AT LONG LAST – A NATIONAL INITIATIVE FOR URBAN REFORMS

AT LONG LAST – A NATIONAL INITIATIVE FOR URBAN REFORMS 

(Disclaimer: the author was involved in advocating selected urban reforms for inclusion in the National Urban Renewal Mission) 

As the winter clothing is getting pulled out in Delhi, the Union Government took the wraps off the Jawarharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM). JNNURM has neither the scale of the Rural Employment Guarantee Act, nor the fundamental transformational power of the Right-to-Information Act. However, it marks a milestone for the country: for the first time, political leaders across party lines and seniority were willing to acknowledge the inevitability of urbanisation, and the need to respond to its multiple challenges in a holistic, cooperative manner.  

With NURM, the Union Government has unequivocally answered the one tricky question that has kept it out of city issues, despite the fact that urban breakdown was visible to all: why should the Centre get involved, given that urban issues are a state subject, especially with limited resources and large rural demands?

The answer lies in the acknowledgement that the challenges facing urbanisation in our country cannot be solved exclusively by city governments alone, or even just with the leadership of the concerned state governments. Comprehensive urban governance reforms are required on a number of fronts - devolution of funds, functions and functionaries to local governments, basic services to the urban poor, urban planning, formalising citizen participation, urban land reforms and so on. It has become obvious that simple band-aid responses are not going to suffice. However, our cities cannot make this transition by themselves. They need assistance in many forms: financial, technical, legal and so on. State initiatives so far have been fragmented, sporadic and incomplete. What was needed was an unapologetic and substantive national initiative that offered a supporting hand – previous union initiatives have been tentative and insubstantial.

This kind of national initiative requires political will, especially given the competing claims for public resources. It has taken a variety of factors to accumulate this will – a critical demographic threshold of urbanisation, the mounting evidence of the crises that our cities face, and the acknowledgement of the unbreakable link between economic growth and urbanisation. 

So what is in NURM? Material released by the two concerned Ministries states, “the primary objective of the JNNURM is to create economically productive, efficient, equitable and responsive cities”. NURM adopts a 3-pronged approach to do this: first, for each qualifying city to prepare a City Development Plan (CDP) that lays out the vision for the city over the next 20-25 years; second, to submit Detailed Project Reports (DPRs) for financial assistance; and third, to submit a Timeline for implementation of urban reforms.

The total financial assistance from the Centre is Rs 50,000 crores over the next 7 years, expected to supplement state and city funding of an equal amount – a total of Rs 1 lakh crores, which - if actually released by the Finance Ministry and utilised by cities - makes NURM far and away the largest urban initiative the country has seen. Thrust areas for project assistance range from solid waste management to basic services for the urban poor. The urban reform list has also been broken into mandatory and optional reforms at the state and local levels.  

While critics could find gaps in NURM, the mission’s strengths outweigh its weaknesses, as it seeks to find a balance: acknowledging that each city needs to evolve its own solutions and responses, although the underlying urban governance structures are not necessarily different. Cities will ultimately have to find their own destinies, harnessing their economic opportunities as well as the passion and energies of their residents. Across the world, vibrant cities are those that have successfully managed to create this sense of shared destiny. This approach ensures that local solutions emerge to address local issues; it is also consistent with calls for greater decentralisation, local democracy and citizen participation.  

However, the real work begins now, both for the cities as well as for the Ministries concerned. One critical issue will be to ensure that NURM is not seen as yet another pot of largesse from the Centre, with inadequately monitored performance criteria that will get progressively diluted over time. If implemented correctly – and the jury is still out on this - NURM’s approach should encourage cities to take ownership, define their visions, and look inward within themselves rather than outward to either the State or Union Governments for the answers to their urban challenges. NURM’s success will be defined not only by improved urban infrastructure for all urban residents, but also by the engagement of the citizens of these cities, so that the enormous skills and energies of urban India are harnessed.  

More than anything else, this national initiative marks a turning point in how our country views its urban challenges. One thing is certain: we will never again be in denial of the legitimate needs of urban India and - hopefully - will finally put behind us a cynical, divisive attitude of defining our public policies in terms that pit rural versus urban as zero-sum games.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
The author is founder of Janaagraha. He can be reached at ramesh@janaagraha.org