Grassroots Democracy — Part 3: Local Government in Urban Areas

Why This Matters

Think about a big city. Mumbai. Delhi. Chennai. Kolkata.

So many people live there. Tall buildings everywhere. Buses and cars all day. Markets full of shops.

Now ask yourself a simple question. Who keeps all of this working?

Who makes sure water comes in the taps? Who picks up the garbage? Who fixes the broken road? Who switches on the street lights at night?

A city has lakhs of people. Their problems are many. One person cannot solve them all. The state government, sitting far away, is too busy with the whole state. It cannot watch every street.

So cities and towns get their own local government. It sits close to the people. It looks after the day-to-day needs of the town.

In this chapter, we will see how a town or a city runs itself. This is the third part of our story about grassroots democracy. Earlier we saw how a village runs itself. Now we move to the town and the city.

The Big Idea

A town or a city is too big for the state government to look after every small thing. So it has its own urban local government — a team of leaders chosen by the people of that town. This team is called an urban local body. The people are split into small areas called wards. Each ward votes for one leader, called a ward councillor. All the councillors together form the town’s council. Smaller towns get a smaller body (a Nagar Panchayat), bigger towns get a Municipal Council, and the biggest cities get a Municipal Corporation. This body looks after water, garbage, roads, drains, street lights and parks. It is run for the people, by people the people chose. That is democracy, working right where you live.

Let’s Break It Down

Local government in towns and cities

First, a quick word. “Urban” means a town or a city. “Rural” means a village. We are talking about urban areas here — towns and cities.

A town or city has its own local government. Local means near you. So local government is the government that is closest to your daily life.

This local government is called an urban local body. A “body” here just means a group or a team. So an urban local body is the team that runs your town.

Why have a separate body just for a town? Here is the reason, in plain words.

The state government looks after the whole state. A state can be huge. It cannot check if one drain on one street is blocked. It is just too far and too busy.

But the people of the town do know their own streets. They know which road is broken. They know where the water leaks. So it makes sense to let the local people choose a small team to fix these local things.

This idea has a name. It is called being decentralised. Big word, simple meaning. It means the power is not all kept at the top. Some power is given down to the local people, so they can decide what is best for their own area.

Wards and ward councillors — and how they are chosen

A town is big. It would be hard to run it all as one giant piece. So the town is cut into smaller parts. Each small part is called a ward.

Think of a big cake cut into slices. Each slice is a ward. The whole cake is the town.

Now, each ward needs a leader. So the people who live in a ward vote. They choose one person to speak for them. This person is called a ward councillor. (In some cities the same person is called a corporator. Same job, different name.)

Let us be clear about how this works. It is just like other elections.

• The people of one ward vote.
• The person who gets the most votes wins.
• That winner becomes the councillor for that ward.

Every ward does this. So if a town has 30 wards, it gets 30 councillors. One for each ward.

Then comes the key part. All these councillors come together. As a group, they run the town. This group is the town’s council.

Figure 12.1 below shows the whole journey — from wards, to votes, to one team for the city.

Tap to zoom

The three urban bodies — and why the size of the town decides which one

Here is something important. Not every town has the same kind of body.

A small town does not need a huge team. A giant city needs a much bigger one. So India uses three kinds of urban local bodies. Which one a place gets depends on how many people live there.

Let us meet all three.

1. Nagar Panchayat — for a small town. A small town has fewer people and fewer problems. So it gets the smallest body, the Nagar Panchayat. (This is usually for a place that is changing from a village into a town.)

2. Municipal Council — for a bigger town. When more people live in a place, there is more work. A bigger team is needed. So a bigger town gets a Municipal Council. It is also called a Nagar Palika or a Municipality. In India, this is usually for a town with between 1 lakh and 10 lakh people.

3. Municipal Corporation — for a big city. A big city has lakhs and lakhs of people. The work is huge. So it gets the biggest body, the Municipal Corporation. It is also called a Mahanagar Nigam. In India, this is for a city with more than 10 lakh people. Mumbai, Chennai and Delhi have Municipal Corporations.

Now the most important question. Why does the size of the town decide which body it gets?

Let us reason it out, step by step. More people means more houses. More houses means more taps, more garbage, more roads, more drains. So more people means much more work to do.

A small team cannot handle a giant city’s work. There is simply too much. And a giant team for a tiny town would be a waste — there is not enough work for so many leaders.

So we match the size of the body to the size of the place. Small place, small body. Big place, big body. It is just like a small shop needing one shopkeeper, but a big mall needing many staff.

Figure 12.2 below shows this matching clearly.

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Let us put the three side by side so the difference is easy to see.

The Mayor and the officials

So all the ward councillors form the council. But who leads the whole team?

In a Municipal Corporation, the councillors choose one leader from among themselves. This leader is called the Mayor.

Think of it like a class. Every student is important. But the class also picks a class monitor to lead. The Mayor is a bit like the head of the city’s elected team. The Mayor leads the meetings and stands as the face of the city.

But here is something many people miss. The Mayor and the councillors are elected leaders. They decide what should be done. But they do not do all the everyday office work themselves.

For the daily running, there are trained government officials. These are officers and staff who carry out the plans. They actually get the work done — they manage the water department, the garbage workers, the office records, and so on.

So there are two parts working together.

• The elected part: the councillors and the Mayor. The people chose them. They decide what to do.
• The official part: the trained officers and workers. They carry out those decisions every day.

Both are needed. The elected leaders give the direction. The officials do the work.

What urban local bodies do for us

Now the best part. What does this body actually do for you? Quite a lot. You use its work every single day, often without knowing.

Here are the main jobs:

• Water supply — getting clean water to homes through pipes and taps.
• Garbage collection — sending trucks to pick up and clear the rubbish.
• Drains — keeping the drains clean so dirty water flows away and does not flood the streets.
• Street lights — lighting the roads at night so people are safe.
• Roads — making new roads and mending broken ones.
• Parks — making and keeping green parks and open spaces.
• Markets — looking after the local markets.
• Records — keeping records of births and deaths in the town, and looking after burial grounds.
• Government schemes — making sure schemes meant for the people actually reach them.

Figure 12.3 below shows some of these everyday services.

Tap to zoom

Here is a thought worth pausing on. The body cannot do all this alone. The people must help too.

For example, if you throw garbage on the road, the workers have a much harder job. But if you put your waste in the right bin, garbage collection becomes easy. If you see a water pipe leaking and report it quickly, you save a lot of water.

So the people and the body work as a team. This is what we call participatory democracy — where the people take part, not just watch. The body works best when the people care for their own town.

Let us try a real-life problem now. Knowing which body to go to is a useful skill.

Before we go further, let us quickly remember how a village runs itself. We learnt this in the earlier part of our grassroots democracy story. It will help you see what is the same and what is different.

So how is the town’s system like the village’s system, and how is it different? Figure 12.4 below puts them side by side.

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Where the money comes from

Doing all this work costs money. Pipes, trucks, road tar, street-light bulbs, workers’ pay — none of it is free.

So where does the urban local body get the money? Mostly, it collects money from the people of the town. This money comes in two main ways: taxes and fees.

A tax is money that people must pay to the government. It is not for one single service. It goes into a common fund. The body then uses that fund to run the town.

A fee is money you pay for using a particular service. You pay it, you get that service.

Here are the common ones:

• Property tax — money paid by people who own a house, a shop or a building in the town.
• Water charges — money paid for the water you use.
• Licence fees — money paid to get permission, for example to run a shop or put up a big advertisement board.
• Fines — money charged when someone breaks a rule, like dumping garbage in the wrong place.

All this money goes into the body’s fund. Then the body spends it on services for the town.

Figure 12.5 below shows the money coming in and going back out.

Tap to zoom

Now you can see why paying tax matters. The body has no money tree. The money it spends on your roads and water is the very money people paid in. When people pay their fair share, the town can run well.

Common Mistakes

Some ideas about local government trip up many students. Let us clear them up.

Quick Check

Let us see how much has stuck. Try each one before reading the answer.

Practice Problems

Now try writing full answers. Think first, then open the solution.

Easy

Medium

Challenge

Summary

• A town or city is too big for the state government to look after every small thing, so it has its own urban local government, called an urban local body.
• A town is split into small areas called wards. The people of each ward vote to choose one ward councillor (also called a corporator).
• All the councillors together form the town’s council, which runs the town.
• There are three kinds of urban bodies, chosen by the size of the place: a Nagar Panchayat for a small town, a Municipal Council (Nagar Palika) for a bigger town, and a Municipal Corporation (Mahanagar Nigam) for a big city.
• A bigger place has more people and more work, so it needs a bigger body — that is why the size of the town decides which body it gets.
• In a Municipal Corporation, the councillors choose a Mayor to lead them; trained officials carry out the daily work.
• The body looks after water, garbage, drains, street lights, roads, parks, markets and birth/death records.
• Its money comes mostly from the people — through taxes (like property tax) and fees and fines — and is spent back on town services.

What’s Next

You now know how people run their own village, town and city — the grassroots of our democracy. But all of this depends on something else: people doing useful work. Where does work fit into our lives and our society?

That is what we explore next, in Chapter 13 — The Value of Work.