Bengaluru
Ward committees, which civic activists say is the platform where democracy comes to life, are steadily gaining popularity and have become more regular in the past six months in Bengaluru. Between September and December last year, out of the 1,864 ward committee meetings that were mandated as per law, the city’s civic body conducted 1,553 meetings, according to a study undertaken by Janaagraha, a Bengaluru-based NGO.
While 1,170 meetings were held during September 2021 to April 2022, 2,419 meetings were conducted between August 2020 and September 2021, according to Janaagraha’s assessment.
Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) is divided into eight zones and 243 wards. Each ward is a small geographic area with 40,000-50,000 population. A corporator is elected from each ward once in five years. Every ward has engineers and health inspectors and other officials that are responsible for providing services to citizens in that ward.
Civic activist Srinivas Alavilli said a ward committee meeting is where citizens of the ward can meet the corporator and all the officials that are working in the ward, in person to address local issues, monitor expenses, and make plans for the future.
Santosh Nargund of Janaagraha said that in the past one year, Bengaluru stands out compared many other cities in terms of ward committees. “During Covid, they realised the importance of ward committees. How it helped the government reach out to the citizens. Post Covid, they realised the utilities of ward committees and senior officials are enabling the running of ward committees. So, ward committees have been functioning consistently the past six months. It is definitely a leap forward in terms of participatory democracy,” Nargund said.
“Citizens’ role in democracy comes alive in ward committees, where they can participate directly in the functioning of the democracy and bring changes. Citizens are more concerned about the state of roads, water, bus stops, playgrounds, parks and issues like that. You can discuss these things in the ward committee meetings,” Nargund said.
Alavilli pointed out that no other major city in India has ward committees like Bengaluru. This is made possible by ‘BBMP Act 2021’ which replaced the earlier Karnataka Municipal Corporation Act that governs all other city corporations of Karnataka and provides for ward committees. In Bengaluru, ward committee meetings are expected to happen once a month, on the first Saturday of every month in the ward office at 10 am.
Civic activist and convener of Citizens’ Agenda for Bengaluru, Sandeep Anirudhan, said, “Wherever citizen engagement is high and there is demand, ward committee meetings have become more regular. With a lot of citizen pressure, the meetings are being held also on the 1st and 3rd Saturdays of the month, in many wards, as notified. This is leading to a sea change in the way citizens engage with the government. Citizens and officials are building a new relationship based on awareness and mutual engagement. Citizens feel a lot more empowered as they are in a position to question or influence decision-making relating to their neighbourhoods.”
Anirudhan pointed out that even before independence, municipalities were powerful and devolved, and it produced some of the finest leaders during the freedom struggle, such as Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel, Subhash Chandra Bose, who were all mayors of their respective city municipalities. “If that experience is anything to go by, then the resumption of grassroot democracy will help us incubate a new crop of informed, engaged citizens who will go on to become political leaders of the future,” Anirudhan added.
According to Janaagraha, during the review period of September 2022 to December 2022, 388 meetings were held per month on an average across the wards of BBMP. All the wards managed to conduct at least two meetings during the four months considered for review. The maximum number of ward committee meetings (417) were conducted during the month of October 2022, Janaagraha’s data showed.
Dasarahalli, East, Mahadevapura, Raja Rajeshwari Nagara, South and Yelahanka were the highly performing zones while Bommanahalli, West was classified as a partially performing zone. 132 Wards (57% of the total wards) have conducted all the eight meetings in the quarter months considered for review, according to Janaagraha. However, only a few wards have been successful in uploading meetings’ proceedings regularly on the BBMP website, it added.
Alavilli said that according to data, while quality is still lacking, quantity has drastically improved particularly since the zonal commissioners started ensuring ward meetings happen. Chief Commissioner instructed zonal commissioners to visit ward committee meetings in their zone to ensure compliance, he said.
But all wards do not have ward committee meetings. Bengaluru has been without an elected body since September 2020 when the term of the BBMP ended, and the last BBMP polls were held in November 2015. In the absence of elected representatives, that is Corporators, BBMP has appointed Nodal Officers to chair the ward committee meetings. Alavilli said that in some wards, the Nodal officers have not been appointed or not trained. This leads to several wards not holding monthly ward committee meetings.
Nargund said that while there is no elected council, the fact that the ward committees are continuing is a reassuring thing. “As a democracy, everybody desires an elected council. When there is a leader, there is ownership and accountability. While that is the desirable thing, the fact that the ward committees are continuing is a reassuring thing. The ward committees have been continued by the senior officials, knowing the value of it,” he said.
Stressing that ward committees are here to stay, Nargund said that the question is not whether there are ward committees, but about strengthening the institution to solve the civic issues plaguing the IT hub at the grassroots level. “Now, there should be a set of standard procedures, bylaws, by which they can define the role of the ward committee and institutionalise it. For example, the budget allocation has to be decentralised to the ward level. People know what issues need to be addressed. Surveys can be done and ward development plan can be made. From there, we can draw estimates, which can be presented to the BBMP which can then make allocations. This is true decentralisation and realisation of ward committees,” Nargund said.