Mumbai handles a municipal budget exceeding ₹52,000 crores annually—larger than the GDP of several small nations. Yet this megacity of 20 million souls operates under legislation drafted when Queen Victoria ruled India, gas lamps lit London streets, and the horseless carriage was a fantasy.

The Mumbai Municipal Corporation Act of 1888, with its subsequent amendments, still forms the backbone of civic governance in what aspires to be a global financial hub.

Think about that for a moment.

While Singapore renovates its governance structures every few years, while Seoul deploys AI for traffic management, while Shanghai builds entire new districts with cutting-edge administrative frameworks, Mumbai’s municipal machinery grinds along using legal architecture from the Raj.

This isn’t quaint. This is catastrophic.

The British Blueprint That Won’t Die

The BMC operates under provisions that reflect colonial priorities: centralized control, minimal citizen participation, and bureaucratic opacity. The 1888 Act, even after multiple amendments including the significant 1951 revisions, maintains a fundamentally top-down structure where genuine decentralization remains a pipe dream.

Consider the absurdity.

The Municipal Commissioner—an unelected bureaucrat appointed by the state government—wields more practical power than the 227 elected corporators. This individual controls a budget that dwarfs those of many Indian states, yet answers primarily to the state, not to Mumbai’s citizens.

No major global city operates this way anymore.

Tokyo’s 23 special wards each possess autonomous governance. New York’s community boards, despite their limitations, provide more grassroots input than Mumbai’s ward committees, which function largely as rubber stamps.

The Act grants the Commissioner sweeping powers over contracts, appointments, and policy implementation with minimal checks.

Transparency?

Accountability?

These remain decorative concepts.

When was the last time an ordinary Mumbaikar could access detailed line-item breakdowns of BMC expenditure without filing RTI applications that languish for months?

The ₹52,000 Crore Question

Mumbai’s municipal budget for 2024-25 stands at approximately ₹52,000 crore—a staggering figure that should translate into world-class infrastructure, impeccable services, and a citizenry living in urban paradise. Instead, Mumbaikars wade through flooded streets during monsoons, dodge potholes that reappear annually despite crores spent on repairs, and watch their “world-class” city crumble in slow motion.

Where does this money vanish?

The budget itself reveals troubling patterns. Nearly 40% goes toward establishment costs—salaries, pensions, and administrative overhead.

Compare this with Singapore’s municipal expenditure, where personnel costs rarely exceed 25%, with the balance directed toward infrastructure renewal and service delivery.

Or examine Seoul Metropolitan Government’s budget allocation, where infrastructure development and maintenance consume over 35% of total spending, with strict oversight mechanisms ensuring value for money.

Mumbai’s capital expenditure, while substantial on paper, produces remarkably little visible improvement. The Coastal Road project, budgeted at ₹12,721 crore, faces repeated cost escalations and timeline extensions. The Metro Rail projects involve BMC contributions running into thousands of crores, yet coordination between authorities remains chaotic, leading to redundant digging, service disruptions, and citizen frustration.

Meanwhile, Shanghai built over 500 kilometers of metro rail in less time than Mumbai takes to complete one line. Seoul transformed its urban landscape within two decades through focused, corruption-free execution. These aren’t magic tricks. They’re outcomes of accountable governance and efficient resource allocation—concepts that remain alien to BMC’s operational culture.

Decentralization: The Promise That Never Was

On paper, Mumbai has 24 ward committees meant to bring governance closer to citizens. In practice, these bodies function as administrative theater. They lack independent budgets, real decision-making authority, or meaningful autonomy. A ward committee cannot even approve a neighborhood park renovation without navigating layers of bureaucracy that would exhaust Kafka.

Contrast this with Tokyo’s special wards. Each ward—Shibuya, Shinjuku, Minato—operates with genuine autonomy, managing local taxation, service delivery, and community development. Residents can directly influence decisions affecting their neighborhoods. Ward offices respond to citizen complaints within defined timeframes, with penalties for non-compliance.

Or examine Paris’s 20 arrondissements, each with elected councils possessing real budgets and authority over local matters. Parisians don’t wait for a centralized bureaucracy to fix their streets or improve local services. Their arrondissement councils handle these matters with dispatch and accountability.

Mumbai’s ward committees, by contrast, exist primarily to diffuse public anger. They hold meetings, pass resolutions, and file recommendations that vanish into BMC’s bureaucratic black hole. Citizens seeking redressal navigate a maze where nobody accepts ultimate responsibility. The corporator blames the ward officer, who blames the Assistant Commissioner, who points to the Additional Commissioner, who defers to the Municipal Commissioner, who ultimately answers to the state government. The citizen, meanwhile, continues living with the pothole, the uncollected garbage, or the non-functional streetlight.

This centralization breeds corruption. When decision-making concentrates at the top, so do opportunities for graft. A 2019 study estimated that Mumbai loses between 20-30% of its municipal budget to corruption and inefficiency—that’s potentially ₹15,000 crore annually vanishing into the pockets of contractors, middlemen, and compromised officials.

The Corruption Industrial Complex

Let’s speak plainly.

BMC has functioned for decades as a money-printing machine for politicians and connected contractors. The building permissions department alone reportedly generates hundreds of crores in bribes annually. Construction projects routinely overrun budgets by 50-100%, with the excess magically disappearing. Contractor cartels operate openly, dividing territories and projects with impunity.

The pothole scam perfectly encapsulates BMC’s dysfunction. Every year, crores are spent filling potholes using substandard materials and methods guaranteed to fail within months. Every monsoon, the same roads disintegrate. Fresh tenders are floated, new contracts awarded, and the cycle perpetuates.

It’s not incompetence—it’s design.

Why fix problems permanently when temporary solutions generate recurring revenue?

Compare this with Yokohama, Japan’s second-largest city. Their road maintenance operates on predictive algorithms that identify weak spots before potholes form. Contractors face severe penalties for substandard work, including permanent blacklisting. Work quality is independently verified. Corruption exists everywhere, but Yokohama’s systems minimize opportunities and maximize consequences.

Or look at Seoul’s anti-corruption measures following their 1990s reforms. Real-time disclosure of municipal contracts, citizen oversight committees with actual power, and strict enforcement transformed Seoul from a moderately corrupt city into one of Asia’s cleanest administrations. They decided corruption was unacceptable. Mumbai seems to have decided it’s inevitable.

The recent BMC buildings collapse incidents reveal another ugly truth. Buildings sanctioned by BMC, built under its regulatory oversight, collapse regularly, killing citizens. Where’s the accountability? Committees are formed, reports are filed, and life continues. No major official has faced meaningful consequences for structural failures that kill people. In Singapore, such systemic negligence would trigger criminal prosecutions and fundamental regulatory reforms. In Mumbai, it’s Tuesday.

The Alternative?

Mumbai doesn’t need ‘more government’. It needs ‘better government’—smaller, focused, accountable, and competitive.

Imagine Mumbai reorganized into 10-15 autonomous municipal zones, each managing its own budget, services, and development. Residents could compare performance. Zones competing for residents and businesses would have incentives to improve services, reduce corruption, and enhance quality of life. Poor performance would result in residents and businesses relocating to better-governed zones, creating market pressures for improvement.

This isn’t theoretical.

Washington DC’s Business Improvement Districts allow local businesses and residents to levy additional taxes in exchange for enhanced services—better cleaning, security, maintenance. These districts consistently outperform standard municipal services because stakeholders have skin in the game and authority to act.

Hong Kong’s approach to public housing and infrastructure through quasi-independent authorities like the MTR Corporation demonstrates how separating service delivery from political interference produces superior outcomes. The MTR generates profits while providing world-class service because it operates on commercial principles with clear accountability metrics.

Mumbai could adopt similar models. Create autonomous zone corporations responsible for local services. Give them revenue-raising powers, spending authority, and performance benchmarks. Publish comparative data on service delivery, expenditure efficiency, and citizen satisfaction. Let zones that perform poorly feel pressure from citizens who can see better alternatives elsewhere in the city.

This requires killing the sacred cow of centralized control. Politicians hate this idea because it fragments their power. Bureaucrats resist because it threatens their empires. But citizens would benefit enormously from governance that’s proximate, accountable, and responsive rather than distant, opaque, and dysfunctional.

Global Cities Show the Way

Shanghai’s Pudong New Area transformed from farmland to financial district in three decades through focused autonomy and accountability. Pudong’s authorities possessed clear mandates, sufficient authority, and faced genuine consequences for failure. Result: gleaming infrastructure, efficient services, and economic dynamism.

Singapore’s government operates on principles of meritocracy, transparency, and ruthless efficiency. Ministers face parliamentary scrutiny. Senior officials are recruited globally and paid competitively to attract talent. Corruption faces draconian penalties, actually enforced. Their municipal services operate with Swiss precision because the system demands it.

New York, despite its problems, allows its boroughs significant autonomy. Brooklyn residents can influence local decisions without navigating a monolithic citywide bureaucracy. Community boards provide input. Power is distributed, not concentrated.

Paris rebuilt itself repeatedly, most recently with Grand Paris Express—a massive metro expansion delivered through independent authorities with ring-fenced funding and clear timelines. Political interference is minimized through institutional design.

These cities aren’t utopias. They face challenges, make mistakes, and deal with corruption. But their governance structures incorporate accountability mechanisms that actually function. Citizens have recourse. Officials face consequences. Systems self-correct because they’re designed to do so.

Mumbai’s system is designed for the opposite—to diffuse accountability, concentrate power, and perpetuate dysfunction. Until the foundational architecture changes, incremental reforms will achieve little.

The 2026 Elections: Rearranging Deck Chairs?

As Mumbai approaches municipal elections in mid-January 2026, expect the usual carnival. Political parties will promise the moon. Candidates will distribute money and gifts. Vote banks will be courted through identity politics. And come February, whoever wins will inherit the same rotten system that has failed Mumbai for decades.

The tragedy is that these elections won’t address fundamental questions. Nobody campaigns on restructuring the BMC Act. No party promises genuine decentralization. None commits to publishing real-time budget expenditure data or implementing strict anti-corruption mechanisms with actual teeth.

Instead, we’ll get promises of new flyovers (that will take a decade to complete and cost triple the budget), better roads (fixed with the same failed methods), improved services (through the same incompetent machinery), and accountability (an empty word repeated until meaningless).

Mumbai deserves better. This city generates wealth that powers India’s economy. Its citizens are educated, engaged, and capable of self-governance. They don’t need colonial bureaucrats managing their lives. They need frameworks that empower local action, encourage competition, punish corruption, and reward results.

Reforming BMC requires courage that Mumbai’s political class currently lacks. It means dismantling power structures that benefit entrenched interests. It means telling voters uncomfortable truths rather than comfortable lies. It means accepting that solutions require systemic change, not cosmetic adjustments.

First, scrap the 1888 Act entirely. Draft new legislation based on 21st-century best practices, incorporating genuine decentralization, transparency mandates, citizen participation mechanisms, and strict accountability frameworks.

Second, break BMC into autonomous zones with independent budgets and authority. Let them compete. Publish comparative performance data. Allow citizens to judge.

Third, implement technology-driven transparency. Every rupee spent should be traceable online in real-time. Every contract, tender, and approval should be publicly accessible. Sunshine remains the best disinfectant.

Fourth, criminalize corruption with severity and actually prosecute offenders. Jail time, asset forfeiture, permanent blacklisting—make the risks exceed the rewards.

Fifth, invite global expertise. Hire international consultants who’ve reformed dysfunctional municipalities elsewhere. Pride shouldn’t prevent learning from those who’ve solved problems we can’t.

Mumbai can become a world-class city. But not with Victorian governance, centralized dysfunction, rampant corruption, and political theater masquerading as democracy. The 2026 elections offer another opportunity to demand transformation rather than accepting stagnation.

Whether Mumbai’s citizens seize this moment or settle for more of the same will determine whether India’s financial capital joins global cities at the top table or remains a cautionary tale of squandered potential.

The choice, as always, rests with those willing to demand better and refuse to accept excuses from those who’ve failed them for far too long.

Views of the author are personal and do not necessarily represent the website’s views.

Dr. Jaimine Vaishnav is a faculty of geopolitics and world economy and other liberal arts subjects, a researcher with publications in SCI and ABDC journals, and an author of 6 books specializing in informal economies, mass media, and street entrepreneurship. With over a decade of experience as an academic and options trader, he is keen on bridging the grassroots business practices with global economic thought. His work emphasizes resilience, innovation, and human action in everyday human life. He can be contacted on jaiminism@hotmail.co.in for further communication.

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