Vision of Life; by Sanjay: Prashasak Raj, PMC, Citizens & Pune City!

“A city is not gauged by its length and width, but by the broadness of its vision and the height of its dreams.’

… Herb Caen

Herbert Eugene Caen was a San Francisco humorist and journalist whose daily column of local goings-on and insider gossip, social and political happenings, and offbeat puns and anecdotes & best thing I love about Americans is they can make fun (read as humour) of anything, even their own self also! A characteristic which doesn’t go well with, we the Indians (no offence, accept it), indeed, we love making fun but it’s always of others & this is the reason may it be philosophy or humour, its personalities like Herb, who comes to my rescue often for starting the sharing than our fellow countrymen, so is here! Indeed, Herb’s above quote is not about humour or fun but about making people understand concept named city, which is why I chose it for the topic, though the name may be PMC (Pune Municipal Corporation) governing public body for Pune city, is most people know but Prashasak Raj (Administrator ruling) is something not even the PMC’s staff was knowing because never such time has come & that’s why this aspect is directly related to the city’s development! Thought it’s a bit complex issue, so let me explain as this situation is applicable or being experienced (being lived is more apt) in many big cities in the State at present so I will take Pune as a case study (as usual). We all know a Municipal Corporation is a public body where we vote for Corporators i.e. Nagar Sevak (Mananiya also is a nickname to them) & the party which won by majority becomes the ruling party in the public body which in our case is PMC!

This is similar to State’s or Country’s election system, though for many subjects or policies PMC must work under the State govt’s guidelines, yet it remains an individual authority on equal number of matters, especially those which are important of day-to-day life of citizens e.g. water supply, drainage, garbage collection & many such, for the citizens! And there is a bureaucratic (administrative) system in place in parallel with the general body of elected members to execute the decisions the GB has taken as well to guide them in civic matters. In short, PMC (or any such public civic body) is like a two-legged human body making administration (staff) as one leg & elected members as another & if Commissioner heads the staff team, then the Mayor leads the elected members team, keeping balance of the body i.e. among both the teams! There are departments on both teams according to the infrastructure essential for living, such as water, road, public health, property tax, building permission & many such on staff side while Standing Committee (which looks after all budget allocations), City Improvement, Education & many such committees are there to keep control on the respective dept’s working on which elected members are appointed! I know these are very basic things yet I know even the so called educated people (Pune is full of them) doesn’t know most of these things as recently I was part of committee meeting our Central Transportation Minister who is responsible for entire country’s road network & there were few other citizens who has come to meet them & they were going to complain the minister about poor road network in Pune & condition of the roads, which even doesn’t comes under his purview, such is knowledge of most of the citizens about the public bodies we live in!

Ohk, now if you have understood how the functioning of our city works then lets come to other aspect of sharing i.e. Prashasak Raj which is in place for last two years & trust me, this hasn’t happened in entire fifty plus years of Pune’s history & what it means is, for last two years there is no public body in place as there are no elections so the PMC is working without public’s representatives or say Corporators, means the body named PMC is walking with only one leg, to give you simple analogy! This is the subject of sharing, as due to a legal matter which is going on in the Hon Supreme Court, election procedure at PMC is at hold so the earlier public body’s tenure has ended but life of the city goes on so Hon Commissioner has been named (read as appointed) as Administrator (read as care-taker) of PMC along with his regular duty of head of staff at PMC & this way working of PMC is going on for last two years, a record in itself! Now, what this means is there is no citizen’s representative in PMC & many will ask what’s need as anyway for two years things are going on fine but same thing is applicable to the infamous Emergency (Ananibani) where all rights or say authority has been controlled by few key position & even there are people who used to praise the Emergency period! In simple words now the Commissioner has to decide what’s important for the citizens & the Commissioner only has to execute what he has thought important & if the system fails to deliver then the Commissioner is only responsible to listen to the complaints from the citizens regarding failure of the system to serve them!

In a way this is good as many citizens (all PMC staff) do think what's the use of elected members as they are one actually even if they come from different political parties as well, they put their interests above the city's interests & list is on! But this is why we call ourselves democratic society where we get to choose our representees to represent our issues & act on them, right? And with Prashasak raj in place for nearly two years the basic concept of democracy has gone for toss & this is not a good sign for the city at large as well for the society also!

At the same time imagine the responsibility, burden of expectations or authority, whatsoever you may call it, the Prashasak Raj thing gives to one single person i.e. The Commissioner of PMC as, no body to challenge your decision as well no answerable to anybody if this is one side of the coin then being held responsible for every wrong thing that happens to the city, is the other side of the coin named Prashasak Raj! Now, if you have understood the scenario let’s see what these two special years of Prashasak Raj has given to the city because public body or not, the city never stopped growing, rather it grew in lips & bounds in the last two years which were vital post the covid era! That way also Pune has always been blessed for growth on its own, yet the good luck never always remains so & slowly the city is witnessing the other side of growth & that is, side effects of insufficient infrastructure! While I was writing this sharing, a news went viral about Concert of Arijit Singh (famous Hindi singer) in western suburbs of Pune & the traffic chaos it created, to such extent that Police Chief of the city also got stuck in the traffic for hours & has to go back without being able to attend the event! And then comes water, which has been the backbone of the city’s growth for decades but has also started showing its colour by making most suburbs dependant on tanker water & Hon Divisional Commissioner asking to stop new permissions for constructions in some fringe areas of newly expanded parts of PMC! All these are signs which Prashasak Raj needed to tackle as going by present political & legal situation, it seems there won’t be a civic body’s election for next nine months for sure & the problems will only multiply for sure for the infrastructure!

The Ex-Commissioner (Prashasak) tried his best to give justice to the three roles he had to play simultaneously, & river front development as well Metro rail coordination & road network expansion type projects he followed for execution & are important for the city at large. At the same time the civic body got awards for having the best public health infra in the State as well he published Vision for reducing carbon footprint & these are important aspects for the future of the city. But making development plans of merged villages & getting it sanctioned is something that is lagging for long & most important is strengthening public transport which is the weakest link of Pune region! As present PMPML i.e. public transport system is owned by PMC & PCMC & both civic bodies having Prashasak Raj, every single problem of public transport could have been solved but it didn’t happen yet. Indeed, getting electrically operated buses is a good thing but monitoring the bus schedule & basic infrastructure like bus parking spaces, bus depot & bus stops like things are way below what commuters expect! At the same time there was another news about PMC administration pulling down all illegal hoardings of political figures under the name of “Achar Sanhita” i.e. Code of Conduct as General Assembly polls have been declared, so obviously common man does thinks who has stopped administration to pull down such hoardings earlier, which are like bad patch on the face of the city, why can’t the Prashasak Raaj didn’t remove all the hoardings & banners which are illegal when it has all the powers to do so, right? Reducing tree cover & ground water both are alarming aspects for the city because both are directly related (read as cause) for many ill effects such as increase in temperature & pollution in & around the city. Though the Prashasak Raj formed a committee in place for ground water conservation yet rampant tree cutting is a thing we can’t ignore & need more attention for conservation of existing trees. Then the worst scene or aspect is of garbage, as with one crore population & its lifestyle which generates hundreds of tons of waste every day & to manage it is an increasing task every day! *BTW, a curious question lingers in my mind: if we can conduct elections of the entire country, what is the problem (legal) for not being able to do so for small-scale election such as the civic body’s elections of Pune, right?

The tenure of one Prashasak has ended but the Raaj continues & we can’t blame every wrong thing on the system, as citizens of Pune also can do a lot by themselves to reduce their some of the problems such as controlling use of water, following traffic rules or not throwing their garbage at empty public places (especially rivers & water bodies) & learn to walk a bit to use public transport than expecting to get down from the vehicle right at the doorsteps of their destination & many such! Do mind, a city may be governed or ruled or controlled by administration or by elected members but it’s the citizens which decides the fate of the city; adios with this note!

Sanjay Deshpande

smd156812@gmail.com

Sanjeevani Dev.

Please view my sharing about finding a Right Home/ Office in Pune, at YouTube link below & share if liked...

https://youtu.be/27j3I3rwGPQ?si=-ODYBxVI2Dl_C345

Please do visit my blog links below to read about real estate & home buying!

https://visonoflife.blogspot.com/2024/01/choosing-your-home-along-with-future-of.html

http://jivnachadrushtikon.blogspot.com/2023/02/blog-post.html

Creating Togetherness; team Sanjeevani Way (Click link below)

https://www.flickr.com/photos/65629150@N06/albums/72157627904681345

For any of your complaints about city, log in at link below

www.punecorporation.org

Take your issues to Hon PM at link below...

https://secure.mygov.in/

Think Green, Think Life