Urban governance issues have simple solutions

A recent news story in one of the newspapers stated that a certain infrastructure project in Bengaluru that had been stalled for the last year had been restarted. The narrative in the paper was that the project contractor had had problems; the government had cracked the whip and confiscated the project from the contractor and then had returned the project to the contractor. In the meantime a year and a half had passed, pedestrians had fallen into potholes on the roads dug for the project, monsoon rains had clogged the works and traffic was log jammed.

The reason I bring up this up is that this is a regular and unending problem of urban governance that has simple structural solutions but never seem to be engaged with. Contractors and developers do make errors but not all the time. Mostly, this is a problem of poor management by the government. By blaming the contactor for all the problems and confiscating the project for stretches of time, the problem only gets compounded. In many cases, the contractor is a large national-level player, with experience of large projects and capable of suing the government. Despite the newspaper article making it sound that the government had returned the project to the contractor, the reality was probably quite different and the contractor threatened to sue the government. This would have delayed the project even more and caused the average citizen even more problems. This is a melodrama played out in the public domain on a regular basis in Bengaluru and either the government is incapable of dealing with it or just doesn’t want to. Its reactions are often knee jerk and short sighted. So how do we sort out this problem?

Firstly, preparing better quality contract documents— specifications, pre-qualification of contractors, shortlisting specifications and tender notices. So many infrastructure contracts are boiler plate documents and are often written by the same contractors/ developers/ politicians bidding for the project. This needs to be better managed. The government, either through sheer hubris, negligence, poor capacity and/or general corruption, facilitates projects, the details and specifications of which it is not aware of. It only becomes aware of a problem when crises arise and then it ends up acting overdramatically. The solution is a little bit of care in the structuring of the contracts— hiring better procurement lawyers and perhaps looking at more creative ways of management.

Secondly, streamlining the hiring/procurement of the contractor. By engaging only the lowest bidders and the problem of corruption in government, infrastructure projects across the country are defined by shoddy work. In this day and age when the private sector is getting better at its work, the government needs to step up its game and improve its hiring/ procurement procedures to reflect quality. Key steps would include the computerisation of the procurement process, stringent vetting at the pre-bid stages and restrictions on politicians being involved in the process. Transparency is a key requirement of this process. Monitoring of contracts also need to be handled better.

Thirdly, balancing the narrative in the media. The media often reports the problems of infrastructure work as created by the contractor. This is problematic because it is not always true. It is easy but not always true. The problem often arises from the mismanagement of the contract by the government. To spin it in the media as not their problem only compounds it. The local politicians begin to believe this narrative and the publicity pictures of politicians at worksites haranguing the contractor are just what they are: Pointless and of no use. The solution here lies with the media. Instead of only giving politicians and bureaucrat’s space to spread their narrative, they need to engage with all sides of the equation. Contractors/consultants are usually hesitant to articulate issues with the government, especially as often they are their largest client but their perspective needs to be heard and reported in a balanced manner. Often the reality is extremely different from what is articulated.

Fourthly but not lastly, the policy framework. Much of the policy framework developed for infrastructure projects is applied in an ad hoc manner. This is not because of lack of strategy; but mostly because of poor governance and implementation.

Bengaluru, on average, has reasonably well written public policy. There are plenty of well-educated and engaged players in the city that are willing to engage in the development of the city to improve the quality of life. However, due to a lack of cohesive coordination by the various parastatal agencies, ad hoc political intervention around election cycles and the general tokenistic engagement with people at grassroots levels, infrastructure development in the city continues to remain shoddy and poorly managed.

(The writer is a Bengaluru-based urban planner)