CAG: Governance is barrier in ease of urban mobility | India News
New Delhi: Comptroller and Auditor General Sanjay K Murthy on Thursday said governance is the bottleneck behind the country’s failed urban mobility. It is not for lack of roads or rail but for lack of systems that work together.“Solutions are not unknown. London, Stockholm and Singapore have proven that congestion pricing, combined with robust public transport, can reduce traffic by 20-30%. The knowledge exists. The technology exists. So, what are the cultural barriers?” CAG asked when he described how we build metro lines that don’t connect to bus networks, we build flyovers that only decongest traffic.The CAG was speaking at the opening ceremony of a two-day meeting of federal auditors of BRICS countries in Bengaluru, where participating countries included China, Russia, Brazil, South Africa and the United Arab Emirates. He said that if significant capital spending fails to reduce average commute times, it’s not an infrastructure shortfall we’re seeing, it’s an administrative failure.“We are conducting a special audit of 101 Indian cities, assessing ease of living from a citizen’s perspective, across quality of life, access, sustainability and perception. And we are auditing multi-modal transport and first-mile, last-mile logistics in partnership with institutes like IITs and IIMs,” and shared his work with the World Bank’s leading countries in BRICS.Murthy recalled a quote by former President APJ Abdul Kalam saying, “A vision without action is a mere dream and action without accountability is mere expenditure. Accountability is our giving.” He said auditors play an important role in providing useful information and inputs for effective governance.“In an age of comfortable living, we must ask a deeper question: Has spending changed lives? A city can build a hundred flyovers and still fail its citizens. A city can pass every compliance audit and still not be very easy to live in,” he added.The Auditor General of India said that his organization provides value-added products such as departmental appreciation notes, management letters and study reports, which act as a real aid to management and keep citizens and stakeholders meaningfully informed.
