Media Release
Mangaluru, Jan 23: A campaign was launched by Mangaluru City Corporation (MCC) commissioner Akshy Sridhar IAS on January 19. Citizens, people representatives, residents association, NGOs were among the various stakeholders who submitted their thoughts on the city budget allocation in their respective wards.
In three days, Janaagraha was able to garner 1060 responses (856 online and 204 offline) through MyCityMyBudget campaign launched by Janaagraha Centre For Citizenship and Democracy.
The public opinion aggregated showed that that construction and repair of roads, solid waste management and completion of underground drainage works, were among the top 3 priorities that Mangaluru want their civic agencies to focus and spend.
Over 27 percent of the citizens prioritised roads, 20 percent prioritised solid waste management, whereas 16 percent wanted the public money to be spent on underground drainage works.
Footpaths were the fourth priority with 14 percent of citizens voting for the issue of redressal, followed by drinking water supply at 10 percent, public toilets at 7 percent and streetlights at 6 percent.
Inputs were received from all the 60 wards of Mangaluru, and the highest was received from Bejai, followed by Bendur and Kadri South wards.
“The citizens of Mangaluru showed that when an opportunity is given to participate, they will make the best use of it. It is heartening to see the mayor, deputy mayor and corporators join the commissioner in seeking public opinion. The ball is now in the court of MCC!” said Srinivas Alavilli, head of Civic Paricipation at Janaagraha.
The priorities, inputs and suggestions by the citizens were handed over to the mayor of Mangaluru, Diwakar Pandeshwar, MCC commissioner Akshy Sridhar and Taxation, Finance & Appeal Standing Committee president, Kiran Kumar on Saturday.
“We have received the MyCityMyBudget report from Janaagraha. We will go through with this public consultation document, review the suggestions and priorities that are submitted by the citizens. The MyCityMyBudget report will help us understand what the citizens want and also plan, discuss in our meeting on effective utilization of the budget,” said Mangaluru City Corporation (MCC) Commissioner Akshy Sridhar.
“There is an outstanding response in a short while from Mangaluru citizens on MyCityMyBudget in sharing their priorities for the city budget! This is a wonderful start and will ensure deeper citizen engagement in the days and months to come,” said Sapna Karim, head of civic participation at Janaagraha.
How MyCityMyBudget was conducted in Mangaluru
On January 19, MCC commissioner Akshy Sridhar IAS had launched Janaagraha’s MyCityMyBudget campaign and appealed to the citizens of Mangaluru to share their inputs on core areas they want the Mangaluru City Corporation budget 2021 to be utilized.
The campaign was aimed at eliciting citizen inputs in time for the city municipal budget, slated to be announced in the last week of January 2021, and enable councilors to consider citizen priorities for ward developmental plans.
With the commissioner’s enthusiastic call-to-action, citizen inputs were collected online through a dedicated microsite on Janaagraha, WhatsApp, Facebook, and on-ground, through extensive public engagement with the help of community leaders, NGOs, and other citizen stakeholders across all 60 wards of Mangaluru.
Active co-operation from the Mangaluru's Apartment Association, educational institutions, MCC civic group, street vendor association, Canara Organisation for Development and Peace (CODP), Dakshina Kannada Bus Operators Association, Animal Care Trust, elected corporators of Mangaluru City Corporation, doctors, teachers, graduate student groups, Mangaluru City Police, radio jockeys, media and eminent citizens like researchers and social workers - Dr Rita Noronha, Dr Juliet C J, principal of the School of Social Work Roshni Nilaya, Mangalore Amateur Radio Club and many others facilitated on-ground efforts to reach as many citizens as possible and comprehensively understand the citizens’ priorities and expectations from the upcoming budget.
The MyCityMyBudge campaign was executed through a bilingual survey questionnaire, in Kannada and English, for citizens to list out the immediate infrastructural priorities in their ward. Citizens were asked to prioritize seven key infrastructural needs in their wards. Owing to the limited timeframe, the list of priorities for MCMB 2021-22 was intentionally kept brief for quick tabulation and evaluation purposes, with the assurance that in the future the MCMB Mangaluru will be bigger and better!
What is MyCityMyBudget
MyCityMyBudget is an annual participatory budgeting campaign run by Janaagraha. In 2015, MyCityMyBudget 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 MyCityMyBudget 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 India's cities. It comprises of 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).