India’s urban transformation must be backed by accountability: CAG at BRICS SAI Summit

In his inaugural address at the fifth BRICS Supreme Audit Institutions SAI Leaders Summit in Bengaluru under the theme Ease of Living with a Focus on Urban Mobility, Murthy said SAI must move beyond conventional compliance auditing and assess whether public expenditure was actually improving citizens quality of life, especially in urban centres grappling with congestion, infrastructure stress and unequal access to services.

Comptroller and Auditor General of India K Sanjay Murthy on Thursday said India's rapid urban transformation and push for sustainable mobility must be supported by stronger accountability systems. In his inaugural address at the fifth BRICS Supreme Audit Institutions (SAI) Leaders' Summit in Bengaluru under the theme ''Ease of Living with a Focus on Urban Mobility, Murthy said SAI must move beyond conventional compliance auditing and assess whether public expenditure was actually improving citizens' quality of life, especially in urban centres grappling with congestion, infrastructure stress and unequal access to services. ''A goal is only as good as the accountability that backs it. And that is precisely where we, the SAIs of the BRICS nations, enter this story,'' he said. India is hosting the two-day summit from May 7 to 8 during its BRICS Chairmanship year, bringing together 42 delegates, including heads of SAIs from BRICS member countries, to deliberate on urban sector audits, mobility systems, environmental sustainability and public service delivery, an official statement said. Presentations are scheduled from SAIs of Brazil, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Russia, South Africa and the UAE, it added. Murthy described Bengaluru as an ''apt venue'' for the summit, saying the city represented both India's technological aspirations and urban challenges. ''A city that writes the software powering the world's most advanced enterprises, and where, on the very same morning, a nurse boards an overcrowded bus for a ninety-minute commute to save lives that software cannot reach. Bengaluru, in that way, is not just a host city. It is the living argument for why this Summit matters,'' he said. Highlighting the scale of India's urbanisation, the CAG said cities occupied only three per cent of the country's landmass but contributed around 60 per cent of national GDP. ''By 2030, 70 per cent of all new jobs in India will be created in cities,'' he said. The CAG noted that more than half of India's population was expected to live in urban areas by 2050. Referring to the Centre's recently approved USD 11 billion Urban Challenge Fund, Murthy said India was shifting from grant-based financing to market-linked, reform-driven, outcome-oriented urban infrastructure. On the concept of 'Ease of Living', Murthy said it should not be treated as a bureaucratic benchmark but as a citizen-centric promise. ''Ease of Living is not a bureaucratic metric. It is a deeply human promise,'' he said. Speaking on urban transport, the CAG said mobility was the area where governance was experienced most directly by ordinary people. ''Urban mobility is where governance stops being abstract and starts being personal. It is the daily referendum that citizens conduct on their governments, not at the ballot box, but at the bus stop,'' he said. Murthy said global congestion indices had risen sharply and urban commuters were losing up to 180 productive hours annually due to traffic bottlenecks. He said governance failures, and not merely lack of infrastructure, lay at the heart of mobility problems. ''We build metro lines that don't connect to bus networks. We build flyovers that merely shift congestion,'' he said. Calling for a transformation in public auditing practices, Murthy said SAIs must increasingly focus on outcomes instead of just procedural compliance. ''In the era of Ease of Living, we must ask a deeper question: Did spending change lives?'' He said SAI India was integrating artificial intelligence and data analytics into audit processes under its Strategic Plan 2030 and was conducting a special audit of 101 Indian cities from a citizen's perspective, covering quality of life, sustainability and access to services. Murthy also stressed upon the importance of collaboration among BRICS nations, which together account for more than three billion people and some of the world's fastest-growing urban populations. ''None of us has solved this fully. All of us have something to offer,'' he said. According to the statement, the summit sessions over the next two days will focus on efficiency in public investments in urban mobility, sustainable transport systems, environmental considerations in urban expansion, and citizen-centric approaches in public auditing. The event will conclude with the adoption of the BRICS SAI Work Plan 2027–28 and the Bengaluru Declaration. Delegates are also scheduled to visit the Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru.