City Pulse

The Kerala government I thought had taken a sensible decision when it decided to do away with the honorific of 'Worshipful' for Mayors. The practice of calling the city Mayors as 'Worshipful' comes from an English tradition when the city leader was held in high esteem.

Now, Mayors of Indian cities as far as I know, are just neither here nor there. They run cities or appear to run cities when the political nerve centre of the state is the Chief Minister. It is the Honourable Chief Minister of a state who calls the shots, pure and simple.

One is not sure if 'honourable' is slightly below 'worshipful' in the pecking order, but in practice, it is the other way round. Mayors are in fact are a pretty ill-treated lot in the cities I am acquainted with. Chief Ministers of states cannot afford to have Mayors with their own political clout, financial and economic independence that the city could offer.

With the cabinet system in disarray and with most ministers treated worse than clerks in the government hierarchy, it is a bit too much to believe that Mayors could withstand the power of the Chief Minister.

In Chennai, and in Bangalore, most people do not know who their Mayor is and any suggestion that the Mayor has some power vis-a-vis the Chief Minister would be considered laughable.

No Chief Minister worth his or her salt can allow for an alternative power centre, particularly in cities which are growing power houses where money and resources are concentrated.

The only time that a Mayor in Chennai had some power in the recent past was when he was the son of the Chief Minister himself. M.K Stalin, son of DMK patriarch and then Chief Minister was the Mayor, and since he was no threat to the Chief Minister he was allowed some leeway.

And Chennai is a place where the Mayors are directly elected and have some connect with their voters. Imagine the case if the Mayor is elected to the post in an indirect manner, by the corporators. It turns out into a farce as the Mayor has no political power or mandate to run the city and the writ of the Chief Minister runs. And in a city like Bangalore, it gets curious as law mandates that the Mayor should be indirectly elected for a period of one year, making him or her that much irrelevant.

There is another problem if a different party is at helm in the city and the state. The state would starve the city of funds, denying the Mayor political space and financial leverage.

At times one wonders, whether the state governments and its political masters have taken enormous trouble to downgrade the office of the Mayor. In a city like Bangalore, it takes six months to know what it means to be a Mayor, and it is just six more months to be out of it.

There cannot be two levers of power in a city, when it comes to resolving basic citizen issues. But given India's political system, the Chief Minister by virtue of heading the state will pummel the Mayor into submission, given his powers and his clout.

There is also the case when the Chief Minister is elected from the city as an MLA. Then the Mayor can forget that he even exists, as the Chief Minister takes all the load and the credit. 

Unless Mayors are elected in a direct election, answerable to their voters and the cities are made economically viable and politically distinct, it is premature to expect visible change. The political discourse in India have always put the 'rural and poor' hinterlands at the centre of its attention. It might have been the hangover of the saying that 'India lives in its villages' ignoring waves of urbanisation and the engines of economic growth in the cities. Unless this changes and the locus of power shifts to the Mayors, a level of political accountability cannot be expected from the 'first citizen' of the city.

The 'Worshipful' Mayors would have to wait for this change; till then the Honourable Chief Ministers will have their say. 

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this article are the personal opinions of the author. The opinions appearing in the article do not reflect the views of I Change My City.