Tuesday, September 20, 2005

City planning

Tavleen Singh squarely blames the bureaucrats for hindering India, on its way to becoming an economic success. She feels administrative reforms will help here.

The Govt is a dead elephant
By Tavleen Singh
The Indian bureaucrat does not want India to become a rich country, he does not want free markets and he does not want a truly free society because when these things happen, his powers diminish immediately
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Let us go further. India has the worst roads, water and electricity supply, public (government) schools, hospitals and cities in the world. This affects us directly but too few of us ask any questions. If we did we would discover that the obstacles officials put in the way of our ordinary needs get multiplied a thousand times as we go higher up the echelons of bureaucratic power. So even when you have a Chief Minister who genuinely wants to make a difference, even when he comes up with plans to improve schools, housing or healthcare, when these plans reach the hands of his officials they stop. The bureaucrats he is forced to deal with allow nothing to happen, nothing to go forward and soon his five years are up and he loses his election because he has succeeded in doing nothing and the same bureaucrats remain in important jobs to ensure that the next chief minister does nothing either.
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Is this what is stopping Dharam Singh from achieving anything so far ? Possible factor. But, he also has power over them. So he can, if he wants to.

Is this the reason behind Bangalore infrastructure woes and failure in Mumbai in July ? Venkat Krishnan suggests more power to local governance as a solution. Well that idea did come up during the Mumbai deluge, esp when you compare the city's tax revenue vs returns in administration, city planning and infrastructure.
How about city govts?
By Venkat Krishnan
The only way to get cities some attention would be to get local governments, for which autonomy and representation are both important.

3 comments:

Sugar said...

Thanks for visiting my blog! I had logged on thinking... boy this blogging thing doesn't seem to be "happening" and was ready to hit the delete button. :)

khelnayak said...

Hi there...coming back after a long time.
Good to see this post. I had been once to the home of our corporator in pune. I too posed such questions to him (of course, more so related to sports :) ). He said he invested arnd 15 lakhs for a mere corporator election and asked me the ways to recover that money.

I think all the problems lie therein. Nobody actually cares if they stay in power or not. What they do care is how much moolah they make in those 5 years. Administration, governance....all these seem secondary.

Do check out the following link.
http://www.arunbhatiaelect.org/

I just wish we have more of such bhatias.

khelnayak said...

Hey prithi, are you below 30? If yes, then do mail me. I have a mail inviting creative writing to be considered for awards. :) And what more. The organisers are from bangalore itself.

And yeah, thanks for linking me! Tell your hubby too abt my blog. :) I am sure he will support n encourage me in my endeavour. :)

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