken?

I could not help smiling grimly. In a previous class, while speaking of the participation of people in rural governance and explaining the various provisions of the laws of most states, which provide avenues for people to gather and discuss governance by Panchayats, I was told the following. People of rural areas lack ‘capacity’ – whatever that means – and therefore, it was futile to expect them to participate usefully in governance.

I turned the point back to the audience to reflect upon. If, in rural areas, people don’t have the ‘capacity’ to participate, and in urban areas, if people don’t have time to participate, then where will they participate? I asked. Is there, I added, a 10-foot-wide sliver of magical land lying somewhere in the suburbs, where people have both the capacity and the time to participate?

Needless to say, I did not get a cogent answer. Just a snort of disapproval at the assumed speciousness of my logic.

So, this is the real problem.

That behind all the political rhetoric, the welter of laws and rules and regulations, the politician and the bureaucrat do not want people to participate. The bureaucrat is usually more vocal about this because they do not have to stand for elections. Politicians, on the other hand, will never say out loud that they don’t need to respond to people, except for those awkward three months before any election. They will play the game of exciting participation, but decisions are anyway taken and ready, much before the formality of consultation.

How do people overcome this problem? There is no point being naïve about it; to imagine that the problem does not exist at all. A polite politician or bureaucrat, who gives you a reason to exult simply because they heard you out fully and patiently, cannot ensure that your word actually makes a difference.

Will courts make a difference? Yes, and no. In the past, courts have stepped in for the marginalised, taken into account the minority view, and pushed for reforms even though the government was not ready for it. A good example is the role that courts have played in the enforcement of laws that were previously ignored, relating to maintaining air quality and the curbing of pollution. However, these decisions of courts are not consistent in their outrage, speed or the quality of their final directions. It always depends upon the personal preference of the Bench concerned. Must background research is done into discerning whether a judge is ‘green’ enough, before whom a case with environmental implications can be safely raised.

Courts can also cause harm or even damage to the eventual objective, by issuing decisions that are partly in the right direction, but which can upset reforms in another area. The initial judgments of courts on solid waste management are a case in point. These judgments placed the responsibility on ensuring safety and cleanliness on the district and revenue administration, referring to provisions in the criminal law about curbing public nuisances. These judgments did not take into account the fact that under the 74^th amendment and the State laws passed in pursuance of it, it was the municipalities that were central to the solution of the problem.

Taking advantage of these judgments of courts, the district administration clawed their way back into municipal administration, thus setting back the objective of strengthening local governments, which was the objective of the 74^th amendments. It took at least a decade before the institutional damage to local governments were cured.

Clearly, courts are not the final solution to set right the bad decisions of an errant executive. Then how best can democracy be modulated, to ensure that all voices are heard, and the right decisions are taken? This is a problem that must find an urgent resolution – nearly all problems that humanity will face in future, will be wicked ones, where the solutions will not be acceptable to all sections of society, and often, the best decision will be one that dissatisfies everybody equally.

T.R. Raghunandan is an Advisor at the Accountability Initiative. 

This blog is part of a series that explores the conceptual underpinnings of decentralisation, and citizen participation. The first part can be found here.  

As I wrote in last week’s blog, citizens cannot afford to take assurances from government officers and ministers that something or the other will be done, at face value. That phase of naivety is over. Repeatedly, one has seen the government simply ignoring citizens’ feedback and citizens’ protests when it takes decisions. This is particularly so when it comes to decisions that adversely affect the environment, as in the case of allowing traffic into Cubbon Park, a vitally important lung space in the heart of Bengaluru city. 

There are several ways in which the government can successfully blunt citizens’ participation, particularly in the civic space. One is not talking about larger order issues, such as the question of inclusion, or the policy with respect to national security and so on. One is merely speaking of instances such as these- where citizens protest against the entry of vehicular traffic into a public park and the government ignores that protest and allows traffic in.

Let me speak of three such effective ways. These are: (a) to deliberately have multiple institutions with overlapping responsibilities, (b) to use that excuse to kick decisions upstairs, and (c) to say that the suggestions of the people can be implemented but on a future date, when all other problems are solved and everything falls into place. 

One of the main ways in which the government successfully overcomes citizens’ wishes is to pass the buck. Accountability cannot be enforced if roles and responsibilities of government entities are deliberately kept fuzzy. This is the oldest trick in the book, and the government has perfected this ploy to a fine art. 

One would expect that the Brihat Bangalore Mahanagar Palike (BBMP), which is the City Corporation of Bengaluru, would be the final authority to take decisions on whether traffic should be allowed into a park. In this case, the City Corporations elected body (which, incidentally has been superseded last week and an administrator appointed to look after the city’s affairs) unanimously resolved that traffic should not be allowed into Cubbon Park. But the government cheerfully ignored that resolution. 

How the government gained the locus standi to do such a thing, was by deliberately creating multiple institutions for the city, so as to confuse and deflect the citizen’s pressure. 

Simply put, not all responsibilities listed in the 12th Schedule of the Constitution, which lists our 18 matters that may be devolved to local governments, are devolved to the BBMP. Even with some of the responsibilities devolved, the actual functions and activities are narrow and limited.

For example, the BBMP is assigned a range of powers and responsibilities with respect to Horticulture, maintenance of parks and protecting the environment. Yet, Cubbon Park remains within the ownership of the State Horticultural Department. That gives the institutional leeway for the state government to interfere in a decision that ought to remain with the City Corporation.

Accountability cannot be enforced if roles and responsibilities of government entities are deliberately kept fuzzy.

Similarly, when it comes to urban land use planning, several other institutions also function in Bengaluru city, with or without overlaps with BBMP functions. Earlier, while these included the Bangalore Development Authority and the Bangalore Metropolitan Region Planning Authority, today, in a COVID-like spurt, there are no less than 11 independent planning authorities looking at land use planning in and around Bangalore. There could not be a worse approach to land use planning.

Along with fragmentation of powers and responsibilities to confuse people, the other way to escape accountability is to kick the final decision upstairs. In the case of Cubbon Park, the decision could well have been left to the City Corporation. But no. that wasn’t the case. The matter went first to the Chief Secretary of the State. Mind you, it’s not a Chief Secretary’s job to direct traffic in Cubbon Park. Yet, the Chief Secretary chairs something known as the Bangalore Coordinating Committee. Nobody seems to notice the irony of this. 

Why do we need a Bangalore Coordinating Committee?

Because the governance of Bengaluru is fragmented, deliberately, between a multitude of institutions with overlapping responsibilities. This is deliberately done because the more confusion that one can create, the easier it is for everybody in the government to avoid accountability to the people, and assume power without responsibility for the consequences. This enables the Chief Secretary, whose role is to be the head of the civil service and secretary to the Cabinet of the State Government, to become a CEO – a Chief Everything Officer. 

Eventually, because of the public outcry, the matter did not stop with the Chief Secretary, but went to the Chief Minister. Therefore, in the middle of a worrisome pandemic, an economic crisis and much more, the Chief Minister, who is as remote from the city’s administration as anyone can be, was entrusted the task of deciding the fate of a city park. 

The third way to blunt citizens’ protests is to assert that any decision is contingent on some future perfect circumstance. This was clear in the remark of a senior police officer, who said that while protecting Cubbon Park was important, banning vehicles might affect the traffic flow in the central business district, which can be solved only if there is a comprehensive traffic management plan for the area. According to him, only a perfect solution ought to be implemented. 

Well, sir, so who should prepare the comprehensive traffic management plan? Is that the job of the citizenry? Or which one of your multiple institutions will undertake that task? What have all of you been doing so far, then? Could we ask that question?

Yes, you can, but in reply, you will only hear a resounding silence.

The opinions expressed are of the author and do not represent an institutional stand. 

T.R. Raghunandan is an Advisor at Accountability Initiative. 

Also Read from the Author: Whither, Local Governments, in the Pandemic?

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