Citizen Participation in Urban Governance in India: Need for Reforms

India is fast urbanizing, but its cities and towns are experiencing governance deficit. Urban governance is centralized with no avenues for citizen participation. It is the civil society organizations that often play a significant role in mobilizing local effort and citizen participation. The 74th Constitutional Amendment Act, 1992 which aimed at promoting decentralized participatory governance did not yield the expected results. To institutionalize participation, the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission, 2005 made enactment of community participation law mandatory. But the enactment of community participation law has slow even after the completion of the Mission period. The paper offers a critique of some of the provisions of the Law, examines the reasons for the delay in enactment and implementation, analyzes the working of ward committees in Kerala and Andhra Pradesh. The paper suggests reforms within the broad framework of Nagara Raj Bill which integrates it with the resident welfare and other associations for mainstreaming citizen participation contributing to good urban governance.