A day after the BMC announced its annual civic budget worth Rs 52,619 crore, city-based political analyst and author SURENDRA JONDHALE, in an interview with PRATIP ACHARYA, talks about how the civic body needs to think about long-term plans towards development and how this budget is being drafted keeping in mind the upcoming elections. What is your overall understanding of the BMC’s budget for 2023-24? This budget is entirely a politically shadowed administrative budget. This year, a state appointed administrator presented the budget and if you look closely at the budgetary provisions, you will see that lesser funds are being allotted to the education and health department, just like the Union budget for this year. Another aspect of this budget is that the BMC is going to dive into its reserves (Fixed Deposit) and they are saying that this money will be utilised for development works in city. This a very drastic step and I don’t remember that anything like this has ever happened before. This year we have seen the municipal commissioner speaking majorly about mitigating air pollution. They have also earmarked Rs 25 crore for this purpose. What do you think about this? Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has also spoken about mitigating air pollution of Mumbai and she has connected the current situation with better waste management. The situation in Mumbai today is the result of prolonged incorrect waste management. Air pollution is just an additional factor, the unmanaged construction works, open debris dumping and garbage burning are the primary contributing factors for bad air quality. These factors need to be addressed first, then only the problem could be solved at a holistic level. Municipal Commissioner Iqbal Singh Chahal,in his budget speech, acknowledged the real estate and infrastructure sector leading to dust pollution and has said holistic policies will also be framed. What do you have to say? You can never stop construction activity in Mumbai. There are two issues that have got us to this situation today. One is the BMC doesn’t have a proper policy of waste management and secondly owing to big ticket infrastructure works like Metro and Coastal Road the city is being affected by dust. These problems wouldn’t have risen in the first place, if the city had enough green patches and trees. For example, the Aarey forest is like an oasis to the Mumbai metropolis. Whatever green patches are left in the city now are now being crushed for real estate or infrastructure projects. The lack of trees around is only resulting in poorer air quality nowadays. This year, we have seen the civic administrator pushing for the completion of existing projects instead of announcing any new big ticket projects. How do you see this? There is a lack of innovative imagination in outlying the overall development plan of this city. This year, huge allocations have been made for the existing projects and policies. For the Mumbai Beautification Plan, BMC is spending Rs 1,700 crore, but what beautification works are they going to do in areas like Dharavi, which is expected to go for redevelopment. Similarly, a huge chunk of money is being allotted for Coastal Road project, which is only going to benefit a handful of citizens in the future. I believe instead of spending so much on these projects, more people friendly schemes should have been drawn. In what way do you think this budget is going to benefit the city's people? This budget is proposed solely keeping the upcoming elections in mind. Whenever they are talking about roads, beautification, air pollution, they are trying to make Mumbaikars happy. But at the same time, these are not the real solution to the problems and appear to be a very short-term approach. Therefore, in my opinion, it would have benefited the people of Mumbai more, if the focus was much more towards other fields like education.
