(Cross posted from the article I wrote for SIPA's student blog themorningsidepost.com)
On Wednesday, 14th September 2011, when Dr.
Sameer Sharma, the Municipal Commissioner of the city of Hyderabad in India,
walked up to deliver his speech at SIPA’s Global Mayors Forum, few from the
audience had heard or known of Hyderabad as a model for India’s urban
development. Yet, fifty minutes later, few were left with doubt.
Global Mayors Forum is an exciting series featuring leaders
of the world’s most dynamic cities, and is sponsored by the Urban and Social
Policy concentration at SIPA. Prior participants at the Forum have included
Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City, Mayor Boris Johnson of London and
Mayor Syed Mustafa Kamal of Karachi. Introducing Dr. Sharma at the 2011 Global
Mayors Forum, Prof. Ester Fuchs, Director of Urban and Social Policy
concentration said “Cities are the world’s most important laboratories for
innovative policy making. This forum examines both challenges confronting
global cities and also showcases visionary and creative leaders of these cities
and the kind of policies that they pursue.”
Dr. Sharma, who belongs to the elite Indian Administrative
Services (IAS) cadre of civil servants in India, spoke candidly about his
experiences as a city manager, and the challenges he faced in making Hyderabad
India’s best governed city. In just under two years, Dr. Sharma brought about
sweeping changes in Hyderabad’s community participation structures, used
technology to increase accountability of government officials, and harnessed
the forces of globalization to propel Hyderabad’s long term economic growth.
Hyderabad, India’s sixth largest city with a population of 6
million, is the capital of the state of Andhra Pradesh in southern India. Over
the past two decades, the city has earned reputation as a global IT destination
and the nickname ‘Cyberabad’ after successfully attracting firms such as
Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon. However, the urban governance systems
in Hyderabad exhibited similar shortcomings as all major Indian cities – poor
service delivery and a highly centralized system of governance.
In 2009, soon after he returned from US with a Ph.D. in
Urban Development at the University of Cincinnati, Dr. Sharma took over the
office of the Municipal Commissioner of Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation.
Under India’s urban governance structure, the Commissioner holds executive
authority over a city and has powers far exceeding that of the Mayor. Dr Sharma
used this opportunity to blend his prior experiences as a Municipal
Commissioner (for the cities of Vijayawada and Vishakapatnam) in Andhra Pradesh
with the theories he came across in his doctoral program, to initiate a variety
of unique and innovative programs in Hyderabad.
One of these initiatives was the use mobile phones to
increase government accountability. In a first-of-its-kind deployment anywhere
across the world, the city of Hyderabad has built a web based Off Site Real
Time (OSRT) monitoring system which relies on the inbuilt camera of a mobile phone
and GPRS technology to match pictures of field level staff and their street
locations with preset data, and register attendance. An anywhere, anytime
accountability mechanism, the OSRT provides real-time information in solid
waste management, urban planning, public works and street lighting to municipal
managers and the citizens.
Another key initiative was the decentralization of local
governance in Hyderabad to Ward Committees (similar to Community Boards in New
York City) and Area Sabhas, or neighborhood associations. In determining which
functions would be devolved, Dr. Sharma referred to the “Principal of
Subsidiarity” – a commonly used concept in the theory of local governance.
Given that participatory democracy is a new concept to India’s urban citizens,
Dr. Sharma relied on 2009 Noble laureate Elinor Ostrom’s theory of “Rules in
Use” when formulating the procedures through which these local participatory
structures would function. The result has been a significant shift to bottom up
decision making where public interest is constructed through local discourse.
About 20% of the city’s annual budget is now decided through these new bodies.
While the community level decentralization project has been
welcomed by citizens and NGOs, Dr. Sharma cautioned that the initiative is
facing resistance from the city councilors, who are averse to sharing power and
having citizens ask them questions about their work. The true test of Dr.
Sharma’s initiatives will lie in the duration that they survive without being diluted
or subverted by elected representatives, and whether if Hyderabad’s model
inspires other cities across India to adopt similar programs. Nevertheless,
this interaction with Dr. Sharma showed SIPA students how individual leaders
with creative ideas can influence far reaching policies.
