Many agencies but nobody accountable for city’s tragedy

In Delhi, the joy of the first monsoon shower after a searing summer is killed almost instantly. Reports of water logging, traffic jams, roads crumbling and sewage backflow pour in even before the Met department gets its rain gauge out. Shivani Singh writes.

In Delhi, the joy of the first monsoon shower after a searing summer is killed almost instantly. Reports of water logging, traffic jams, roads crumbling and sewage backflow pour in even before the Met department gets its rain gauge out.

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It is a seasonal drill. A short spell of rain sinks our civic agencies’ tall claims of monsoon preparedness. Like the mess, the excuses for it remain the same. “It rained way too much for the city infrastructure to handle” or simply, “it was not in our area”.

The five civic agencies and the Delhi government’s public works department (PWD), who together control the road space in Delhi, fight over whose blocked drain was responsible for the backflow.

The traffic police blame the road agencies for the snarls even as its own signal system breaks down with a brief spell of rain. Power and water utilities are blamed for destroying the underground plumbing that makes roads cave in. Monsoon rains are anyway too short and sporadic in Delhi and the agencies simply wait for the headlines to fade out and then move on to the next bout of blame game on another civic issue.

Governance has long been a victim of multiple authorities in Delhi. There are no fewer than 98 urban bodies - local agencies, boards, and authorities -- serving the city, according to United Nation’s 2008 State of the World Cities report. With the trifurcation of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi in 2011, we added two more.

Now, there are eight different agencies handling drains, sewerage and water pipes. Road upkeep is again the responsibility of civic bodies, the Delhi Development Authority and the PWD. Primary schools are with the four civic agencies and the secondary schools with the Delhi government. Hospitals and healthcare involve the Centre, Delhi government, and the five municipalities.

The Union Home ministry handling internal security of the country also deals with the administrative matters of the civic bodies and Delhi Police. Major decisions of preparing and implementing the city’s master plan lie with the DDA that works under the Union Urban Development ministry. The Lieutenant Governor is the reporting manager for these agencies. But L-G office and the elected state government are not always on the same page.

So, it has never been easy to fix accountability for any civic mess, be it the bad handling of the Commonwealth Games, a building collapse, a waterlogged road or just a traffic snarl.

At a hearing of the Green Tribunal this week, lawyers representing different government agencies fought over who would remove concrete pavement tiles that were choking Delhi’s trees. Similarly, an HT report based on a reply to a Right to Information application revealed how no government agency was willing to take the responsibility of encroachment on the Yamuna riverbed, the biggest ecological disaster happening in Delhi.

The issue of full statehood has remained undecided despite the same party holding power at both Centre and Delhi. Other proposals of shifting control on law and order and land to the Delhi government have also been rejected.

The trifurcation of the MCD in 2011 was an opportunity for reorganising civic governance by streamlining the departments of education, public health, roads, sanitation and land that are presently controlled by different agencies into single respective units.

But all it achieved was a division of records, furniture and staff.

Decentralisation is a key to good governance. As it waits for the big legislative decisions, there is nothing to stop the government from forming small working groups for coordination among agencies on key civic, security and infrastructure issues.

But the formation of the Unified Urban Traffic and Transportation Infrastructure Planning Cell in 2008 was the first and the last step in this direction. It is five years since.