UBIQUITOUS POTHOLES; MONSOON FLOOD­ING; traffic jams and gridlocks; power and water shortages; runaway omnibuses; no parking space; itchy-palmed traffic policemen and municipal corpora­tion employees. To that list add noxious air quality and millions of viruses looking for warm bodies. The weight of evidence is overwhelming: 21st century India’s chaotic, ill-governed cities are in meltdown.

As slums proliferate and spread through India’s cities, the response of the academy and intelligentsia is mere lamentation, breast-beating, and bleats for improved civic governance of by all-at-sea municipal corporations. Intelligent solutions such as enforcement of the 74th Amendment which would devolve civic administration to ward committees comprising local property owners (see https://www.educationworld.in/enforce-74th-amendment/); switching to the mayoral system of civic governance with a directly elected mayor presiding over a “three-tier set-up” comprising civic administration, engineering and maintenance wings as suggested by bril­liant architect and civic planner Gautam Bhatia (Times of India, November 18), get short shrift.

The plain truth is that the country’s municipal corporations and affiliated civic organisations are chock-a-block with engineers, technicians and bureaucrats with ornamental certification from low-grade state government colleges. They have rock-bottom education qualifications and obsolete skills.

Moreover even from this muddy pool, many are re­cruited on the basis of kith, kin and caste considerations and have greatness thrust upon them. Expecting them to solve complex urban design and management problems is to flog a dead horse. Wake up folks, you have everything to lose!