What do a Municipal Corporation and a Municipal Council do?

Which city has which body?

Local government in cities and towns is run by urban local bodies. Which one a place has depends on how many people live there. The chapter gives this rule:

Population	Highest urban local body	Also called
More than 10 lakh	Municipal Corporation	Mahanagar Nigam
1 lakh to 10 lakh	Municipal Council	Nagar Palika
Smaller towns	Nagar Panchayat

One lakh is 1,00,000 people, so a Municipal Corporation serves a city of more than 10,00,000 people. Chennai, Indore and Mumbai all have a Municipal Corporation at the top of their urban bodies. (Extra: each State makes its own exact rules, so some smaller cities also have a Municipal Corporation.)

What do they do?

A Municipal Corporation, a Municipal Council and a Nagar Panchayat all do the same kind of work for their area, on different scales:

• Infrastructure: water supply, roads and drains, and repairs when something goes wrong;
• Cleanliness: garbage collection and disposal, and looking after burial grounds;
• Records and permissions: certificates such as marriage certificates, and licences for businesses, trades and hoardings;
• Emergencies and requests: fire services, ambulances and water tankers;
• Schemes and planning: checking that government schemes are carried out, and some planning for the area’s economic and social development;
• Money: collecting local taxes and fines.

Wards and elected members

A city is too big to manage from one office, so it is divided into smaller units called wards. Ward committees run activities like health camps and campaigns against single-use plastics, and they watch out for water leaks, blocked drains and damaged roads, reporting them to the authorities. The urban local bodies have elected members who represent the local citizens, just as villagers elect their Gram Panchayat. (Extra: in many States each ward elects a councillor, called a corporator in a Municipal Corporation, and a Mayor heads the corporation.)

Where does the money come from?

Look at the services of the Indore Municipal Corporation shown in the chapter and you can see how a city body earns:

• taxes: property tax on buildings;
• charges: water charges for the water it supplies;
• fees: for business and trade licences, hoardings and marriage certificates;
• services on request: water tankers, septic tankers, an auditorium, funeral vans, mobile toilets and ambulances, which people book and usually pay for;
• fines for breaking local rules.

(Extra: city bodies also receive grants from the State and Union governments.)

Indore: a city and its citizens

Indore in Madhya Pradesh was named the cleanest city in India under the Swachh Survekshan survey seven years in a row. A Municipal Corporation cannot achieve this alone. When people segregate waste at home, use dustbins, avoid single-use plastics and report problems quickly, garbage collection works smoothly. This is what the chapter means by citizens doing their duties in a participatory democracy.

The oldest city bodies

The Madras Corporation, now the Greater Chennai Corporation, was set up on 29 September 1688 and is the oldest municipal institution in India. The Bombay Municipal Corporation, now the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai, was created in 1865. To see where these bodies fit among all levels of government, read the Chapter 12 notes.