The De-democratization of Urban Local Governance – Law School Policy Review & Kautilya Society

Dr. Stéphanie Tawa Lama*

Credit-ET Government

The 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendment Acts (CAA) of India, hailed for their intent to democratize local governance, offered promises of expanded political participation, reserved seats for marginalized groups, and envisioned citizen engagement through ward committees. Three decades on, a sobering reality emerges. While elections became regular, subsequent reforms introduced restrictive criteria for candidacy, delayed elections, and even introduced non-elected bodies like the Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) under the Smart City Mission. This erosion of democratic ideals, epitomized by curtailed political participation and diminished collective control over local governance, marks a stark contrast to the original vision of deepening democracy. This analysis calls for renewed attention to the de-democratization of urban local governance in India.

Anniversaries always offer an opportunity to look back and reflect on the legacy of events. The anniversary of a law invites us to compare intentions and facts, promises and reality, discourse and action. The 73^rd and 74^th Constitutional Amendment Acts (“CAA”), adopted in 1993, certainly deserve an assessment, three decades later. Together, they defined a policy of democratic decentralization that marked a break with the past in several important ways. One of them being that for the first time, the difference between rural and urban local self-government was acknowledged.  However, late in the drafting process and reflected in the fact that the 74^th CAA, although similar in many ways to the 73^rd CAA, addresses the specificities of urban areas.

I want to focus here on the democratic promise of the 73^rd and 74^th CAAs. These two pieces of legislation are indeed considered as a major moment of democratic deepening because they enlarged political participation in three major ways. Firstly, they made it compulsory to hold local elections every five years, under the supervision of State Election Commissions. This was a major departure from the prevailing situation, where urban local bodies (“ULB”) could be superseded and ruled by bureaucrats, as elections could be postponed for years on end.

Secondly, having thus created some 3 million of new elective positions, the two CAAs introduced reservations for four social categories. In similarity with elections at the state and national levels, a number of seats would be reserved for Scheduled Castes (“SC”) and Scheduled Tribes (“ST”), in proportion to their weight in the local population. Strikingly for the first time, seats would also be reserved for women. Thirty-three percent (33%) of elective positions could now be contested only by women in every local body. In addition, it became possible to reserve seats for Backward Classes as well – the existence and size of this quotas being left to the discretion of the states.

Thirdly, new avenues of participation were offered to citizens, beyond participation in local elections. The gram sabha (the assembly of all voters of a gram panchayat), defined in the 73^rd CAA, was supposed to have an urban equivalent in the ward committees included in the 74^th CAA.

These three provisions, taken together, would considerably enlarge the “funnel of participation”, as was Rajiv Gandhi’s intention [1]. Indeed, at the end of the 1990s, the democratization of urban governance looked impressive. Although the voting rate was always lower in Municipal Corporations than in other local body elections, municipal elections did take place with regularity, as one state after another started implementing the 74^th CAA.

The conformity legislations adopted by the states (variously called Municipal Act, Municipal Election Act, Municipal Corporation Act etc.) used the room for maneuver allowed by the two CAAs in various ways – some of which opened up participation even further. Thus, over time, a majority of states increased women’s reservations from 33% to 50% of seats.

As far as citizen participation is concerned, the picture was always more ambiguous. In most states, ward committees were defined in such a way that they became not a space for citizen participation but a decentralized level of deliberation for elected councilors and municipal bureaucrats. However, truly participatory spaces did develop in many cities, as resident welfare associations took up a new role in urban governance. Moreover, in Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and Pune, new participatory schemes were implemented by state governments keen to showcase their “good governance”.

For a few years, therefore, it looked like the third tier in India’s federal structure might become the most democratic one. Three decades later, the situation looks very different.

Citizen participation was a major buzzword of the 1990 [2]. Now, it has fallen out of fashion with state governments. Participatory programs and policies such as the People’s Plan Campaign in Kerala, or the Bhagidari scheme in Delhi, lapsed as and when the parties that supported them were defeated electorally. Even the Aam Aadmi Party, who placed participation at the center of its agenda when it conquered the city-state of Delhi in 2015, hardly mentions it anymore.

What about ward committees? In spite of various attempts (most notably through the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission launched in 2007) to transform them into urban gram sabhas, called ward sabhas or area sabhas, they have remained largely closed to lay citizens.

The most significant change concerns local elections. Local self-government, and therefore local elections, are a state subject and as such they have proven to be a site of political innovations.  In every state, the Municipal (as well as Panchayati Raj) Acts have been repeatedly amended and a significant number of such amendments concern the right to stand for local elections. New grounds for disqualification have appeared. Some being present in many states, others more exceptional. Thus, the so-called two child norm – whereby the parents of three or more children cannot stand for local elections – was adopted first in Rajasthan in 1995, and then in many other states (including Andhra Pradesh, Haryana, Orissa, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat and Chhattisgarh) [3]. Several states also have made it compulsory for prospective candidates in local elections to have functional toilets in their house. Rajasthan and Haryana introduced, in 2014 and 2015 respectively, a disqualification based on people’s schooling level. Thus, in order to contest municipal elections in Haryana you need to have at least matriculation level (but if candidate is a woman or a Scheduled Caste person, then the minimum level is middle pass; and if candidate is a woman from SC category, then the minimum level is fifth class pass). Rajasthan even introduced a qualification based on age. In the state’s Municipalities Act 2009, a provision was made regarding horizontal reservations for people who are between 21 and 35 years old.

Thus, a series of local electoral reforms in states all over India, under the rule of different parties, largely remain under the radar of observers of urban governance and local democracy. Although, these reforms are not always politically motivated, they can be very significant. Some of these reforms have been resisted and contested in various arenas – legislative assemblies, the courts, the streets – occasionally leading to a repeal. We clearly need on the ground surveys to assess the actual impact of such reforms. However, what seems clear in any case is the existence of a trend towards restricting the right to stand in local elections, in stark contrast with the original project behind the 74^th CAA.

Moreover, in several states municipal elections have been postponed much beyond the six-month limit prescribed by the Constitution – despite the 2006 Supreme Court judgement insisting that “under no circumstance the (State) Election Commission would be justified in delaying the process of election after consulting the State Govt. and other authorities”.

Beyond the political context specific to each state, one can discern through (i) the accumulation of reforms restricting the right to stand and (ii) the multiplication of decisions to postpone elections, what looks like attempts to contain the democratization prescribed by the 74^th CAA.

The Smart City Mission (“SCM”) launched in 2015 only reinforces this trend. Although it concerns a minor part of Indian cities, the SCM introduces a new institution in urban governance: the Special Purpose Vehicle (“SPV”), led by senior bureaucrats and other appointees of the state government, is responsible for monitoring and approval of projects funded under the SCM. SPVs escape democratic control insofar as their members are not elected.

One may view this series of attempts to contain local elections as a testimony to their actual importance – against the common misconception that local self-government is a negligible level of Indian politics. However, a less optimistic assessment would consider that the democratization of local urban governance aimed at through the 74^th CAA has been short-lived.  De-democratization, according to Charles Tilly,  is promoted by the “reversal” of any of eight processes that he identifies as “necessary for democratization”, such as the “broadening of political participation” or the “enhancement of collective control over governmental resources and actions”. The multiplication of restrictions to the right to stand in local elections; the postponement of such elections; and the introduction of the SPV, a non-elected institution, arguably signify a narrowing of political participation and a reduction of collective control over (local) government. The de-democratization of local urban governance is a reality that demands attention.

*Dr. Stéphanie Tawa Lama (tawalama@ehess.fr) is a CNRS senior fellow at the Centre de Sciences Humaines, New Delhi.