The five keys to unlock more money for your ward development
The first phase of the MyCityMyBudget campaign for 2021–22, which concluded with the release of the BBMP’s budget in March 2021, was peppered with victories — both minute to very significant ones. The first of which was the direct recognition of Ward Committees and their role in the budget making process. What followed was historic, to say the least. The vision of institutionalising participatory budgeting became a reality when the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) allocated Rs. 60 lakh per ward, which empowered the Ward Committees to undertake repair of footpaths, roads and water related maintenance. A total of 120 crore rupees was set aside set aside by the BBMP for implementation through ward committees.
MyCityMyBudget, was first launched in 2015 and allowed citizens to contribute ward-wise budgetary inputs over the next five years. A formal memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed by the BBMP and Janaagraha was the first step towards recognising citizen voices in the city’s budget making process. The process would come full circle only if the ward committees were empowered with the requisite process and tools to judiciously spend the allocated funds. This would form the basis of the second phase of MyCityMyBudget 2021–22.
As complex an exercise as this seems on the surface, our experience over the past year helped identify the five success keys of ‘participatory budgeting’- meticulous planning, a coherent and fleshed out process, partnership between citizens, community groups, civil society groups and the local government representatives, persistence and propagation.
1) Planning — The whole program was the result of thorough and continuous planning and organisation. Janaagraha drew up detailed guidelines in the ‘Bengaluru Walkability SoP’ for the BBMP, detailing the implementation of the budget allocation towards improvement of footpaths and other related pedestrian infrastructure. 5 km of footpaths were to be surveyed and costed in every ward, and subsequently taken up for improvement. The document vested considerable amount of decision making powers in the hands of the ward committees. We chose to focus only on a handful of wards, so as to pilot the mechanism that was developed using the guidelines; the learnings of which can be presented to the other 194 wards in the city.
2) Process — Everything was process driven, with ward committees and Nodal Officers equipped with the necessary tools to aid their decision making process. Despite the absence of a local council and formally constituted Ward Committees, citizens continued to hold monthly meetings with the BBMP-appointed Nodal Officers.
Janaagraha’s principle aim at this stage was to facilitate the judicious utilisation of allocated funds. The first step was training and orientation of citizen volunteers in Ward Committees, through detailed orientation sessions to acquaint them to the work-flow. The second step entailed shortlisting a network of footpaths (based on the criteria of high pedestrian volume areas, connection to commercial nodes); thirdly, the execution of the survey itself. The survey was designed to yield qualitative and quantitative insights measuring four principle parameters — accessibility, safety, comfort and connectivity. A costing framework developed by Janaagraha, using the Schedule of Rates (SR, Public Works Department, Karnataka), informed the ward committees the actual cost of footpath improvement in their wards, laying bare the intricacies of budgeting for the city’s infrastructure development. There arose a need to prioritise small stretches within the surveyed network of roads, as the allocated funds were insufficient to cover all surveyed roads in the ward.
End to end participation and ownership on the part of the citizens, along with the cooperation of Nodal Officers and Ward Engineers allowed for this exercise to run as smoothly as it did. Both Ward committee representatives and Nodal officers exhibited the ability to troubleshoot challenges that propped up unexpectedly, because of the training and orientation by Janaagraha. The process will serve as a case for other wards in the city to emulate and also learn from the challenges as presented by examples of focus wards.
3) Persistence — This is the corner stone of success and the ‘golden key’. Persistence is the DNA of people’s movements. Nothing significant is ever achieved without it. The ample learnings derived through the engagement between citizens and ward engineers respectively have helped pave the way forward, year after year. What underwrites the success of the past year is this — despite the absence of formally constituted ward committees and an elected Councillor to head the same, citizens continued to keep the forum alive, through sustained and continuous engagement with their Nodal Officers and Ward Engineers. Here, Janaagraha’s experience over two decades of engagement with the governments, allowed to drive home the realisation that persistence prevails!
4) Partnership — The Rs. 60 lakh allocation and utilisation has been an exemplary case of citizen-government partnership. The trust built by Janaagraha over years of sincere efforts and galvanised by persistent action was a major key to success. The entire process continues to help foster a very healthy collaboration between BBMP’s Nodal Officers and citizens in the focus wards.
Phase one of the MyCityMyBudget campaign received around 4780 budgetary inputs, pertaining to footpaths. Under Phase two, the BBMP budget set out with the vision of addressing all actionable inputs on broken and missing footpaths, with an initial goal of creating 1,000 km of walkable footpaths, with at least 5 km of walkable footpaths per ward.
Ward committees and citizen volunteers were at the front of the entire exercise. Their participation was integral to its execution, allowing them to take end-to-end ownership of the budget making and implementation. From selection of road / segments that required development on priority, to estimation of cost, to utilisation of the budgets set aside for the purpose, the entire process was driven by the people. And let’s not forget the role they continue to play in monitoring and supervision of the works they proposed and approved, to subsequently assess and sign off on quality of work once they are completed.
Throughout the phase two of MyCityMyBudget, Ward Committee representatives from the five focus wards communicated through WhatApp groups, and facilitated access to real time updates from Ward Engineers and Nodal Officers, through the course of the exercise. During the City Politics webinar organised on January 22nd, 2022, the ward committee representatives demonstrated their experience to citizens from other wards to, as means to encourage more participation and subsequent utilisation of the allocated funds.
5) Propagation — Success begets more success. The past six years of MyCityMyBudget merit the need for increased participation across the city. As more number of ward committees engage in the process and successfully utilise the initial allocation of the 60 lakh rupees, this will encourage the local government to release more money for expenditure as decided by citizens, subsequently resulting in substantial budget allocation kept at the disposal of the ward committees in the coming years.
Systematic mobilisation of community is the starting point. Activating Ward Committees across the city and ensuring process-driven regular ward committee meetings, coupled with regular follow-up on issues raised in these meetings, in the recipe that can help strengthen the process in the long run. A study conducted by Janaagraha in September 2021 found that 4000 ward committee meetings took place in the city between July 2020 and August 2021- an encouraging trend, cementing our hopes for stronger ward committee representation in civic affairs.
By creating an eco-system with a proclivity for openness and collaboration, the BBMP and the people of Bengaluru have set an example for local governments across the country to emulate. While there is much to rejoice in these little but significant victories, we look forward to witness a day when citizen participation is ubiquitous in all realms of the local governance.
