There are few ar­eas of pub­lic gov­er­nance that have been the sub­ject of as many stud­ies, con­sul­ta­tions, speech­es, and White Pa­pers as the re­form­ing of our sys­tem of lo­cal gov­ern­ment. Yet, Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions cam­paigns are about the worst pos­si­ble time to la­bel prospec­tive re­form is­sues as cen­tral to their even­tu­al out­comes.

For one, the kind of change need­ed to reg­u­late bet­ter qual­i­ty rep­re­sen­ta­tion and ser­vice de­liv­ery is not the pre­rog­a­tive of coun­cil­lors and al­der­men in a mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tion. This is a process suit­ed to en­light­ened par­lia­men­tary de­ci­sion-mak­ing and faith­ful­ly com­pli­ant ex­ec­u­tive ac­tion.

Once elect­ed, lo­cal gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives will be re­spon­si­ble for im­ple­ment­ing whichev­er re­forms are even­tu­al­ly en­act­ed, but they are not the ones to de­ter­mine the leg­isla­tive con­di­tions un­der which they are to per­form.

Sec­ond­ly, the least of the apos­tles at Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions time are usu­al­ly the ac­tu­al can­di­dates who rou­tine­ly re­ceive third or fourth or fifth-class billing on the hus­tings.

It should not in­spire any­one that be­ing a lo­cal gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tive pro­vides a step­ping stone to a par­lia­men­tary ca­reer, when in fact it is a sub­stan­tial­ly im­por­tant job that has mean­ing for peo­ple and their com­mu­ni­ties.

In the process, com­mu­ni­ty needs and ways of man­ag­ing them, are rarely at the top of the main cam­paign agen­das, and it has be­come re­liant on some kind of “re­form” to ac­cord lo­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tives their ap­pro­pri­ate place in the scheme of things.

At this time, even the par­ti­san hud­dles at cot­tage and home meet­ings fo­cus on strate­gies to win, and not nec­es­sar­i­ly to work out ways of re­solv­ing com­mu­ni­ty chal­lenges.

In­stead, the ad­vent of mes­sag­ing apps has played such a role, dur­ing terms of of­fice, and helped stim­u­late joint de­lib­er­a­tion and ac­tion on im­me­di­ate needs, al­most in de­fi­ance of the for­mal sys­tems for ad­dress­ing them.

Vir­tu­al “lo­cal gov­ern­ment”, via What­sApp in par­tic­u­lar, has thus lat­ter­ly rep­re­sent­ed an al­ter­na­tive plat­form (at least at the pri­ma­ry lev­el of dis­course) to the re­search and so­lu­tion-find­ing func­tions of statu­to­ry meet­ings. I am re­al­ly not sure where vil­lage coun­cils stand in this re­gard.

An­oth­er rea­son why Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment re­form is such a re­mote (or even ir­rel­e­vant) mat­ter for con­sid­er­a­tion at this time, is that these con­tests have tra­di­tion­al­ly been re­duced to sta­tis­ti­cal in­di­ca­tors of the fu­ture prospects for po­lit­i­cal par­ties at gen­er­al elec­tions. Au­gust 14 is no dif­fer­ent.

Cur­rent cam­paign shenani­gans are dom­i­nant in the pub­lic dis­course, and who aligns with whom is cur­rent­ly deemed in­fi­nite­ly more im­por­tant than ac­cu­mu­lat­ed wa­ter pud­dles in the drainage sys­tem that will soon yield the next dengue out­break.

I sus­pect that the more de­vot­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives ag­o­nise con­stant­ly over the man­ner in which their spon­sor po­lit­i­cal or­gan­i­sa­tions or­gan­ise these cam­paigns. Some of the most com­mit­ted, com­pe­tent and con­sci­en­tious politi­cians I have ever met have been lo­cal gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives–on dif­fer­ent sides of the po­lit­i­cal fence.

Many of them would tell you that when it comes to so­lu­tion-find­ing and the al­lo­ca­tion of fre­quent­ly scarce re­sources, there is a lev­el of ma­ture bi­par­ti­san­ship that kicks in. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly true around times of cri­sis and emer­gency.

You can al­so usu­al­ly tell the dif­fer­ence be­tween par­lia­men­tar­i­ans who have served in lo­cal gov­ern­ment and those who have not—not that this rep­re­sents any kind of up­ward mo­bil­i­sa­tion, for they all serve na­tion­al in­ter­ests how­ev­er com­mu­nal­ly sub­di­vid­ed. But there al­ways ap­pears to be greater sen­si­tiv­i­ty to the mi­cro-is­sues.

They even­tu­al­ly learn, you see, that the re­al ac­tion re­sides in the de­liv­ery of goods and ser­vices at street, block, and com­mu­ni­ty lev­els. Ef­fi­cient pub­lic health and waste man­age­ment, com­mu­ni­ty safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty, spa­tial plan­ning and de­vel­op­ment, and com­mu­ni­ty in­fra­struc­ture and ser­vices—all things of val­ue that ex­ceed al­most every­thing else in na­tion­al gov­er­nance.

What a re­formed sys­tem can do is to en­sure that these mat­ters are at­tend­ed to with a high­er lev­el of or­der­li­ness, trans­paren­cy, and ef­fi­cien­cy, through the wider avail­abil­i­ty of re­sources and plan­ning sys­tems to en­sure prompt and re­li­able de­liv­ery.

In a sense, that’s all we need. But the out­come of these cur­rent elec­tions can change none of that. Au­gust 15 will find us in the same leg­isla­tive space.

But none of this is to dis­miss the need for com­pre­hen­sive re­form of the sys­tem of lo­cal gov­ern­ment. There have been nu­mer­ous it­er­a­tions that have large­ly re­ceived bi­par­ti­san sup­port. It is re­al­ly hard to dis­tin­guish be­tween what Su­ruj Ram­bachan and Hazel Man­ning and Franklin Khan ad­vo­cat­ed so strong­ly for. In prin­ci­ple, their pro­pos­als were the same.

But that’s not what these elec­tions are all about. Lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form could not have been more ir­rel­e­vant at a time of lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions.