Establishing Empowered City Governments in India: Institutional Approaches and Lessons from Three Decades of the 74th Constitutional Amendment Act

A majority of Indian cities are hamstrung by serious infrastructural and governance deficits. Enactment of the 74th Constitution Amendment Act is a major step toward strengthening the city governments in India. Drawing on the government policy documents, reports of the urban thinktanks, and published literature, this chapter systematically analyzes the changes in urban governance in India and flags the key institutional shortcomings impeding India’s quest toward empowered city governments. The implementation experiences of the last three decades of the 74th Constitution Amendment Act reveal clear mismatch between the envisaged rhetoric of bottom-up planning and the prevailing practices of urban policymaking within the top-down hierarchical structures. City governments lack genuine autonomy to make decisions and capacity to act on such decisions. Cities have remained hamstrung by the lack of funds and are operating with unfunded mandates. This adversely impacts the delivery of urban basic services. So, this paper argues for providing the city governments with complete power and authority over the devolved functions; strengthening fiscal health of the city governments through greater initiatives in generating revenue form own sources; transferring staff and arranging administrative supports to the city governments for newly devolved functions; and depoliticization of the decision-making processes.