India’s urban transformation must be backed by accountability: CAG at BRICS SAI Summit
In his keynote address at the fifth BRICS Supreme Audit Institutions (SAI) Leaders’ Summit in Bengaluru, themed “Ease of Living by Focusing on Urban Mobility”, Murthy said the SAI must go beyond traditional compliance auditing and assess whether public spending is actually improving the quality of life of citizens, especially in urban centers grappling with traffic congestion, infrastructure stress and unequal access to services.
“A target is only as good as the accountability that supports it. This is where we, the SAIs of the BRICS nations, enter this story,” he said.
India will host a two-day summit from May 7-8 during the BRICS Presidency year, bringing together 42 delegates, including the SAI chairmen of BRICS member countries, to discuss urban sector audits, mobility systems, environmental sustainability and public service delivery, an official statement said.
It was also stated that presentations are planned to be made from the SAIs of Brazil, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Russia, South Africa and the UAE.
Murthy described Bengaluru as a “suitable venue” for the summit and said the city represents both India’s technological aspirations and urban challenges.
“A city that writes the software that powers the world’s most advanced businesses, and where, on the same morning, a nurse boarded an overcrowded bus for a ninety-minute journey to save lives beyond the reach of the software. In this regard, Bengaluru is not just a host city. It is a living argument for why this Summit matters,” he said. Highlighting the scale of India’s urbanization, the CAG said cities occupy only three per cent of the country’s land but contribute approx. 60 percent of national GDP.
“By 2030, 70 percent of all new jobs in India will be created in cities,” he said.
CAG noted that by 2050, more than half of India’s population is expected to live in urban areas.
Referring to the Centre’s recently approved US$ 11 billion Urban Challenge Fund, Murthy said India is shifting from grant-based financing to market-linked, reform-oriented, results-oriented urban infrastructure.
Murthy said that the concept of ‘Ease of Living’ should be considered as a citizen-centered promise, not as a bureaucratic criterion.
“Ease of Living is not a bureaucratic measure. It is a very humane promise,” he said.
Speaking about urban transport, CAG said mobility is the area where governance is most directly experienced by ordinary people.
“Urban mobility is where governance stops being abstract and starts to become personal. It’s the daily referendum that citizens have on their government, not at the ballot box but at the bus stop,” he said.
Murthy said global congestion indices have risen sharply and urban commuters are losing up to 180 productive hours a year due to traffic bottlenecks.
He said that at the heart of mobility problems lies not only a lack of infrastructure but also governance failures.
“We’re building metro lines that don’t connect to bus networks. We’re building overpasses that just change congestion,” he said.
Calling for a transformation in public audit practices, Murthy said SAIs should increasingly focus on results rather than just compliance with procedures.
“In the age of Ease of Living, we must ask a deeper question: Has spending changed lives?” He said SAI India has integrated artificial intelligence and data analytics into its audit processes under its Strategic Plan 2030 and has conducted a special audit of 101 Indian cities from a citizen perspective, covering quality of life, sustainability and access to services.
Murthy also emphasized the importance of cooperation among the BRICS countries, which have a combined population of more than three billion people and the fastest growing urban population in the world.
“None of us have quite figured it out. We all have something to offer,” he said.
According to the statement, the summit sessions to be held over the next two days will discuss efficiency in public investments in urban mobility, sustainable transportation systems, environmental issues in urban expansion and citizen-oriented approaches in public control.
The event will culminate with the adoption of the BRICS SAI Work Plan 2027-28 and the Bengaluru Declaration. The delegates are also scheduled to visit the Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru.
