Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has launched ‘Participate Mumbai’, a technology-driven platform designed to connect the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) with companies, CSR foundations, NGOs and citizens willing to support civic development.
The platform currently features projects worth around Rs 189 crore covering gardens, education, healthcare, environment and solid waste management. Participants can contribute through funding, technology, equipment, professional expertise, skills or volunteers. Organisations can also suggest projects of their own for implementation in collaboration with the civic body.
“It is a platform for participation, for asking what you and we can do together for the last person in society,” Fadnavis said.
He also stressed that the success of CSR initiatives should be measured by their public impact rather than expenditure. “What is more important is not how much money has been spent through CSR, but how much public welfare has been achieved and what impact has been created,” Fadnavis said.
Municipal commissioner Ashwini Bhide said the BMC had received interest from industries, corporates and NGOs seeking to contribute to civic services, but lacked a coordinated mechanism to manage such offers.
“However, we did not have an effective platform through which such contributions could be channelled. Many people may approach a hospital saying they want to donate machines, or approach a garden saying they want to contribute in some way but there was no mechanism to coordinate these efforts,” Bhide said.
The listed projects include smart classrooms, STEM facilities, sports infrastructure, digital literacy programmes, theme gardens, biodiversity parks, tree adoption, medical equipment, dialysis centres, lake rejuvenation, tree plantation and recycling facilities.
On the launch day, Hindustan Unilever committed Rs 25 crore in CSR funding for 10 facility centres intended to provide citizens with faster access to civic services through single-window systems.
The BMC also launched ‘Samagra’, aimed at improving governance and service delivery. “There is a need to reduce unnecessary steps in administration and undertake business process re-engineering,” Fadnavis said.
Bhide said the initiative would integrate grievance redressal and emergency response, supported by measurable service standards and a real-time dashboard. “Just as citizen participation is important, it is equally important to have an efficient and responsive administration. When citizens lodge complaints or when messages regarding emergency situations are received, we need an effective integrated grievance-redressal and emergency-response system,” she said.
Source: Hindustan Times
