Polls are won on emotive bread and butter issues in urban megaliths ,as is the case of Delhi.This time it was on the promises of heavy undercutting of electricity charges and on supply of minimum assured free water to a city that has no sources of its own with its one life line Yamuna serving more as a drain than a fresh water medium. If the former is predicated on a possible fiscal misadventure, the later is on a growing curse of nature on tis entire region and its neighbour hood, for which there are no plans either by the Capital city or by the Centre.Add to this the pains of heavy urbanisation.The population density in the emerging city-hubs force a vertical mode of living that geometrically pushes up costs ;land, water and sewerage, transport logistics ,health and hygiene.Cost of running a city can not be left to the largess of a benign government of the day ,that would itself, in time. go under debt.
Civic bodies must learn to be self-sufficient.Cost of maintaining civic
services/ utilities in most municipalities are not matched by civic revenue and in cases like Mumbai despite an ample treasury , professional management is wanting as does accountability.The great city of Detroit that had the highest per capita income in the US went bankrupt on fiscal profligacy.If civic services and utilities are to be subsidised by state largesse as a principle of popular governance, Delhi too would go the way of Detroit.But being the nation's Capital with the Centre sanguinely expected to bridge the fiscal gap endlessly, are we not perpetuating a exclusive and elitist dispensation of welfare of a privileged city at the larger cost of an entire nation.
( Published ET;Dec 26 )
http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Client.asp?Daily=ETM&showST=true&Enter=true&Skin=ETNEW
http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Scripting/ArticleWin.asp?From=Archive&Source=Page&Skin=ETNEW&BaseHref=ETM/2013/12/26&PageLabel=1 (Published Deccan Herald :Dec 26 )
http://www.deccanheraldepaper.com/svww_zoomart.php?Artname=20131226aG010100004&ileft=239&itop=1134&zoomRatio=137&AN=20131226aG010100004
( Published in Pioneer Dec 28 )
Civic bodies must learn to be self-sufficient.Cost of maintaining civic
services/ utilities in most municipalities are not matched by civic revenue and in cases like Mumbai despite an ample treasury , professional management is wanting as does accountability.The great city of Detroit that had the highest per capita income in the US went bankrupt on fiscal profligacy.If civic services and utilities are to be subsidised by state largesse as a principle of popular governance, Delhi too would go the way of Detroit.But being the nation's Capital with the Centre sanguinely expected to bridge the fiscal gap endlessly, are we not perpetuating a exclusive and elitist dispensation of welfare of a privileged city at the larger cost of an entire nation.
( Published ET;Dec 26 )
http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Client.asp?Daily=ETM&showST=true&Enter=true&Skin=ETNEW
http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Scripting/ArticleWin.asp?From=Archive&Source=Page&Skin=ETNEW&BaseHref=ETM/2013/12/26&PageLabel=1 (Published Deccan Herald :Dec 26 )
http://www.deccanheraldepaper.com/svww_zoomart.php?Artname=20131226aG010100004&ileft=239&itop=1134&zoomRatio=137&AN=20131226aG010100004
( Published in Pioneer Dec 28 )
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