"Entrepreneurial skills key to solving civic problems"

Juanita M. Crabb, who is widely recognised as a progressive public official in the USA and has served as Mayor of the city of Binghamton (New York State) for 12 years, would have us believe that there are indeed practical, and even quick-fix solutions to all our civic woes. Having succeeded in turning the multi-million dollar deficit-ridden, crippling Binghamton city into asparkling and highly self-dependent one, she ought to know.

On a visit to India to share her experiences in tackling typical urban challenges and explore closer ties with Indian cities and urban managers in her capacity as the executive director of the Sister Cities International (SCI), she says: "The city mayors or urban managers need to be real entrepreneurs and diplomats who see a potential in the most hopeless of situations and bring warring factions together to get their proposals passed."

Resources, or rather the lack of it, are a major concern for Delhi’s civic bodies too for providing drinking water, better roads, regular electricity supply and primary health care. Crabb adds: "It is all about the power of persuasion. Volunteers and the business sector are huge, still untapped, resources that can be involved in solving many of these problems."

Schemes like "Adopt a park or a stretch of the highway" have been successfully tried in various US cities and elsewhere, and if business houses are madeto realise that they too are a vital part of community welfare programmes, she says, funds for housing, construction of water tanks, computers for schools or even public stadiums will not be too difficult to get.

"After all, their kids breathe the same air and go to the same schools. When they invite their business associates (or the British Queen), they will not like to hear any negative comments about the city," she says, adding that once someone comes forward, others will follow. In short, having all the authority and the money that one needs is not enough. Only individuals with exceptional pursuation and management powers, much like S R Rao, the former municipal commissioner of Surat, can get things moving.

The second mantra is to bring the development plans to a realistic plain. Crabb cites the example of an old neighbourhood in her city with crumbling but sprawling mansions that needed to be pulled down to make way for apartments to solve the housing problem in the region. The civic body didn’t haveenough funds required to even tear them down. The agency instead opted for their restoration after dividing them into four condominiums each.

"It retained the character of the area, accommodated four families in place of one and cost less than tearing the mansions down," she says. In another case, the highly sedimented water supply pipes that would have cost millions to clean up were made functional by using a pulverizer that could not only clean the pipes but also put a polythene lining on them simultaneously.

In yet another case, bio-degradable and non bio-degradable waste was segregated and the former was utilised to produce methane gas for the community, thereby turning the problem of waste disposal into a regular energy resource. "Unlike the popular perception here, American cities too face civic problems like lack of drinking water and waste disposal systems and don’t have enough money to solve them. If they had, I would not have been talking about such problems in the first place," shecommented.

When one bank refuses to spare large loans for a particular civic project and the interest rates are prohibitive, persuading several banks operating within the city to pool in their resources and giving it to the civic agency at a low interest rate, appointing volunteer committees for historical review and ensuring an efficient, responsive civic agency are just some of the ideas that Crabb thinks are practical.

Incidentally, the SCI, which has over 3,000 members in 123 countries all across the globe, presents a huge international network where city governments can plug in to get the best ideas available to solve typical civic problems. Crabb helps local city governments put down exactly what they are looking for from their sister cities in the US, including technical assistance and practical ideas, and facilitates these exchanges for their mutual benefit.

"The city is used as a classroom in the sister city exchanges. The bottomline is that rather than looking towards the central governmentand waiting for funds, generate your own resources and persuade others to help you, like a true entrepreneur," she suggests. After all, if S.R Rao can do it in Surat or Crabb in Binghamton city, so can our Mayor or the municipal commissioner in Delhi.