Municipal Governance in India - Responsibilities of ULBs

Responsibilities of ULBs

The municipal bodies of India are vested with a long list of functions delegated to them by the state governments under the municipal legislation. These functions broadly relate to public health, welfare, regulatory functions, public safety, public infrastructure works, and development activities.

Public health includes Water supply, Sewerage and Sanitation, eradication of communicable diseases etc.; welfare includes public facilities such as Education, recreation, etc.; regulatory functions related to prescribing and enforcing Building regulations, encroachments on public land, Birth registration and Death certificate, etc.; public safety includes Fire protection, Street lighting, etc.; public works measures such as construction and maintenance of inner city roads, etc.; and development functions related to Town planning and development of commercial markets. In addition to the legally assigned functions, the sectoral departments of the state government often assign unilaterally, and on an agency basis, various functions such as Family planning, Nutrition and slum improvement, disease and Epidemic control, etc.

The Twelfth Schedule of Constitution (Article 243 w) provides an illustrative list of eighteen functions, that may be entrusted to the municipalities.

Besides the traditional core functions of municipalities, it also includes development functions like planning for Economic development and Social justice, urban poverty alleviation programs and promotion of cultural, educational and aesthetic aspects. However, conformity legislation enacted by the state governments indicate wide variations in this regard. Whereas Bihar, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Manipur, Punjab and Rajasthan have included all the functions as enlisted in the Twelfth Schedule in their amended state municipal laws, Andhra Pradesh has not made any changes in the existing list of municipal functions. Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Orissa, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal states have amended their municipal laws to add additional functions in the list of municipal functions as suggested in the twelfth schedule.

There is a lot of difference in the assignment of obligatory and discretionary functions to the municipal bodies among the states. Whereas functions like planning for the social and economic development, urban forestry and protection of the environment and promotion of ecological aspects are obligatory functions for the municipalities of Maharashtra, in Karnataka these are discretionary functions.

Provision of water supply and sewerage in several states has either been taken over by the state governments or transferred to state agencies. For example in Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat, water supply and sewerage works are being carried out by the state level Public Health Engineering Department or Water Supply and Sewerage Boards, while liability for repayment of loans and maintenance are with the municipalities. Besides these state level agencies, City Improvement Trusts and Urban Development Authorities, like Delhi Development Authority (DDA), have been set up in a number of cities. These agencies usually undertake land acquisition and development works, and take up remunerative projects such as markets and commercial complexes, etc. The Municipal bodies in most cases have been left only with the functions of garbage collection, garbage disposal, street lighting, construction and maintenance of roads, etc.

In terms of fiscal federalism, functions whose benefits largely confine to municipal jurisdictions and may be termed as the essentially municipal functions. Similarly, functions that involve substantial economics of scale or are of national interest may not be assigned to small local bodies. For valid reasons, certain functions of higher authorities are appropriate to be entrusted with the Municipalities – as if under principal-agent contracts and may be called agency functions that need to be financed by intergovernmental revenues. Thus instead of continuing the traditional distinction between obligatory and discretionary functions the municipal responsibilities may be grouped into essentially municipal, joint and agency functions.