Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Tuesday launched the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s Participate Mumbai platform, a digital initiative intended to connect citizens, companies, non-governmental organisations and experts with civic development projects across the city.
The platform will list projects in education, healthcare, water, employment, environment, parks, beautification and poverty reduction. Companies, NGOs and citizens will be able to select projects according to their interests and contribute through funding, material support, professional expertise or voluntary work, according to an official statement cited by Mid-Day.
Fadnavis said the initiative was not intended only to raise corporate social responsibility funds. He described it as a mechanism through which the state government, the civic body, the corporate sector and social organisations could work together on development projects. Organisations that already have plans for work in a particular area will also be able to submit proposals through the platform.
The Chief Minister said the focus of CSR partnerships should be the number of people benefiting and the impact created, rather than the amount spent. He added that such partnerships could bring new technology, modern management systems, improved monitoring and more flexible working methods to government projects.
Fadnavis identified child malnutrition as one area requiring greater attention in Mumbai. He said the BMC had undertaken major infrastructure work but needed to strengthen interventions in education, healthcare and nutrition, particularly in slum areas and poorer communities where children face problems including malnutrition, stunted growth and wasting. He said improved nutrition could affect children’s brain development, educational performance and immunity.
The launch was accompanied by an exchange of a memorandum of understanding between the BMC and Samagra, an organisation working on governance and public service delivery. The partnership is intended to improve the efficiency, transparency and citizen focus of the civic administration.
Fadnavis said the government was examining existing procedures through Business Process Reengineering to remove unnecessary stages and make services faster. He said the state had attempted to make around 1,100 services available online, but an analysis found that about 200 of them were not being used by citizens. The administration is now restructuring around 45 to 47 widely used services and schemes, which he said could improve delivery for around 90 per cent of citizens. The restructuring is in its final stage and will be implemented soon, he said.
The Chief Minister also said the BMC’s building department had introduced an artificial intelligence-based system to scrutinise building plans. The administration, he said, should reduce human intervention in the process, with the eventual aim of moving towards zero human intervention where possible. The system is intended to improve the ease of doing business in Mumbai.
Mayor Ritu Tawde said Participate Mumbai would give institutional shape to public participation in the city’s development. She said CSR should focus on measurable change and that the platform would connect the willingness of residents, companies, organisations and NGOs with the civic body’s needs. She also called for responsive services that would reduce repeated visits to BMC offices and provide timely, transparent and secure solutions.
BMC Commissioner Ashwini Bhide said a city with a population of more than two crore required continuous improvement in its administrative systems. She said the civic body was developing systems to assess and compare the performance of different departments and wards, while the Samagra partnership would focus on strengthening the BMC’s internal administrative capacity and service delivery.
During the event, Hindustan Unilever handed over a CSR contribution of Rs 25 crore to the BMC for developing 10 new facility centres in Mumbai. Information booklets on Participate Mumbai and the Samagra initiative were also unveiled. The civic body is expected to use the platform to connect external resources and expertise with identified projects and administrative needs.
