Why does India with high growth not look like the fancy, rosy picture of a prosperous civilisation, but rather like the ugly picture of poorly designed houses, equally messy roads and chaotic hospitals?
As Covid19 ravaged India during the second wave, messages asking for oxygen cylinders, hospitals beds / ICUs and life-saving medicines started pouring on social media. Almost every one of these messages was tagged to either PM or CM of that state. Rarely anyone tagged the request to a local councillor / DM or district health officer.
When it comes to governance, Indians seem to be quite innocent. They think of central govt for 90% of the time and probably devote 9.9% of their time to State Govt, while hardly spend 0.01% of their energy on local governance.
And then they wonder as to why roads in their area are broken, and then they click pics of broken roads and tag PMO.
But what if they start thinking about local governance?
There are some really smart people who think that if we start focussing on municipality / ward / panchayat elections, issues related to roads, traffic, hospitals, etc., can be solved. So, every time the ward / municipal elections happen, a lot of hue and cry appear on social media urging people to participate in their local elections.
What if they are equally innocent and naive in believing in the power of municipalities?