Geographically, Mumbai is a peninsular city that faces significant environmental challenges throughout the year such as urban flooding, deteriorating air quality index, and now the oppressive heat waves.With the enactment of the 74th Constitutional Amendment Act that has reshaped urban political landscapes, promoting democratic decentralisation and empowering municipalities as entities of local self-government.

The erstwhile Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) is one of three municipalities that were established by British colonisers outside Britain. Hence, the corporation is comprehensively involved in an array of responsibilities such as sanitation, sewerage, and water supply, maintenance of vital infrastructure like roads, parks, markets, and primary education and healthcare facilities, outlining the broad scope of city governance in action.

Notwithstanding the constitutional mandate till this day, the scope of  urban governance in Mumbai remains tightly controlled by executive authority. The Municipal Commissioner is corollary of the state's urban development department, conventionally headed by the Chief Minister and holds significant power, whereas the Mayor’s role remains largely ceremonial without any fiscal autonomy.

Participate Mumbai Platformn

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) jurisdiction is proliferated across 25 administrative wards with 227 directly-elected public representatives to govern the population surpassing 12 million.

Amidst the quagmire of centralisation and rule by executive, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has recently launched civic engagement initiative of the BMC Participate Mumbai platform, a digital initiative intended to connect citizens, companies, non-governmental organisations and experts with civic development projects across the city.

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) Participate Mumbai is a tech led platform that will list projects in education, healthcare, water, employment, environment, parks, beautification and poverty reduction. Based upon the newspaper coverage, the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai ( MCGM) has identified projects worth around ₹189 crore across gardens, education, healthcare and solid waste management. 

Chief Minister Fadnavis said, “It is a platform for participation, for asking what you and we can do together for the last person in society”, underlining the importance of collaboration in civic development.

Followingly the Municipal commissioner Ashwini Bhide “industries, corporate organisations and NGOs want to contribute to the various areas in which the BMC provides services. Some may want to share their knowledge".

Not a Participation Tool 

The Participate Mumbai  platform is stated “for the last person in the society.” Yet the Municipal Commissioner’s own framing suggests otherwise: industries, corporate organisations and NGOs are positioned as the platform’s primary actors. The citizen, in this framing, is a beneficiary rather than a participant.

In a city where marginalised communities have limited digital access, a platform built around online portals and project briefs is already exclusionary by design.Without offline channels, the platform risks serving the already organised rather than those it claims to reach.

This is not merely a design oversight. The platform’s architecture, listing civic projects for corporate and NGO adoption structurally resembles a CSR clearinghouse than a participation tool.

Private entities naturally direct resources toward initiatives that enhance their brand exposure, leaving marginalized peripheral communities struggling to secure investment compared to high-profile urban developments.

The concern is, however, constitutional. The platform’s launch was accompanied by an MoU between the BMC and Samagra, a private governance consulting firm, and artificial intelligence to reduce human intervention in civic processes. This executive concentration runs deeper than administrative preference.

It reflects a broader substitution of efficiency metrics and digital platforms for democratic deliberation, one that cuts against the spirit of the 74th Constitutional Amendment, which was designed to establish urban local bodies as genuine institutions of self-governance.

Thirty years on, that promise remains largely unfulfilled. Fiscal and political decentralisation has stalled, leaving municipal bodies with uniform structures but widely varying degrees of real authority. In Mumbai’s case, the corporation has operated under an administrator in the absence of elected ward representatives, a democratic vacuum that makes the present substitution especially consequential.

A platform launched under these conditions, channelling civic activity through corporate partnerships and management consultants, rather than ward committees and robust local finance, does not break from this pattern. It continues.

Need for Structural Changes

The Participate Mumbai platform need not be dismissed outright. Its potential to connect civic energy with public need is real. But for it to function as a genuinely democratic instrument rather than a performance of participation, several structural changes are necessary.

First, the platform must include offline access channels, community facilitation desks, ward-level help centres, and language options beyond English, if it is to meaningfully include the informal workers, migrants, and slum-dwellers who are officially its primary beneficiaries.

Second, project selection must not remain exclusively a bureaucratic exercise. Ward committees, neighbourhood groups, and resident welfare associations must have a formal role in proposing and prioritising projects listed on the platform. Communities should be able to identify their own needs, not simply choose from a curated menu.

Third, CSR contributions on the platform should be subject to the same public audit and RTI disclosure obligations as BMC's own funds. Transparency in project outcomes, not just project listings is essential for accountability.

Finally, the platform's partnership with Samagra and future private governance actors must be governed by clear, publicly available terms of reference, ensuring that administrative reform is shaped by constitutional mandates rather than managerial preference.

(Niutoli Yepthomi is pursuing Master’s in Urban Studies at Dr. B.R. Ambedkar University Delhi. Ujjwal Gurdaswani is an urban policy analyst with a passion for promoting sustainable and inclusive cities. The views expressed are personal. They can be contacted at icsujjwal@gmail.com)