DC Debate: Will Bengaluru Mayor's dharna work?
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Mayor B.S. Satyanarayana has taken a decision to go on dharna to get BBMP officers to do their job. R.K. Misra and the Mayor debate whether the unusual move will work.
Public opinion will make officials work
B.S. Satyanarayana, Mayor of Bengaluru
Many officials are inefficient are unwilling to co-operate with the administration. I am not the only one complaining about this. All previous mayors have had similar problems getting work done due to lack of cooperation from officials of the BBMP. They have all had to deal with opposition from these officials to their moves to improve the city.
This is why I said I was going to stage a dharna in front of the offices of the BBMP. It is important that people come to know that these officers are not willing to work. Public opinion could force them to perform.
No need for dharna, just suspend them
R.K. Misra, an expert on urban civic issues and founder of the Nav Bharat Democratic Party
The BBMP does have a system in place to measure the performance of officials. This system can be improved to assess individual officials and departments. There are ways to deal with inefficiency in various areas and there are also ways to penalise or punish officials who are not performing or are guilty of wrongdoing. For instance, officials, who don’t perform can be suspended.
If the Mayor is worried about the lack of cooperation or performance of the officials, he can have them suspended to send across a strong message.
There is no need to stage a dharna on a issue like this which can be easily tackled through official measures. Having said that, I would also like to mention that inefficiency on the part of officials is not the greatest of the BBMP’s problems. The biggest problem is corruption among corporators.
Many of these corporators are employed as contractors by the BBMP and are involved in huge scams. It is easy to keep a check on BBMP officials. It is the elected representatives who are out of control.
If the Mayor really wants to stage a dharna, he should do so to remove corrupt and non- performing corporators. He should find out how many corporators are also contractors and how many scams each one is involved in. He should also figure out how much money each one has got sanctioned and how much work has been done.
If elected representatives are honest and want to get work done, the efficiency of officials can be easily ensured.
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