The Month Reviewed

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Municipal Misgovernment Prime Minister Nehru while inaugurating the Ninth Meeting of the Central Council of Local Self-Government, on September 6, suggested that all legislators should serve on municipal committees or other local bodies for sometime before they are allowed contest elections to State or Central Legislatures. In the last General Election in 1962, the names of all the Congress candidates for the Lok Sabha and the State Legislatures had to be approved by the Congress High Command, which at that time virtualy meant Pandit Nehru himself, Mrs. Indira Gandhi and Mr. Lal Bahadur Shastry. It should not be difficult for the Congress High Command to give preference to persons with the previous experience of the working of local bodies, when selecting its candida es for election to the Parliament and the State

Legislatures. The suggestion, is good, though not new, but so far it has not received the consideration that it deserved.

Pandit Nehru, having served Allahabad Municipal Board as its Chairman forty years ago, and with his experience of running the country's government for the last 16 years, is eminently qualified to make the suggestion. Experience of grassroots democracy will help in making better legislators and parliamentarians and in turn it might lead to

better appreciation of the problems of grassroots democracy and to improvement in working of local bodies in the long run.

The performance of the Municipal bodies in the country has not been satisfying. In his address to the Central Council of Local Self-Government Ministers last month Pandit Nehru also opined that Municipalities were not known for their efficiency or ability to get things done. The Municipalities, he had added, "by and large, were not a shining example of virtue or efficiency." In saying the above, Pandit Nehru was echoing his ideas formed of the working of Municipal bodies forty years ago. Writing of his

municipal experience in 1936, Pandit Nehru hadsaid, "our local bodies are not, as a rule, shining examples of success and efficiency".

If 40 years ago local bodies were not "shinig examples of success and efficiency", we could lay the blame for this on the foreign government, but if even in 1963 they are not "shining example or virtue or efficiency", we have only ourselves to blams for it. The foreign rule ended in 1947 and the Congress Party under the leadership of Pandit Nehru has been ruling the country since then.

Forty years ago Pandit Nehru had attributed the ills of Municipal democracy to the absence of a background of informed public opinion and a sense of responsibility. He had gone on to say that instead of the above we had an all-pervading atmosphere of authoritarianism, and the accompaniments of democracy were lacking. There was no mass educational system, no effort to build up public opinion based on knowledge. Inevi tably public attention turned to personal or communal or other petty issues, Pandit

Nehru had added.

and competent as were they 40 years ago. The fact that all the rulers now are Indians makes up for some of the deficiency, but it cannot be a substitute for what Pandit Nehru described to be the "attainments of democracy".

A singularly wooden attitude has been adopted by the Central Government and the State Governments, as also by the ruling. party, in viewing the problems of Muni ipal Administrations. Little patience has been shown by the ruling people in understanding the problems of democracy and government at the local level in towns and cities. The Municipalities have been suffered by them as necessary evils, rather than as worthy instruments of democracy and administra tion, which could be of immense service in serving and uplifting the people, if only they could be adequately vitalised.

The unthinking indifference to the problems of the Municipal Administrations or the attitude of contem pt towards them, that have marked the Government policies in the post-Independence era could not have led to any other result than perpetuating the inefficiency and incompetence of the local bodies, and, if anything, further accentuating these

evils.

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The changing of street names is a pastime in which the Municipal Councils in India have also been indulging. After a struggle lasting eight years Calcutta Corporation recently decided to re-rame Mott Lane Monilal Saha Lane. Lucknow Municipal Board, when it was under a Governmentappointed Administrator, overnight changed all the streets' names that were not namved Indians. New Delhi Did the same. In May last Bombay Municipal Corporation re named Harvey Road after Pandia Ramabai Saraswati, a pioneer social reformer. This re-naming, paradoxical as it may appear, was done by Mr. S. K. Patil, an ex Mayor of Bombay, who at the re naming ceremony itself declared that he was totally opposed to renaming of the roads in the city, as su h renaming, he added, only made confusion worst confounded. In this connection, Mr. Patil also referred to some advanced countries where the roads had only numerals and it was easy for even a blind man to go where he wanted.

The craze for renaming of streets has come in for justifiable criticism from some quarters. The Sunday Standard, deploring this craze says: "Nothing is more symptomatic of the shallow and infantile mentality of our people than the contemptible craze for renaming the city roads after individuals who did no service to Bombay and had nothing to do with its streets, squares or markets”.

A speaker at the Bombay Rotary Club, condemning this "puerile process of perverting history falsifying geography and confounding postal and telephone services", said "the emphasis is on politicians and patriots, on men who started slogans, shook banners, broke laws and statues, led morchas

and misled mobs". He added: "creative artists, scientists, engineers, educationists, physicians and surgeons, who rendered service to the city are never thought of; only politicians and Anglophobes, whose main service consisted of violent speeches and wild gesticulations."

A Times of India Columnist has asked: "Can anything be more unrewarding and singularly unfruitful than this agitation in favour of renaming streets and tearing down ancient statues usually at considerable expense?" He adds: "every street name is a remembrance of much that is strange, fascinating and instructive and the cost of changing street names and removing statues cannot therefore be computed solely in terms of rupee expense".

Not all the names being changed are of the Colonial rulers. A perfectly tidy name like Marine Drive with no trace of British contamination, has been named by the Bom. bay Corporation Netaji Subhas Road, the Sunday Standard adds, "unnecessarily and inappropriately." It asked: "What had Netaji Bose, whatever his contribution in confounding British domination, got to do with the city of Bombay? If Netaji Bose or Mahatama Gandhi or Swami Vivekananda stand at all in need of such childish glorification, their memorials should be in New Delhi."

Luckily the campaign for removing statues of foreigners, the former British rulers, now seems to have exhausted itself, but the street re-naming propensities of the civic bodies have not yet been checked, for these are not solely due to the narrow chauvinism, which regards foreign names as offensive and permanent reminders of early indignities, but due to other considerations, like securing cheap publicity and public recognition for whomsoever the cityfathers may be interested in.

The craze for renaming of streets has to be discouraged. There will be enough new roads if the civic bodies will attend to their more important job of road-making, which can be named after anyone the cityfathers may be interested in. The suggestion of

Mr. S. K. Patil that the streets should bear

numerals instead of names of individuals also deserves consideration.

Food Adulteration

Adulteration of food articles and drugs has assumed dangerous dimensions. Stringent laws have failed to curb the evil. Last April Union Health Minister, Dr. Sushila Nayar, had told the Rajya Sabha that the Food Adulteration Act would be further amended to provide for deterrent punishment to adulterators of foodstuffs. Imprisonment would be made compulsory for those convicted of offences under the Act, she had said. Adulteration of foodstuffs and drugs is but one of the many aspects of the growing corruption in the country.

Delhi's citizens would draw cold comfort from the denial of the Union Health Minister, Dr. Sushila Nayar, in the Lok Sabha on September 5, that adulteration of food articles was on the increase in the country. Statistics collected for Delhi for the last two or three years, she said, had shown a reduction in the prevalence of the evil. The Medical Relief and Public Health Cosmetics of Delhi Corporation does not share the view of the Union Health Minister, and it has planned more stringent measures to deal with the menace of adulteration. In the Lok Sabha, when the Drugs and Cospemtics (Amendment) Bill was being debated, on September 12, an Independent member, Mr. Gauri Shankar Kakkar, suggested life imprisonment and public whipping or at least simple life term for proved manufacturers of adulterated drugs. He said adulteration was so well-organised and lucrative that even a maximum of ten years' imprisonment provided in the Bill was not going to make any impression on the miscreants.

percent to 25 percent over the last two years. The Delhi Corporation's two foodtesting laboratories and its staff of 21 Food Inspectors (raised from 8) were inadequate to cope with the needs of the Capital.

The Central Council of Local Self Government has now asked the Union Health Ministry, as a part of its drive against food adulteration, to introduce a scheme for the establishment

of analytical laboratories. during the Fourth Plan. Laboratories with modern equipment should be set up at the Municipal, District and Regional levels for speedy analysis of food samples, the Council has asked.

While the evil of food and drug adulteration is not confined to the bigger metrolpolises, all the Municipal Councils are not equipped with, and have no resources to equip themselves with, analytical laboratories and hire the necessary staff for detecting adulteration and bringing the guilty to book, even if these Councils were so inclined, Adulteration of food and drugs has become a thriving industry in the whole of the country. According to a report of the Union Health Ministry, of the food samples raken in Maharashtra as many as 51 per ent of these were found adultera ed, while in the neighbouring State of Gujarar only 15 percent of the samples were adulterated. The percentage of adulteration detected in other States, according to this report, was as under: Delhi 35.4; Punjab 24; Uttar Pradesh 25.3 Rajasthan 41.7 and Himachal Pradesh 48. In Assam adulteration was found in 477 percent of the samples taken, but in Bihar it was only 19.7 percent. In West Bengal and Orissa the figures were 25.9 percent and 28 percent, respectively.

Not all the cases of food adulteration are detected. As mentioned above, in smaller towns the machinery for taking food samples and subjecting them to analyitical tesis is practically non-existent. The mass scale of food adulteration is, however, obvious. It

constitutes a serious threat to the nation's health. Pious resolutions and draconian laws passed by the Parliament have not led to any notable dimunition in the extent of this crime against public health. Cool thinking and rational approach are needed

Municipal Councils, properly energised, can play a big part in curbing this evil.

Toll Of Roads

Last January it was reported from Delhi that according to information received from State Governments, the number of motor vehicle accidents in India had risen from 21,639 in 1951 52 to 44,348 in 1960-61. The statistics of road accidents in 1960 which the Economic Commission for Europe published last August show that 51,154 persons were killed as compared with 37,302 in 1953. For the number of automobiles on India's roads and the number of miles travelled the Indian accident rate is on the high side.

In Calcutta in the first six months of this year 106 people were killed and 2,465 injured. The number of street accidents was 8,316 against 7,821 and 7,556 for the corresponding period in 1962 and 1961 respectively, Delhi's record is even more distressing. In 1962 the number of accidents in Delhi was 7,268. Besides 134 pedestrians and 65 cyclists were killed and the injured numbered. about 1880.

There is a talk of starting a helicopter service to connect Dum Dum Airport with the Calcutta Maidan to overcome the problems created by traffic congestion in that city so far as moving in and out of the air passengers is concerned. Delhi is going in for seperate traffic signals for pedestrians which will guide them on busy crossings when to halt and when to move on. To discourage parking of cars on roads and their use by motorists as garages Delhi Corporation has introduced a parking fee. Parking meters have yet to come.

Preventive measures to check road accidents still remain to be considered in most of the bigger towns, where already the toll of life on the roads has increased considerably. The mixed raffic-fas moving automobiles side by side with cycle-rickshaws or even bullock carts and horse-drawn vehiclescomplicates the road scene. This, coupled with lack of observance of road rules by many road users creates such congestion and chaotic conditions on the roads that are not

warranted by the number of vehicles and other users on the road,

The task of regulating traffic is shared between police authorities and the civic bodies. And there is not always co-operation and co-ordination between the two agencies. Traffic engineering could help improve matters, but few civic bodies have yet given serious thought to this. Encroachments on roads have been allowed to come up indiscriminately, and the difficulties of road users have increased. Additional powers taken by the State Governments to deal with such encroachments and to prevent haphazard construction on and along side the roads have not always been properly applied. More trucks and buses now ply the roads than was the case a few years ago. The number of these will go on increasing. Trucks laden with goods enter the city's main roads at all hours and there are no special parking lots for trucks engaged as carriers of goods.

Municipal Councils have not yet tried to educate themselves into the need for adequate measures for regulation of traffic so that accidents may be prevented and traffic may flow smoothly. The Police occasionally resort to big stick to deal with violations of road rules and traffic regulations. Delhi Police did so recently, but found that this did not pay. They are now reported to have shifted the emphasis from large-scale prosecutions to education. Road safety is to be taught to school children also. A Safety Park, the first of its kind in India, is also to be made in the Capital. This is far better than what an M. P. described as the ridiculous sight of policeman being posted every five feet on Delhi's roads, and which the Minister said was intended to exercise concentrated type of traffic control. Neither Delhi nor any other metropolitan area can have such a large traffic police force as would be needed to maintain the type of concentrated traffic control that was exercised in Delhi recently. Education of the road users in the traffic rules is the only means of curbing the road accidents, and restoring order on the roads. Civic bodies have a big part to play in this, but have been reglegent so far of their duty in this regard.

Water Scarcity

Dr. Sushila Nayyar, India's Health Minister, says that polluted drinking water is the Number One Enemy of the nation's health. She believes that there is no other way of ensuring the health of the people than to provide them with safe drinking water.

Mr. R. .S Mehta, Director of the Central Public Health Engineering Institute, says that only 10 percent of the country's population get elean water and the remaining 90 percent receive polluted water for drinking. This explains the high incidence of waterborne diseases in the country, including some important metropolitan areas. According to the Report of Health Survey and Planning Committee (1961), about 75 percent of the urban areas lack protected water supply while over 85 percent lack the amenity of a sewerage system. Even in those urban areas where water supply or sewerage facilities do existfacilities are inadequate and are in need of substantial improvements.

Assuming the average cost of an urban scheme at about Rs. 50 for water supply and Rs. 75 for sewerage per capita, the financial outlay necessary to complete water supply and drainage schemes for all urban population who lack these facilities would be of the order of Rs. 625 crores. If additions and improvements to the existing facilities in urban areas are also to be taken into account, the total figure may be of the order of Rs. 900 crores.

The

Under the First and Second Five Year Plans a provision of Rs. 12.72 crores and Rs. 63 crores, respectively, was made for the urban water supply and sewerage schemes. Even in the Third Plan the provision is but a fraction of the total requirement. question of rural water supply, according to Mr. R. S. Mehta, has hardly been tackled. It is estimated that the cost of providing minium water supply facilities in all rural areas of the country will come to Rs. 300 crores. In its three Five Year Plans India has spent only a total amount of Rs. 75 crores on rural water supply programmes.

The above figures give some idea of how colossal is the problem of fighting the Enemy