Moneylife: Mumbai: Tuesday, January 30, 2018.
On 19th
January, I was among the five concerned Mumbaikars who petitioned chief
minister, Devendra Fadnavis, against the Mumbai municipal commissioner’s
decision to declare Praja Foundation, a non-government organisation (NGO) with
a long and credible track record as persona non grata. What exactly does this
mean? Well, Praja has received formal letters from various municipal
departments that queries from its employees under the Right to Information
(RTI) Act will not be entertained; they also won’t get appointments to discuss
legitimate issues with municipal officials.
The enormity
of this action is apparent, but becomes frightening when put in the right
context. BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) presides over India’s financial
capital and has a bigger budget than many states in India. Naturally, it is
exploited to the hilt by a corrupt and brazen nexus of netas, babus and
businessmen, while the city suffers illegal encroachments, pathetic roads and
infrastructure, repeated deaths due to fires, illegal construction,
proliferation of illegal slums and public health issues. Rules and regulations
are deliberately opaque, excessive, outdated and non-transparent, so as to
allow corruption to thrive. BMC officials have mastered the art of cover-up by
issuing show-cause notices against illegal actions without initiating any
follow-up action or stopping it. Even in the recent fire tragedy at Kamala
Mills, only restaurant owners have been arrested, while municipal officials,
who probably extorted large sums of money, have merely been suspended.
And, yet, BMC
commissioner Ajoy Mehta’s first reaction to the Kamala Mills fire that killed
22 people was to tarnish activists who had repeatedly pointed to illegal
permissions. He claimed that ‘activists’ were part of a corrupt nexus with his
officials, without naming names or initiating specific action. This surely
wasn’t an off-the-cuff remark; it is part of a worrying pattern of actions
meant to subjugate citizens by terrorising and maligning those who dare to
protest.
The BMC
succeeded, when it went after popular comedian Kapil Sharma, who foolishly
tweeted about endless extortion while his own bungalow had flouted rules. BMC
gleefully retaliated by going on a demolition
drive that included his neighbours as well. It was a sharp lesson to
celebrities not to be tempted to use their star-power to speak up. The
harassment of Bombay Gymkhana by the BMC plays out in the public domain without
protest, only because it is seen as an elite club. Very few of its star members
and sportspersons have dared to speak out.
But BMC’s
strategy boomeranged when municipal officers went after radio jockey Mallishka
for lampooning Mumbai’s bad roads in the monsoons, when every Mumbaikar’s
patience wears thin. The BMC’s attempts to frame charges of dengue breeding at
her home caused such a backlash that it beat a hasty retreat. The charges against ‘activists’ after the
Kamala Mills fire killed 22 people are in line with this practice.
This is where
organisations such as Praja Foundation become a thorn in BMC’s flesh. This NGO
has been doing stellar work with the same municipal corporation for over two
decades. In 1997, it worked with BMC to jointly develop a Citizens’ Charter
that was released by Nani Palkhiwala in 1999. In 2003, it collaborated with the
BMC in developing an online complaint management system (OCMS), which gave some
desperately needed efficiency to the complaints process. It also trained over
200 municipal staffers to handle these complaints. Since 2011, it has trained
over 75% of the past BMC councillors and 90% of new councillors on how to ask
questions regarding BMC’s functioning. It has conducted training programmes on
how budgets are made and how funds are allocated to corporators. It has also
produced ready-reckoners on how the BMC functions.
All its data
are collated by filing over 2,500 RTI applications a year. This data ought to
be in the public domain in the first place (Section 4 of the RTI Act mandates
it); but even an NGO that wrote the BMC charter has to file applications to get
the information from BMC. Nitai Mehta, founder of Praja, says, “We build tools
of governance that can be used by all three stakeholders citizens/citizen
groups, elected representatives and the government. Our approach is a dialogue
with all stakeholders with the objective of improving the quality of lives of
Mumbaikars.”
What exactly
is the BMC’s problem with Praja, after 20 years of committed work? Apparently,
it has an issue with the facts put out by Praja and has accused it of
distortion. These pertain to issues such as poor health standards in the city,
the number of tuberculosis related deaths, malnourishment among children and a
consistent reduction in the number of students attending municipal schools. If
the problem was with the data put out by Praja, the answer should have been to
provide correct data. If it is with interpretation, the solution is to discuss
it and explain. After all, Praja has worked with the BMC for two decades and
cannot possibly want to score self-goals by drawing false conclusions.
Obviously, the problem lies elsewhere. It is about the BMC wanting to suppress
negative reports or slap down criticism about its functioning.
This BMC's
strategy of demonising and ostracising those who expose it has, hopefully,
backfired. The petition to the chief minister was signed by former police
commissioner, Julio Ribero, former municipal commissioner, DM Sukthankar, and
former central information commissioner, Shailesh Gandhi, as well as scores of
leading activists. RTI activist, Kamlakar Shenoy, has filed a petition against
the municipal commissioner in the Bombay High Court, while advocate Godfrey
Pimenta, who heads Watchdog Foundation, has moved the Lok Ayukta for similar
action. Mr Sukthankar was critical about the ‘degradation of democratic
processes at one of the oldest civic bodies in India’; Mr Ribeiro emphatically
condemned the action against Praja while Shailesh Gandhi said it is tantamount
to denial of a fundamental rights.
The RTI Act
has no provision for any government organisation to declare a set of
individuals as persona non grata or deny them information. Even prisoners on
death row have the right to obtain information and routinely do so. How can a
municipal commissioner arrogate such extra-judicial powers to himself that he
dares to deny information? Because he probably did not expect to be challenged.
Over the past
decade, we have seen a sharp decline in accountability of public
representatives, regulators and government organisations. This starts right at
the top with the empty benches in parliament when pertinent questions affecting
citizens are raised. Our elected representatives often fail to notice
incomplete or tangential answers to their questions, which were treated with
great care and seriousness a couple of decades ago. Regulators forget to table
key regulations in parliament for two years (like SEBI’s insider trading
regulations) and nobody so much as notices. The government is busy setting up
new regulators and institutions at public expense, but cannot be bothered about
ensuring the checks & balances that go with it.
Ironically,
much of the rot, including regulatory capture of institutions accelerated under
the United Progressive Alliance (UPA). Young inheritors and princelings with
Ivy League management school degrees passed draconian legislation without
bothering about the consequences. The Companies Act 2013, amendments to the
SEBI Act giving it sweeping punitive powers and allocation of thousands of
crores of public funds to Aadhaar without even a statute, are among the
atrocities of that time. Most other MPs are unconcerned about governance,
economic and financial issues, with the result that absurd theories, divisive
politics and mindless protests hog media space and public discourse.
It is time we
woke up to what is happening. The manipulation of public sentiment to demonise,
malign and ostracise anyone who dares to question or criticise has to be
protested most vociferously. It is an attack on our fundamental rights, freedom
and democracy itself. What the Mumbai municipal commissioner had officially
done to Praja Foundation is unofficially practised against media and activists
by many regulators and government bodies. Will we, the people, allow them to
get away with it? Or stand up and be heard?
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