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‘Is your town better, or mine?' (nammooru chendavo, nimmooru chendavo?') asks our rustic hero of his shy bride in the dreamy old lyric, Mysuru Mallige.
In a year or so, we - unlike K.S.Narasimhaswamy's diplomatic bridal figure - should be able to tell with figures the good, the bad and the ugly among our cities.
Bangalore's civic affairs NGO, Janaagraha, is finalising a novel socio-politico-economic measure for urban centres. It has roped Brown University's social scientists into the exercise.
The pilot will cover 25,000 people under the 190-plus wards of the Bangalore metro area between June and this year-end. It will grade the city on the basis of its people, civic activism and their political engagement in getting what is their rightful service, among others.
After Bangalore, the study will turn to the metros, Pune, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad sometime in 2013.
You can perhaps liken the Janaagraha-Brown Citizenship Index to the Human Development Index, says Ramesh Ramanathan, who co-founded Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy with his wife, Swati.
If the HDI talks about healthcare, education and such ‘people' factors, here you would rate a city by the access its people have to public services; and how they stake claim to these rights, he says.
“We may be a good democracy voting regularly in large elections. But what happens after the elections? Are we claiming our rights as citizens and accessing public services?" asks Ramanathan.
According to Swati Ramanathan, the Janaagraha-Brown Citizenship Index will gauge the quality of citizenship. Researchers and sociologists can use this for many studies – compare a Mumbai with a Bangalore; mark the evolution of its citizens.
For Janaagraha, too, it will take stock of whether the body has “made a difference to the level of citizenship in the areas we operate in”
According to Prof. Ashutosh Varshney, political scientist and Director of the Brown-India Initiative at Brown University, it combines research with activism.
Led by him and his sociology colleague, Prof. Patrick Heller, the Urban India Project, is the flagship of the Brown-India Initiative.
Ramanathan says over time, the Janaagraha-Brown Citizenship Index will be show ‘the true health of democratic governance in our cities.'
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Who knows. Today, armed with such a meter, the belle in the celebrated hum would be plumping for one of them: the warm Navilur. Or her childhood's sweet palm-fringed Honnur.
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