SANJAYA BARU
In the excitement generated in urban India by the election of Zohran Mamdani as the mayor of New York, few have asked where the mayors in India are. Many cities do have mayors but few know of them given their limited powers. Most in the nation’s capital would know that Rekha Gupta is the chief minister of Delhi but few would be aware that Raja Iqbal Singh is the mayor.
The visibility of public officials is a function of their real power — administrative and financial. India’s chief ministers have been able to retain considerable power, despite the growing centralization of power within the Central government, but none of them has been willing to share that power with heads of local government.
There was a time when cities like Mumbai and Kolkata had powerful and visible mayors but state-level political leaders ensured the systematic disempowerment of urban government. This was largely motivated by the desire of chief ministers to secure control over urban real estate. The growth of cities opened up a new avenue for personal enrichment of politicians in power at the state level. Every chief minister and members of his family and caste have become millionaires from control over real estate.
This easy access to money power through the control of political power has systematically discouraged state-level political functionaries from empowering urban local bodies. It was with the objective of, in fact, ensuring such empowerment that the 73rd and 74th Constitutional amendments were legislated. The 74th amendment, enacted in 1992 and coming into effect in 1993, granted Constitutional status to urban local bodies. It provided a framework for the structure and functioning of municipalities that included their democratic functioning. However, chief ministers across India effectively defanged these institutions.
It was a recognition of this reality that prompted the government of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) to launch the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) in 2005. The mission aimed to encourage reform of urban governance and fast-track the planned development of various cities. However, given its primary focus on “efficiency in urban infrastructure and service delivery mechanisms”, adequate attention was not paid to the objective of “community participation” and the establishment of “accountable” municipalities.
The JNNURM’s priorities were listed thus: “(1) Modern and transparent budgeting, accounting, financial management systems, designed and adopted for all urban service and governance functions (2) City-wide framework for planning and governance will be established and become operational (3) All urban residents will be able to obtain access to a basic level of urban services (4) Financially self-sustaining agencies for urban governance and service delivery will be established, through reforms to major revenue instruments (5) Local services and governance will be conducted in a manner that is transparent and accountable to citizens (6) E-governance applications will be introduced in core functions.”
Weak or absent urban governance has contributed to the decline of most Indian cities. Even as urbanization has proceeded rapidly, with growing migration from rural areas to urban areas, the quality of life in most cities and towns has rapidly declined. The very rich have moved into farmhouses and high-rise apartments in gated communities, using private security, private water and power supply, and private facilities for sanitation and garbage disposal, leaving the rest to live with the rapidly declining quality of public service.
Few municipalities are in fact “accountable to citizens”. In every major city everyone expects the state government to deal with problems ranging from air and water pollution to potholes on roads. When chief ministers like getting photographed sweeping streets as part of a Swachch Bharat campaign, who would ask who the mayor is?
The irony is that in giving statehood to the Union Territory of Delhi, yielding to local political pressure, the Central government ensured that the chief minister was no more than a mayor. In fact, many mayors across the world have more powers than the chief minister of Delhi. If one accepts that the Delhi CM is no more than a mayor then one could say that India’s “Mamdani Moment” was when Arvind Kejriwal was elected CM of Delhi.
Just as Mamdani is viewed as challenging President Donald Trump, Kejriwal used his Delhi platform to challenge Narendra Modi. Not surprisingly, the prime minister was intent on ending Kejriwal’s career and did so with determination, adopting all manner of questionable tactics. It remains to be seen if Trump will similarly disempower Mamdani.
It is, of course, debatable whether decentralization of political and administrative power as envisaged in the 74th Constitutional amendment would help improve the quality of life in cities or would, in fact, make matters worse. Some members of the Aam Aadmi Party government in Delhi set a good example by taking responsibility for urban governance within their constituencies. The member of the state legislature from my locality in Delhi, Saurabh Bharadwaj, was one such who took active interest in issues ranging from supply of drinking water to drainage and roads.
It is clear from Mamdani’s victory that even in New York urban governance has been corrupt and weak and unable to address the needs of the majority even though the mayor is a powerful administrative functionary. Even the New York mayor is dependent on funding from the federal government and President Trump had threatened to withdraw federal funds if Mamdani won. In India chief ministers have used their financial powers to keep mayors in check. Clearly, we need much better urban governance than we are getting today.
Sanjaya Baru is an economist, former newspaper editor and author. His most recent book is ‘Secession of the Successful: The Flight out of New India’ (Penguin, 2025).