Media Release
Mangaluru, Jan 19: On Tuesday, Mangaluru City Corporation (MCC) Commissioner Akshay Sridhar appealed to the citizens of Mangaluru to share their inputs on core areas they want the Mangaluru City Corporation Budget 2021 to be utilized.
Sridhar was speaking after flagging off the #MyCityMyBudget initiative by Janaagraha, a non-profit NGO that is collaborating with MCC in this participatory budget endeavour by collecting citizen inputs. Sridhar appealed to Mangalureans to use virtual or offline mode and share their views on budget priorities and opinions before 12 noon on January 22, 2021.
MCC commissioner Akshay Sridhar launching the My City My Budget Campaign at his office in Mangaluru on Tuesday along with Janaagraha’s Communications consultant Harsha Raj Gatty.
“The budget is for the people and we want citizens to give us suggestions on how they wish the budget is utilized. You can submit inputs via the My City My Budget campaign and we will consider the same while preparing the budget,” he said.
Citizens can submit inputs by visiting the link: www.janaagraha.org/mangaluru
They can click on the top 3 priorities they want the budget to be utilized from options such as roads, footpaths, underground drainage, drinking water supply, solid waste management among others. On January 20, 21 and 22, volunteers from Janaagraha will collate inputs from citizens by visiting various wards.
“Citizen participation in city budgets is the cornerstone on which great collaborations and partnerships between cities and citizens can emerge, and a virtuous cycle of planning, implementation and transparency emerges through ward committees. This is an important first step in that journey!,” said Sapna Karim, head, civic participation at Janaagraha.
“Very happy and excited to see participatory budget become a reality in Mangaluru with My City My Budget. It may be a baby step this year but will grow in time and make the beautiful city of Mangaluru even better by prioritizing what citizens want in their city budget. We humbly request all active citizens to use this opportunity to make the voice of Mangaluru heard by the Corporation,” said Srinivas Alavilli, head, civic participation at Janaagraha.
My City My Budget is an annual participatory budgeting campaign run by Janaagraha. In the year 2015, My City My Budget was launched in Bengaluru in collaboration with the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike. Since then, year on year, Janaagraha has been conducting the exercise with the BBMP and this year it collated over 9,000 citizen budget inputs in Bengaluru. This is the first-time My City My Budget has been launched in Mangaluru.
About Janaagraha:
Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy is a non-profit trust in the Jana group co-founded by Swati Ramanathan and Ramesh Ramanathan in 2001.
Janaagraha's mission is to transform the quality of life in India's cities and towns. It works with citizens to catalyse active citizenship in city neighbourhoods and with governments to institute reforms to city governance (what we call "City-Systems").
The 'City-Systems' framework is a whole-of-systems approach to solving for India's cities. It comprises four distinct yet interdependent components: Urban planning and design (master plans, design standards for public utilities), urban capacities and resources (municipal finance, municipal staffing and technology), political leadership (empowerment, legitimacy) and transparency and citizen participation (public disclosures, citizen participation, service level guarantees and grievance redressal).
MCC commissioner Akshay Sridhar’s video message during launch of My City My Budget at his office on Tuesday, January 19, 2021: