In a mock council meeting, city students tasted how it feels to be corporators and the challenges involved
NIHARIKA MANDHANA
Be the change you want to see. This is the war cry taken up by Janaagraha, a citizen-centric movement in Bangalore that believes in participative governance. This was the motivation behind Yuva Janaagraha, the youth wing’s initiative to organise an intercollege Mock City Council, a simulated BBMP meeting in session, at the Institute of Agricultural Technologists on February16 (Saturday).
The objective of the Mock City Council was three-fold, explained Shruti Veenam, the coordinator of the event: To encourage student participation in local governance, to help them understand the functioning of the BBMP and to spread awareness on civic issues. “Students know more about the American elections than the BBMP! We wanted to change that,” she added.
For a City Council, mock or otherwise, two categories of players are needed — corporators and the standing committee.The student corporators were selected through a preliminary round conducted on February 2, where 40 teams from 15 colleges were shortlisted to nine. For the finals, these students donned the roles of corporators representing specific wards like the Sanjaynagar-Chickpet ward or the Richmond Town-Shantinagar ward.The BBMP ambience was complete with a standing committee comprising Mumtaz Begum(a former mayor of Bangalore), H B S Aradhya (a retired deputy commissioner), B G Nagraj Rao(a retired health inspector) and two Janaagraha volunteers.
Kritika Vishwanath, an organiser,said, “The idea for the standing committee was to get people who have been a part of the BBMP, who know exactly how it works, so that the simulation could be authentic.”
After the questions segment,each team presented a resolution before the Mock Council on issues like climate change,connectivity, health, roads, illegal constructions, water supply, amenities in new BBMP zones etc. Presentations were made, complete with statistics,working models and recommendations.
The Mount Carmel College team proposed an integrated transport system (Metro to bus to autos) to reduce the commuting time, cost and stress of travel, mini buses for certain routes and auto-pooling to ease congestion. The University Law College team proposed to solve the water supply woes through an urban community rainwater harvesting system.
The standing committee tempered discussions and explained the BBMP’s rationale behind certain decisions in the past. One of the judges, Syed Sultan, an educationist, observed,”We have a derogatory opinion of mayors. To us, these are people sitting on their high chairs doing nothing, knowing nothing. That perception has definitely changed today.
“Vijita Verma from the UniversityLaw College team, said,”We visited the BBMP office and spoke to officials to gather information, statistics, status reports and plans of different projects. Many misconceptions were cleared. The authorities were very forthcoming.”
Shreya Sawant of Mount Carmel College averred. “This was a great exercise, a lot more relevant than model United Nations sessions that are regularly conducted. We didn’tknow what local governance really meant. We realised how much effort goes into keeping Bangalore the way it is.”
What’s encouraging is that the idea of a Mock City Council will not be reduced to a one off event. Shriram B, a Yuva Janaagraha volunteer, said,”This is the first of its kind in Bangalore. We intend to popularise it by handing down Mock City Council modules to schools and colleges.”
The Mirror Squad 