Public administration and babudom

In a recent Mckinsey Quarterly interview with Smt. Sheila Dikshit (CM of New Delhi, India), she suggests that the central government in India must create city-states for increasing efficiency in governance. The system currently in place is that the big metro cities are capitals of the states in which they are located. States being vast provinces, there are terrible inequities with urban cities growing at breakneck speed, while rural areas languish and in many cases regress. New Delhi however is an exception. It's a state created from a former union territory (think Washington DC), essentially a city. India's capital at that.

The success of New Delhi that has seen substantial and positive infrastructure development in the past 5-6 years is a clear cut example that the city-state example will work.

Now the reason I write this here is that I had once proposed this idea to my Economic teacher in the context of Mumbai. It was more like a question. This was sometime during the handover of Hong Kong to China and the class was discussing economic policy implementation. So I asked why can't the government make Mumbai a city-state? A separate zone governed by its own laws and rules. While some may call this discriminatory and the people in power would never agree (Mumbai contributes a lions share of taxes for Maharashtra state), it is perhaps a much needed remedy to make cities competitive and more importantly livable.