Exclusive: Can Indian cities ever have strong mayors? Why it is unlikely

In India, mayors can’t draw up budget plans, hire and fire department chiefs, or veto policies. The commissioner takes all administrative decisions

NEW DELHI: Zohran Mamdani celebrated his historic win in what might have been the world’s most closely watched mayoral election with much Indianness on Wednesday. The victory address by the 34-year-old son of Indian-origin immigrants invoked Jawaharlal Nehru’s famous “tryst with destiny” speech. The choice of celebratory Bollywood music also added to the desi flavour.

New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, speaks in front of the Unisphere alongside his transition team, in the Queens borough of New York, Wednesday (AP)

Back in India, though, many wondered if our own cities could ever experience a similarly politically charged campaign, or a remarkable mayoral feat such as Mamdani’s in New York City.

Perhaps not.

That’s simply because the seat of the mayor has limited political or even aspirational value in India. In fact, most citizens, including those who step out to vote in municipal elections, can hardly recall the name of their last city mayor, let alone show any interest in who might be elected next.

While the mayor’s office in London or New York — or even Manila, Jakarta, Sao Paulo or Mexico City — is often considered a stepping stone in the journey of a politician aspiring to become the prime minister or president, the ambition of our mayors and councillors is usually limited to securing a ticket to contest the Vidhan Sabha (assembly) elections, says Srikanth Viswanathan, chief executive officer of Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy.

A lost tradition

It doesn’t help that only five Indian states, out of the 18 reviewed by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG), have a provision for the direct election of mayors. According to the CAG’s performance audits released last year, only nine of these 18 states have mayors with a five-year tenure.

Indian mayors are mostly ceremonial heads. Apart from presiding over the municipal house, they can suggest new projects, summon officials, and give anticipatory approval to expedite civil work. But it’s the commissioner, an executive officer, who takes all administrative decisions. A mayor cannot draw up budget plans, hire and fire department chiefs or veto policies.

The commissioner, a bureaucrat appointed by the state, runs the city administration, underlines Milind Mhaske, the CEO of Praja Foundation, a non-profit working for accountable governance. “These bureaucrats are not democratically accountable to local citizens. Their promotions and loyalties lie with their state bosses, not the city’s electorate.”

In the past, though, Indian cities did have a rich tradition of mayors.

Political stalwarts Chittaranjan Das, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and BC Roy occupied the post in erstwhile Calcutta; Freedom fighters Minoo Masani and Khursheed Nariman – Nariman Point is named after him – were mayors of erstwhile Bombay.

Compared to the current mayoral system, during the British era, the mayoral council was stronger, with more powers vested in the mayor to run the city. Chittarajan Das, as the mayor of Calcutta, had the British authorities appoint Bose as the commissioner, although the latter had left the ICS to join politics. For a brief time, Bose performed his duties while in jail. That’s how influential the mayoral system was, points out Mhaske.

Although the role of the mayor diminished after Independence, the office attracted a number of prominent figures. In 1958, freedom fighter Aruna Asaf Ali was elected the first mayor of Delhi. More recently, Mumbai’s Manohar Joshi and Nagpur’s Devendra Fadnavis went on to become the chief ministers of Maharashtra after being mayors. Tamil Nadu CM MK Stalin was the mayor of Chennai.

The rural bias

Mhaske blames the “preference for rural” in Independent India—the belief that India lives in its villages—for institutionally feeble city leadership. This, he said, is reflected in the constituent assembly debates and ultimately in the drafting of the Constitution, which gave prominence to stronger union and provincial governments that were to lead the young nation. The result was a weak mayoral system for the next 40 years.

The 74th Constitutional Amendment Act (CAA) of 1992 on the devolution of powers to urban local bodies was also primarily conceived from “a rural outlook,” following the 73rd CAA, which granted constitutional status to Panchayati Raj Institutions in rural areas. “Its application to urban areas was essentially an afterthought, with no real effort made to strengthen the political office at the city level,” Mhaske adds.

Marginal roles

Viswanathan argues that the 74th CAA doesn’t do enough for strong mayors and councils. It fails to establish a politically empowered mayor with a five-year term. Its rotation-based reservation system makes it unviable for grassroots political leaders to nurture their constituencies in the long term.

Moreover, the amendment does not effectively mandate state governments to devolve critical civic functions and services exclusively to municipalities. The “poor drafting” of the law means the state governments can get away with not holding timely elections.

“Taken together, this has resulted in elected mayors and councillors becoming marginal and nominal political leaders in India, even within their political parties,” Viswanathan says.

The Twelfth Schedule of the Constitution, added by the 74th Amendment Act, specifies the powers, authorities, and responsibilities of municipalities through 18 functions. These include urban planning, land-use and building regulations, public health, civic amenities, and parking management.

But the CAG audits found that only four functions have been effectively devolved with complete autonomy. It identified urban planning and fire services as the least devolved functions by law. Janaagraha helped synthesise these CAG audits into a compendium.

When urban planning falls outside municipal corporations’ domain —and, by extension, the mayor’s — cities suffer. The Delhi Development Authority, a statutory autonomous body under the Centre, is tasked with preparing master plans. Still, its implementation at the local level suffers because the Municipal Corporation of Delhi, which has a popularly elected wing, does not have the power to get into the domain of urban planning. This, experts say, removes public participation and political accountability from the city planning process.

Further diminishing the role of urban local bodies in city management is their lack of control over resources. The CAG audits note that, on average, urban local self-governments generate only 32% of their funds from their own sources, leaving them highly dependent on grants from the Union and state governments. There is a lack of complete autonomy for urban local self-governments regarding taxes and user charges. Also, five of the six states, for which data was made available to CAG, require administrative approval from the state government to undertake infrastructure work.

Power dynamics

In India, powerful city corporations don’t necessarily empower mayors, and politically strong mayors don’t necessarily have adequate powers.

Mhaske says that with strong municipal acts and control over civic functions, cities in Maharashtra and Gujarat have strong governance through commissioners rather than mayors. In Kerala and West Bengal, mayors are politically influential, but work within the limited functions and powers devolved to urban local bodies.

Viswanathan points to another anomaly. Relatively more affluent municipalities such as Delhi, Mumbai, and Bengaluru have weak mayors and councils. In contrast, municipalities in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh have mayors with five-year terms, but weak finances.

The devolution of powers to mayors has its own political dynamics. State governments are reluctant to devolve these powers, fearing that doing so would reduce their influence with citizens over politically lucrative quality-of-life issues. “If the mayoral office becomes stronger, nobody will come to the MLA, the MP, the state government, or the Union government,” says Mhaske.

But it is in their self-interest to embrace greater levels of devolution, says Viswanathan. “The lack of a PM-CM equivalent in the city -- a single elected political leader who can be held accountable -- is resulting in severely fragmented planning, infrastructure and governance, with low levels of responsiveness and accountability to citizens,” he points out.

Also, over the last two decades, advancing the post-economic-liberalisation agenda that sees cities as engines of growth has created demands for strong city governance. “But we missed a trick by not prioritising cities as central to the agenda of attracting global investments and talent, enhancing economic growth, and improving the quantity and quality of jobs created,” argues Viswanathan.

Fruits of empowerment

While there is no single instance of a truly empowered mayor or council in India, city leadership is shaping big cities across the world through dynamism and visionary thinking. Anne Hidalgo of Paris and Sadiq Khan of London are almost as renowned as the respective countries’ prime ministers and presidents.

Successful mayors are also leaving behind lasting legacies. Former mayors such as Curitiba’s Jaime Lerner and Bogotá’s Enrique Peñalosa popularised Bus Rapid Transit worldwide. Michael Bloomberg launched NYC’s 24-hour 311 helpline, a one-stop shop for all complaints and information on civic issues. Ken Livingstone’s tenure in London was marked by the introduction of the congestion charge to reduce traffic chaos in the city centre and the Oyster travel card for seamless travel on all modes of public transport, while Boris Johnson launched the public bicycle scheme.

“It is ironic yet instructive that autocratic, single-party, communist China has more empowered mayors than democratic India,” says Viswanathan. The current Chinese president, Xi Jinping, was formerly the vice mayor of Xiamen in Fujian province.

In neighbouring Nepal, 35-year-old Kathmandu mayor Balendra Shah has emerged as the key voice in the Gen Z movement. “Local governments in Nepal have significantly more power than state governments, with their own budgets and functions,” says Mhaske.

It’s perhaps time, as Viswanathan puts it, “for overhauling the 74th CAA to restore the powers of the mayor’s office in India. Or for a few enlightened CMs, realising that their growth and jobs agendas can only be achieved through empowered mayors and councils, to break our current status quo.”