Monday Musings: Story of merged villages is high on taxes, low on development

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Around five years ago, many living in the fringe areas of Pune were happy when the state government decided to merge 11 villages within Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) limits. In 2021, the government brought in an additional 23 villages under the civic limits.

Many thought the administration will start getting rid of problems the residents were facing. Rapid urbanisation with large clusters of residential buildings, poor water availability, absence of cleanliness, sanitation, poor garbage management, bad roads and poor public transport have been a litany of issues facing a large number of newly emerging localities of Pune.

What the villages and residents living there have instead received is higher property tax with no headstart to development. PMC has served bills demanding almost three to four times higher property taxes from residents of those living on the periphery compared to old parts of the city, which has better roads, 24×7 water supply and many other civic amenities the recently merged villages are deprived of. The issue does not end here. In the past five years, PMC has spent more money on areas that were identified and referred as Smart City.

The heavily-funded Smart City project in Aundh-Baner-Balewadi area where designer streets and other cost-intensive public amenities are being provided in an already well-developed area contrasts the scenes witnessed in other parts on the periphery.

The common grumble residents and elected members of 23 merged villages make these days is regular water supply with better roads or water tax waiver till PMC addresses these two issues.

When PMC merged 11 areas into its limits in 2017, the civic body had estimated 5,741 crore to carry out works for basic development facilities such as water pipeline network, sewerage network, roads and solid waste management for the development of 34 villages. However, many of the development work could not be carried out in these 11 areas, citing shortage of funds by PMC. Now, the civic body officials have estimated that 9,000 crore will required to carry out development in already included and upcoming 23 areas.

Road, water, drainage and solid waste management are the key areas where the civic body has to spend more as compared to other infrastructure components. However, cheaper land rates prompted real estate developers to build housing complexes with fancy, enchanting names borrowed from the British countryside and romantic Italian locales even as the stark reality has been far less enchanting. Those who couldn’t afford to buy houses in already developed city areas, preferred these complexes as their homes, under the impression that one day development will happen in these areas.

As the gram panchayat was the governing authority before these localities were merged in PMC, there was no evidence of any town planning which would have led to well-planned development. PMC had sanctioned 100 crores in 2019 although the civic body could not spend it to carry out basic development such as roads, water, garbage, street lights and healthcare. The PMC administration later diverted these funds for other purposes.

One of the reasons these areas are still deprived of basic amenities even after merger is these villages have not got adequate representation in PMC. In the outgoing general body, there are only two corporators covering and representing 81 square kilometre. They have not got enough money for development. The municipal corporation estimated more than 2,000 crore for development of these villages. However, PMC has not even allocated 100 crore in the last three years to these new areas.

With delimitation exercise, the merged villages will have better representation in PMC. In such a scenario, the upcoming civic elections, mostly likely to be held in April this year, offer these merged villages their last hope.

Yogesh Joshi can be contacted at yogesh.joshi@htlive.com


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