Performance measurement of municipalities

We are steadily becoming urbanised. Nearly 50 cities in India would have a population of more than a million in 2001, and nearly half the Indian population would be residing in urban areas by the middle of this century. The services being provided by municipal bodies cover the most basic human needs: drinking water, sanitation, waste management, street lighting, housing, roads, and health care. However, rising urban population and rising income levels put tremendous pressures on urban infrastructure and lead to a severe deterioration in the quality of the urban environment. We need municipal bodies under greater public scrutiny. There are severe economic implications of the deterioration of municipal services. Three infants die every minute in India due to diarrhoea, a waterborne disease; the health impacts related to water quality, as estimated by the World Bank, may amount to nearly 290 billion rupees annually. Rivers passing through urban areas have become virtual sewers, and groundwater contamination is rampant. Mounds of solid waste lie unattended and landfills are improperly managed. How could these impacts be minimised while improving the quality of these services? What is the optimal mix of fiscal, policy, and technical solutions coupled with mass awareness? Globally, what is being increasingly used to improve the efficiency of municipal services is performance measurement. This management technique has been borrowed from the corporate sector. For the municipal bodies, the aim is clear: to make them accountable such that the services being provided by them are commercially viable and self-sustaining. Otherwise, the services risk being degenerated and/or dying out. Coupled to this concept is the dissemination of best practices and exchange of experiences among municipalities. Performance measurement is of the results, outcomes, and efficiency of services or programmes. The central idea behind performance measurement is to identify gaps in information, weaknesses related to infrastructure and job skills, budgetary constraints, and ways and means of strengthening the municipal services. It involves determining the efficiency, efficacy, cost-effectiveness, and timeliness of services being provided by a municipal body keeping in view the existing constraints. Performance measurement could provide a measure of the cost per unit of service provided e.g., rupees spent in providing per thousand litres of drinking water. It also compares the accomplished results to those planned and targeted. Moreover, it indicates the quality of service provided e.g., the ratio of garbage collected to the total garbage generated. It also measures the responsiveness of the services provided to the needs of the public e.g., the timings of water supply and public access to municipal officers. A critical benefit of performance information is to help develop and justify budget proposals. Most importantly, performance measurement leads to finding cost-effective and practical solutions to overcome deficiencies and to improve services. Where resource constraints are often cited as reasons for not providing adequate services, performance measurement could guide towards ensuring maximum efficiency of limited resources and also provide a justification to decision-makers that the results obtained are the best possible under the given set of resources. The UP State Finance Commission clearly stated in 1996: 'The urban local bodies should be informed in advance of certain performance indicators to be achieved by them for claiming 100 per cent share from 1997/98 when the devolution amount will grow with growth in state taxes'. Finally, a performance measurement system enables a municipality to compare its services with others, both within the country and abroad. In India, significant work has been done in the areas of urban indicators. However, such work has failed to find ways and means to improve delivery of services. Performance measurement highlights not only the causes of such problems and provides information on how well a service is being provided but also where and what kind of interventions will provide maximum bang for the buck.