Rashid's Blog: A Place for Inquisitive Souls

I have to share this great article written by Juan Manuel Restepo on Favela Issues.

In today’s cities we see how governments struggle to create solutions and to implement large policies. Cities are more complex, diverse and dynamic making governance almost impossible. Governments can’t make changes in these cities by themselves. They need to build collective efforts with all the stakeholders in the city.

Nevertheless, politicians keep on promising and acting as if they had the capacity to make real changes by themselves. They keep on bringing THE SOLUTION for mobility, security, education and health without really understanding the issues or the actors behind them that control real power in the city. During the political campaigns they promise everything and give figures of all the great changes they want to make. But when they get elected the passionate candidates crush with a wall of the real power that controls the city through…

Between 30-60% of India’s population use facilities for defecation, with most sanitation infrastructure development occurring over the past two decades. Sanitation is the responsibility of the states under India’s Constitution. Yet political activity for sanitation is observed in each governmental role – prime minister, president, supreme court, state legislatures, congress, and bureaucracy. Recently, the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi who was elected into office in May 2014 has been utilizing a political campaign for “Not temples, but toilets” during and continuing after his election. In a recent Times of India news article, Congress reportedly critiqued Prime Minister Modi for claiming sanitation improvements as his own political agenda, while failing to recognize the momentum for sanitation that other political institutions had created. Does it matter which political institutions are supporting sanitation? How does authority over sanitation differ among government roles? Finally, how do elected officials control implementation by non-elected government officials?