On 28 August 2022, India witnessed the biggest demolition since Independence, when Noida's 32-storey twin towers came crashing down. What led to the demolition was nearly a decade long relentless pursuit of justice by a group of senior citizens who took the legal route to raise their concerns. This is a perfect example of how citizens can create their own space to participate in the decision making.

Over the years, various efforts have been made to enable citizen participation in urban governance. Decentralization of power through the 74th Constitutional Amendment Act was an important step to enable public participation. The Act not only made municipal governments a formal part of the three-tier governing system but also mandated the establishment of ward committees for cities as an invited space for citizen engagement. These committees were designed to take the concerns of people at the ward level to the councilors and function as formal spaces for people to debate the needs of the area. Another legislation that further regularized and advocated public participation at area level was the Community Participation Law under JNNURM. It involved constitution of area sabhas enabling futher decentralization below ward committees to foster citizen participation in decision making.

However, setting up of ward committees and area sabhas has remained limited to only a few states. It is only now that cities are working towards establishing ward committees and area sabhas in their urban local bodies. Recently, Coimbatore Corporation has passed a resolution to constitute ward committees & area sabhas in all the 100 wards. The civic body is planning to demarcate limits of each area sabha in coming 10-15 days.

While on one hand, Coimbatore's civic body realized the need for setting up these invited spaces on its own, Mangalore City Corporation, on the other hand, had to be pushed by the citizens to create these invited spaces for citizen engagement.

Does your city have ward committees & area sabhas? Have you attended a ward committee meeting?

To know more about Mangalore's efforts, watch.

You can also listen to the Talk in the Town conversation with Nigel Albuquerque.