Janaagraha is a Bangalore based not-for-profit organisation that works with citizens and government to change the quality of life in India’s cities and towns.
The term “quality of life” has two separate aspects, distinct and inter-related: the first is “quality of urban infrastructure and services”: the roads, drains, traffic, transport, water supply etc in our urban areas.
The second aspect of “quality of life” is the “quality of citizenship”: the role that urban residents play by participating in civic issues, deepening democracy and holding our public institutions accountable in delivering various goods and services. This second aspect includes very importantly the aspect of voluntarism.
Janaagraha seeks to change urban quality of life by improving urban governance, and seeks to do this by applying a well-defined framework of change that is based on a systems approach.
An apt metaphor would be that of a TREE- the roots are democracy, the trunk is the systems approach, and the fruits are a better quality of life. What nurtures this tree in a democracy is citizenship.
Founded in 2001 by Ramesh Ramanathan and Swati Ramanathan, Janaagraha started as a movement to include people's participation in public governance and has now evolved into a robust institution for Citizenship and Democracy.
The REED Framework
REED is a comprehensive framework to address urban governance. It is an acronym for four defining aspects of urban governance – a Regional perspective to urban issues, Empowered citizens and local governments, Enabled citizens and local governments, with Direct accountability of the government to the people.
REED addresses issues relating to systems, processes and the institutional framework with respect to governance, all intended to change “quality of life” on both dimensions – the quality of infrastructure and services as well as the quality of citizenship.
The following is a quick snapshot of REED framework with illustrative examples that show how the REED systems approach can solve India’s urban challenges:
1. R - Regional Perspective
The first element of REED framework stands for taking a Regional perspective when looking at urban challenges. Problems of urbanization cannot be looked at in isolation. The city is always a part of a larger region with many interconnections. In India, the district in which the city or town is situated is normally considered as the region. The rural hinterland surrounding most Indian cities is an important part of the city landscape as well as its economy.
This requires taking a regional perspective to almost all aspects of urban planning and governance. For example, transportation planning for the city must be done taking developments in the sub-urban and regional areas into consideration. Planning for solid waste management and its infrastructure (transfer points, landfills etc.) needs to be done with development pattern and ecology of the entire region in mind.
2. E- Empowering Local Governments and Citizens
Within any Metropolitan Region, there are many local governments – corporations, and municipalities. There needs to be full decentralization, devolution of state functions and the restructuring of local bodies and para-statal organisations, so that these local governments are empowered to solve the problems in their respective jurisdictions.
The 74th Constitutional Amendment dealing with urban decentralization lists out 18 functions (including urban planning, water supply etc.) to be carried out by urban local bodies. But some of these functions continue to be played by state government through para-statal agencies. This has resulted in a fractured set of responsibilities for the urban local bodies, severely constraining their efforts in providing a good quality of life to urban citizens.
Another important facet of this second element of the REED framework is empowering citizens. The roots of democracy in urban India need to be deepened by giving a formal voice to urban citizens in local decision making. A formal platform for citizen participation, called as Area Sabha, at a polling booth level is not just desirable but essential for urban governance to be effective and responsive to the needs of citizens, and the passage of a Community Participation Law is a mandatory reform condition under JNNURM (Jawarharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission).
3. E – Enabling Local Governments and Citizen
Empowering the local governments with necessary functions is necessary but not enough. In order for the municipalities to perform their functions effectively, they need to be enabled with the right kind of resources – suitably qualified and skilled human resources, sufficient financial resources, and management support systems like modern technology tools such as GIS, ERP systems etc.
Adequate and capable human resources are essential for any service agency to fulfil its obligations. India has an acute shortage in the number of urban planners – one for every 100,000 urban residents as compared to one for every 5000 urban residents in USA. Even for the existing planners and urban professionals, capacity building is the need of the hour and urban management sector needs to be strengthened.
The poor financial state of Indian cities is not just an outcome of poor federal and state allocation, but also due to poor municipal revenue collection. Most Indian cities have leveraged only a fraction of their potential to collect property taxes, and struggle with revenue collection for basic serves such as water supply, garbage collection etc.
Cities also need access to modern tools and technology of urban management in order to respond to the complex challenges of rapid urbanization. For example, GIS (Geographical Information Systems) is a very powerful and most commonly used tool by urban managers across the world. However, as we will see in the next chapter, there is very little usable GIS data available for any of India’s metropolitan regions, both at the macro level and at the micro neighbourhood level.
As with local governments, citizens also need to be enabled with platforms, skills and tools to participate effectively. Citizens need tools that help them objectively assess the performance of their local governments and their elected representatives in order to take collective action.
4. D – Direct Accountability
The final element in the REED framework stands for Direct accountability. One of the arguments that is often made in India against decentralisation is the risk of increased corruption – more number of local elected representatives, each of whom wants to extract rent for their political survival. While this argument has merit, the response is not to slow down the process of decentralisation, but to carry it to its logical conclusion – which is to empower and enable the local governments, but simultaneously make them accountable in a very rigorous manner to the citizens directly.
Such direct accountability can be achieved through certain institutionalised mechanisms: first, by having inclusive and formal platforms of citizen participation such as Area Sabhas, which are essential for citizens to engage with their local governments on an ongoing basis and demand accountability. Here, participatory budgeting is a good tool for prioritization of issues by city stakeholders based on local needs.
A second instrument of accountability is the Public Disclosure Law, as required under JNNURM. In this law, urban local bodies are expected to release quarterly audited financial statements of performance to the public, and also release information on key Service Level Benchmarks for services like water supply, drainage, solid waste management etc. The Public Disclosure Law is an extension of the Right to Information Act, in that it moves from the citizen asking for information, to the local body disclosing information in a suo moto manner.
Taken together, the REED framework offers a comprehensive framework of urban governance, which looks at the meta-issues of urban reform, while acknowledging the day-to-day challenges being faced both by citizens and those within government. REED also locates the solutions in a democratic context, thereby ensuring that solutions to our urban problems can result in deepening of democratic processes, even as they change the quality of the visible aspects of urban quality of life. (see the Mumbai Metropolitan Governance Report for an example of the application of the REED framework).
Governance Structure
Janaagraha’s governance structure is indicated in the diagram below:
JCCD’s Governing Board members are a small but remarkable group of institution-builders who bring deep knowledge about building strong governance structures, open decision-making processes, and solid management systems.
The Advisory Board meets four times a year with the executive leadership of JCCD, to review the plans and progress of various programmes and activities, ensuring that these are not only meeting milestones and outcomes, but are in keeping with the values and mission of Janaagraha.
Janaagraha Programmes
Janaagraha’s programmes broadly work at two levels:- National Scale
- City Scale
As is evident in the organisational structure below, Janaagraha’s key stakeholders are citizens and government. So, every individual programme within the national and city scale umbrella is either Citizen facing or Government facing. Technology, HR & Volunteer management, Communications and Development are support programmes.
.
0 comments:
Post a Comment