Ward Committees in Bengaluru come to life with budget allocation

Bengaluru: Citizens from different wards of Bengaluru participated in Janaagraha's #CityPolitics webinar titled 'MyCityMyBudget Phase 2 – Are Ward Committees using budget allocated to them' to find out how Bengaluru Ward Committees are utilizing the budget allocated to them.

In August last year, BBMP had allotted Rs 60 lakh to each of its 198 Ward Committees. The decision was taken after over 9,000 citizens submitted inputs in the #MyCityMyBudget campaign on how ward budgets needed to be spent on improving walkability and public toilets by identifying yellow spots.

"After we received inputs through the #MyCityMyBudget campaign we wanted to incentivize citizens to participate in their ward affairs by giving them a chance to decide. Citizens are the biggest stakeholders in ward development and maintenance. They need to continuously engage with their urban local bodies to ensure ward development," said BBMP Special Commissioner (Finance) Thulasi Maddineni, speaking at the webinar on Monday.

"Bengaluru has a reputation for active citizen participation. Allotting Rs 60 lakh to each of the ward committees was an act of faith in our citizens. Ward Committees are like Grama Sabhas and we now have regular meetings in most wards; just like grama sabhas, ward committees can be noisy but order comes out of the chaos," she said. Maddineni is also nodal officer in charge of Ward 19 Sanjaya Nagar and presides over ward committee meetings.

Speaking on how the budget needs to be spent, Maddineni said, "Of the Rs 60 lakhs, ₹20L allotted to potholes was used in October 2021, to speed up the work. The details on where the money is used are available with the Ward Engineer. With regard to Rs 20 lakh for footpaths, Janaagraha is taking up the Footpath Walkability Survey with citizens to help prioritise works. The work will be decided as per the input submitted by the citizens in the ward committee. BBMP is also maintaining close to 10,000 borewells. ₹20 lakh is allotted for maintenance and repair."

"We are nearing the end of January. Citizens can submit their inputs in the ward committees, which will help us, decide where the work needs to be taken up and use the funds," Maddineni added.

Srinivas Alavilli, Head, Civic Participation, Janaagraha said, "Participatory democracy in urban areas has been restricted to academic discussions and largely remained wishful thinking but not anymore in Bengaluru. Today we heard from so many citizens how they worked together in their own ward committees and made concrete plans on how to use the ₹60L funds allocated to them. It is heartening to see active citizens from across India join this discussion. The BBMP is making great strides in institutionalizing citizen participation by conducting ward committee meetings and allocating funds and I'm confident that this is a great beginning. We urge more citizens to get involved locally and taste the power of community engagement and ownership. It can be done and it must be done not just in Bengaluru but in every city of India."

To decide on the footpaths that need to be developed, Janaagraha has been working with Ward Committees as part of MCMB Phase II and in 5 wards have conducted a walkability survey in association with Jana Urban Space Foundation, Sensing Local and with the help of citizens.

The walkability of the ward has been measured across 4 broad footpath parametres – Accessibility, Connectivity, Safety and Comfort consisting of a total of 12 indicators. Both sides of the footpath were taken into account while assigning the score. Additionally, the quality of pedestrian walkabibility was measured over 5 indicators which primarily recorded the presence of footpaths and pedestrian crossings that enable ease across the road network.

In Banaswadi (Ward 27) a total of 9.5 km was surveyed and the ward has received a Ward Walkability Score of 26 out of 100. Gottigere received a score of 17/100 and a total of 8.9 kms was surveyed. Sanjay Nagara has scored 2/100 for the 3.45 km surveyed. R K Nagara (Ward 19) has scored 10/100 in 2.69 km surveyed and Varthur (Ward 149) 0/100 for the 2.4 km surveyed.

The score is reflective of the streets surveyed only and not the entire ward. The citizens who participated in the survey from the 5 focus wards shared insights during the #CityPolitics Webinar.

Amith Nigli and Christopher Cruz, representing Banasawadi (Ward 17) spoke about how they drew plans to identify vulnerable roads. Speaking on budget allocation, Christopher said, "Rs 60 lakhs is negligible to start with. Yet, it is still something good to relie our hopes on!"

Amith Nigli said: "Unless we work together and understand how the system works, we cannot bring the change we all seek."

Speaking on the issue, Swarupa Kakumanu and Poongothai from Gottigere (Ward 194) said that they made use of the walkability index to identify footpaths and roads that needed most attention. "Google forms were created for the collection of people's opinions and the same were addressed while drafting a plan for civic works,"Poongothai said. Citizens appreciated the proactive nature of Nodal Officer Ramamani. Swarupa Kakumanu said they made sure that voices of all sections of society were heard in their ward committee and bore wells funds were utilized in the right areas where there was a need.

The need of more funds for larger wards was addressed by Jagadish Reddy, Co-Founder Varthur Rising. "Varthuru (Ward 149) is a large ward. Thus, 60 lakhs are inadequate when it comes to repair and maintenance of assets. This is a great beginning but we hope that BBMP will allocate more budget that can be utilized by citizens in our ward" he said.

Geeta Gooty from Sanjayanagara (Ward 19) highlighted the importance of civic participation in the effective maintenance of a ward. "Citizen Participation is most vital in the improvement of an area. This must, of-course, be backed by the efforts of the officials and we are lucky to have Ms. Thulasi Maddineni as our Nodal officer" she said.

Commenting on the ways to assess the requirements of the ward, Lalitha Mohan of Radhakrishna Temple (Ward 18) said, "We zeroed down on two factors with regard to footpaths - proximity to the neighborhood schools and the roads that are used often - the connecting roads. Based on this, we finalized where the work was needed to be done.

Citizens from Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Bhubaneswar, Hyderabad and Chennai joined the discussion virtually and commended the efforts in Bengaluru to strengthen ward committees and wished to see similar initiatives in their cities as well. Citizens from different parts of Bengaluru enthusiastically participated in the interaction and brought out many suggestions and highlighted the problems they face in their wards.

Online poll was conducted during the session – 100% of respondents opined that more citizens must participate in ward committees. 87% felt that BBMP should allocated more funds for footpaths. When asked about the biggest hurdles to ward committees, 42% said not taking actions based on ward committee decisions and 28% felt not holding meetings regularly are the two big hurdles. Janaagraha study in September 2021 showed that nearly 4000 ward committee meetings happened between July 2020 and August 2021!

Phase 2 of MyCityMyBudget

MyCityMyBudget Phase II is the implementation phase where the vision of 1,000 km of walkable footpaths with at least 5 km of walkable footpaths per ward gets actualized. Janaagraha is aiming to facilitate the utilization of Rs 20 lakh budgetary allocation (of the total Rs 60 lakh) towards improvement of footpaths through citizens, ward engineers and nodal officers. This phase will enable end-to-end citizen-led execution and supervision of the allocation of funds.

As part of MyCityMyBudget Phase 2, Janaagraha has been taking up orientation of the MCMB campaign goals to communities, providing walkability survey training to communities, execution of walkability survey through citizen participation in focus wards, cost estimation of surveyed footpaths with ward engineers, generating walkability score report, prioritizing road/segments for budget implementation by citizens in ward committee meeting, ward committee and citizens should submit plan to BBMP for implementation, Implementation of ward plan by the BBMP.