Establishing metropolitan governance and local governance simultaneously: Lesson from India's 74th Constitutional amendment act

Abstract

Metropolitan regions are an increasingly relevant scale for political decision making and determining urban utilities and services functions. Metropolitan institutions functions with autonomous local governments, parastatal organisations and public-private enterprises. Therefore, it is always difficult to network between the decentralised municipal governments and create a hierarchy of planning, development and inter-local collaboration for governmental services delivery. One may expect that output legitimacy or legitimacy by performance is the dominant source for legitimacy in metropolitan governance. This paper examines India's metropolitan governance, its functioning under the decentralisation, the varied implementation of the act by states, its relevant comparison with global cases, and the opportunity of efficient collaboration between decentralised local governments within a metropolitan governance mechanism. The 74th Constitutional amendment act (74th CAA) 1992 provides the necessary legislative backdrop for decentralisation and establishment of the local governments or urban local bodies in India. The amendment act also pave ways for institutionalisation of metropolitan governance by establishing metropolitan/regional development authorities. The purpose of this metropolitan institution is to establish a framework of democratic governance, provide infrastructure services and improve regional prosperity. However, this contribution of the amendment act is not highlighted much in literature. The paper narrates the functioning of the metropolitan institution for the integration among the decentralised local governments and the relevant issues from two empirical evidences. It divulges the mechanisms of establishing metropolitan governance and decentralisation in India. In the process, it showcases the contribution of 74th CAA towards the establishment of the metropolitan governance. It also outlines the potential and challenges present in this dual system.