Staff shortage, financial dependency plague local governance in India | Data Premium

Most Indian cities financially dependent on State governments, lack control over staff: ASICS 2023 report. Only Assam empowers cities to collect taxes, most need State approval to borrow. Mayors/councils lack power in staff appointments/promotions. Poor transparency in publishing civic info, financial statements. High vacancy in local governments, worse than global cities.

An annual survey of Indian cities shows that a majority of local governments are financially dependent on their State governments. They also have limited control over who to hire and how to distribute work. The report found that only Assam empowers its city governments to collect all key taxes. Except five States — Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, Meghalaya, and Rajasthan — all the others have to get approval from the State before borrowing money.

The report, Annual Survey of India’s City-Systems (ASICS) 2023, was published by the Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy, a non-profit institution.

Table 1 | The table shows the asymmetry of the mayor/council powers across various city categories.

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Table 1 shows this asymmetry of power across four city categories — megacities (>4 million (mn) population), large cities (1-4 mn), medium cities (0.5 mn-1 mn), small cities (

The report also shows that mayors and councils have limited power in staff appointments and promotions. For instance, only a handful of States have empowered their city governments to appoint municipal commissioners. In fact, no city has complete power over its staff. Cities especially lack control over their senior management teams who are deputed directly by State governments, which makes it tough to initiate disciplinary proceedings against them if needed. The report says because of this, they are not able to build a “strong organisation or exact accountability” from the workers.

Chart 2 | The chart shows the availability of civic data in capital cities.