The history of urbanization and
urban governance in India dates back to the period of
the Indus Valley Civilization.
Subsequent periods saw a major transformation in the
perception of urbanization and
urban governance. In the pre-historic period, the origin and
rise of civilizations, identified
as urbanization, were normally governed by the local
cultural process.
The concept of local
self-government in India as an organized system of governance
emerged during the late
seventeenth century with the setting up of the Municipal
Corporation of Madras by the East
India Company in 1688. Subsequently, Mayor's Courts
were set up in the presidency
towns of Madras, Bombay and Calcutta in 1720. This
followed the empowerment of the
Governor-General in Council to appoint justices of
peace in the presidency towns in
1793 mainly to levy taxes on houses and lands to provide
sanitation in the towns. Efforts
were made to further strengthen the municipal functions
through resolutions by Lord Mayo,
the then Governor-General of India in 1870 and by
Lord Ripon in 1882, which
approved non-official majorities in all municipalities and
replaced even the district
collector by a non-official chairman. A Royal Commission on
Decentralization (1907), the
Government of India Act, 1919, the Simon Commission
Report, 1925, and the Government
of India Act, 1935 replacing the Government of India
Act, 1919, are a few important
events during the British rule aiming at empowerment of
local self-governments in India.
The Government of India Act, 1919, enlarged the scope
of taxation by local
self-governments and introduced a dyarchical system of governance
empowering the provincial
governments to control the local institutions through a minister. Local
self-governments continued to function under the control of provincial
governments or the district
administration.
Despite these developments, local
government institutions in India as well as in Punjab
continued to function without any
significant functional, jurisdictional and financial
autonomy. Whatever was done to
empower the local bodies, exposed them to
administrative lapses due to the
lack of administrative experience and shortage of funds.
Of late, the growth of the
economic process in the form of rapid industrialization and
economic development including
globalization, has led to the emergence of vibrant urban
centres in India. Mumbai,
Calcutta, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Jaipur,
Ludhiana, and Amritsar to name a
few. With different levels of economic development,
these urban centres have been
categorized into different groups according to their
population and income levels. The
trend of urbanization is in favour of larger towns and
the spatial/ribbon pattern of
urbanization is creating demographic imbalances. Punjab is
no exception to this general
national urbanization scenario. The existing concerns and
challenges of urbanization and
local urban governance in Punjab owe a lot to the history
and growth of urbanization and
urban governance at the national level.
Punjab is the fifth major
urbanized state after Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Gujarat, and
Karnataka. How local
self-governments meet the challenges of rapid urbanization and the
problems of housing, poverty,
environment, infrastructure and services, will largely
determine the future of Punjab.
But the history of urban local self-governments indicates
that they have not been empowered
to meet the growing challenges of urban growth in the
state. No serious effort has been
made during the last century to improve their capacity.
Some important strategies need to
be developed to improve the capacity of local selfgovernment
institutions.
In Punjab, the municipalities
have been organized into three categories, namely, nagar
panchayats for transitional
areas, municipal councils for smaller urban areas (further
classified in to class A, class
B, and class C municipalities on the basis of their population
and revenue generation capacity),
and municipal corporations for the larger urban areas
with a population of three lakh
or more and a minimum revenue generation capacity as
specified by the state
government, from time to time by notification.
The Punjab Municipal Act, 1911,
and the Punjab Municipal Corporation Act, 1976
govern the functioning of nagar
panchayats, municipal councils and municipal
corporations respectively, which
were amended in 1994, after the 74th Amendment to the
Constitution of India in 1992.
But the Conformity Legislation of 1994 passed by the state
seems to be a verbatim
incorporation of the amended Act and not much change is visible
in the functioning, power
structure and the fiscal domain of urban local self-government
institutions of Punjab.
The Constitution of India
inserted the subject of local self-government in the Seventh
Schedule, which gave autonomy to
state governments to decide functional and fiscal jurisdictions of the local
government institutions. Many initiatives such as the Local
Finance Enquiry Committee, 1951;
the Taxation Enquiry Commission, 1955; the Rural
Urban Relations Committee, 1963;
and the Committee on Augmentation of Resources of
Local Bodies, were taken in
Punjab to have a close look at the problems of local
government institutions. The
Seventh and the subsequent Finance Commissions, the
Planning Commission's Task Force
on Housing, 1983 and the National Commission on
Urbanization, 1988, all statutory
bodies set up by the Government of India, did not change
the destiny of local
self-governments in the states, which continued to suffer from lack of
functional clarity and financial
autonomy. The Punjab Municipal Corporation Act, 1976
did make an attempt to categorize
specific functions of the municipal corporations under
two heads, obligatory functions
and discretionary functions. However, the 74th
Amendment (1992), a landmark in
the history of urban governance in India, prompted the
Punjab government to frame a
comprehensive Municipal Bill in 1999, in place of the
earlier Municipal Acts. However,
its implementation awaits approval of the central
government.
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