Comment by user_7832 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by user_7832 | Hacker News Reader

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As a Mumbaiker, I would also like to provide a bit of context that may not be obvious (but unfortunately isn't surprising) - the BMC (Municipal Corporation) is considered quite ineffective/corrupt/lazy by most citizens, despite being the richest municipal body in the world (with a budget of ₹59,954 crore this year, which I tried to convert to USD but I can't keep track of all zeros). Every year there are numerous deaths especially during heavy rain in monsoon, from potholes flipping bikers to the river not being desilted. There are valid arguments (eg lots of pollution in the river) but the end result isn't pretty.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brihanmumbai_Municipal_Corpora... has more info including controversies.

Also, regarding housing specifically, due to a perpetual population growth and inflation, many buildings sit empty because builders know that people will cave in, even if property is temporarily overpriced and no one is buying them in the short term. Additionally legal disputes often block up other buildings, resulting in large dilapidated buildings sitting in the middle of busy/high-value areas but providing no benefit.

INR 59,954 crore is around 7 Billion USD.

I was going to say... for a city with a population almost that of the entire state of California, this is hardly anything. To put that in perspective, California spends 200-300 billion each year.

By purchase parity, 1 dollar is about 23 rupees while exchange rate is around 80. So roughly 4x multiplier is needed to .

In purchase parity, it's 27 billions dollar vs 200-300 billion of California. Still 10x less.

I wanted to complain about bangalore garbage and traffic but it will take too much space.

Many people seem to struggle with the difference between absolute and proportional values.

Something similar in my country (Nigeria). Many people keep pointing out that Lagos, our most crowded and number one commercial city, has an annual budget of roughly $1 billion, meaning there should be world-class infrastructure.

Until I point out that $1 billion is roughly $50 annually per person. Even accounting for labor and cost of living differences, you need at least 20x that before you start expecting world-class infrastructure.

Sure, labor is cheaper, but power plants, buses, and trains are mostly imported and cost a damn lot. No way you’re getting first-world infrastructure with third-world budget and taxes.

> Until I point out that $1 billion is roughly $50 annually per person.

I wanted to make a comparison with New York Metropolitan Area and they spend 20 billion only in traffic stuff.

Possibly, but things like roads and waterways are much fewer/smaller/shorter, as Mumbai is geographically an extremely small city for its population. It becomes even more obvious statistically once you remove the national park in the north from land area calculations.

In any case, there are lots of factors, but I think most Mumbaikars would agree that the city could be run much better with similar/the same resources.

How do you figured that? Average salary in california is around 10 times that of mumbai and population of greater mumbai is slightly more than half california. That adjusts the comparison to roughly 140 billion mumvai vs 200 billion california. So mumbai is marginally more efficient than one of the worst run us states by roughetrics. I suspect it should be considered worse because corruption at 8k a year average income cuts a lot worse than equivalent percentage corruption at 80k income

PPP doesn't really translate to municipal budgets, and it's also painfully clear from the grandparent that the huge budget doesn't translate to much, even after PPP comparisons.

> the BMC (Municipal Corporation) is considered quite ineffective/corrupt/lazy by most citizens, despite being the richest municipal body in the world

Well when one divide total budget by population per person won't be much. Economist and even politicians mentioned as much that Indian tax revenues per person are 1/20th of first world but regardless they do think they deserve facilities comparable to developed nations.

Yep that’s a fair point, the tax burden in India in general is pretty skewed, however worth noting that Mumbai pays a fairly significant amount of it (especially when factoring in indirect and non income taxes). Iirc BMC’s budget is very directly from taxes (very little/no loans or other handouts, though I could be wrong about this).

(Edit: quick googling shows property tax to be the biggest current revenue stream since octroi has gone away after the introduction of a national GST.)

Well the flip side of spending all tax revenue of city like Mumbai locally instead of statewide or nation wide there will be even more lopsided development which turns to ever more people coming to Mumbai making infrastructure, pollution and so many other problems worse.

Municipal Government in India answer to and get funded directly by either State Level planning authorities or Central Government IAS.

Municipal Corporations all over India have minimal autonomy outside of PWD procurement [0].

[0] - https://www.impriindia.com/insights/urban-governance-in-indi...

₹59,954 crore is roughly USD $7.2 billion.

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