Kolkata Civic Body In Make-over Mode

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: Over 21,000 stock items, including thousands of gas street lamps from the British period. Unopened crates of spares for Bedford trucks. Books of accounts with a nine-year hole. Inspectors who measured floor areas without a measuring tape.

These are just a few snapshots of Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) that greeted Debasish Som when he took over as municipal commissioner four years ago. Not to forget that wage costs alone exceeded earnings, and babudom threatened the corporation’s very existence. That’s when the new helmsman decided to go for a complete make-over and look for external funding.

But with no books having been maintained for nearly nine years, which lender would look at KMC without getting some idea of its assets and liabilities?

So Som, backed by reformist mayor, Subrata Mukherjee, decided to whip up some action.

First, his accountants were set on overdrive. Accounts for the last nine years were finalised in six months flat; tight control was exercised on spending and purchases, leading to huge savings; and the front and back offices were computerised. Result: Customer compliance was ramped up along with internal functioning.

This accomplished, KMC was ready to talk grants with foreign multilateral lending agencies and employ the best global consultants. And, of course, ramp up revenue collections.

He didn’t have to wait too long. Two years ago, the Asian Development Bank lent $220 million for the Kolkata Environmental Improvement Project (KEIP), while Britain’s department for international development (DFID) exten-ded 28 million pounds for a capacity building programme.

So today, while residents of other Indian metros are worrying about where their next bucket of water will come from, Kolkata has a total supply of 270 million gallons of filtered water, besides trying to cope with an extra 60 million gallons in its antiquated delivery system.

For all this, KMC has spent nearly Rs 100 crore out of its own funds on waterworks. As Som points out proudly, the financial turning point came in 2002. “Since then, the KMC has been running its business without a single paise of overdraft,” he says. (It repaid nearly Rs 296 crore of overdrafts with various banks.)