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India aspires to become a US$40-trillion economy by 2047, and in this quest, cities are pivotal. However, a rapidly urbanising India is confronting multidimensional challenges of inequity, overcrowding, infrastructure gaps, and climate change-induced shocks and stresses. Addressing these challenges while maintaining the desired economic growth momentum requires strategic reimaging and planning of India’s cities through quality infrastructure investments at scale across departments and timeframes.
Infrastructure investments in cities in India are lower than in East Asia and the West. India’s present approach to urban infrastructure planning and development does not align with existing statutory long-term spatial planning tools, such as Master Plans (MP) or Development Plans (DP). Consequently, urban local bodies (ULBs) roll out mega projects, such as for water supply, sanitation, solid waste management, transport, and urban renewal, under various centrally sponsored schemes (CSS) on an ad-hoc basis, with unplanned land use and weak cross-sectoral linkages, if at all.
Infrastructure investments in cities in India are lower than in East Asia and the West. India’s present approach to urban infrastructure planning and development does not align with existing statutory long-term spatial planning tools, such as Master Plans (MP) or Development Plans (DP).
Such disjointed land-use planning and infrastructure development processes put cities in a constant fire-fighting mode, with limited room for rethinking long-term approaches to address pressing global issues and climate-induced risks. Therefore, there is a need to reflect on the role of the Centre, State, and ULBs in planning sustainable and resilient infrastructure. This rethinking is necessary to align national, regional, and ULB goals and create pathways towards achieving the Government of India’s nationally determined contributions (NDCs)[1] to reduce the carbon emissions intensity of its gross domestic product (GDP) by 45 percent from the 2005 level, increase the cumulative electric power installed capacity of the national grid to 50 percent by 2030, and achieve its net-zero target by 2070.
Fragmented infrastructure delivery and land-use planning in Indian cities
Urban local bodies (ULBs) in India had little functional and financial autonomy in governance and planning until the early 1990s; in developing land and urban public infrastructure, for example, it was the state governments that played the key role. The economic liberalisation in the early 1990s was a turning point for modern planning and infrastructure development in India. The new economic reforms and the 74th (Constitutional Amendment) Act (1992) advocated for decentralised urban governance and the provision of planning functions for ULBs.
This provided a much-needed impetus to India’s hitherto ignored urban challenges. The latter years of the 20th century witnessed a significant transition from the public sector as the primary investor in cities by allowing private-sector involvement. Although public-private partnerships (PPP) enabled by these reforms markedly reduced the share of public investments in urban infrastructure, PPP in the urban infrastructure sector continued to experience the challenges of market failure.
The latter years of the 20th century witnessed a significant transition from the public sector as the primary investor in cities by allowing private-sector involvement.
Since the early 2000s, the Central Government has played a pivotal role in facilitating and supporting infrastructure development in cities through various urban reform-linked schemes such as the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM), AMRUT 1.0, and AMRUT 2.0. The JNNURM, launched in 2005, provided infrastructure investment opportunities through PPP projects. It stressed the preparation of non-statutory City Development Plans (CDP) to identify projects and guide programme implementation, through the preparation of Detailed Project Reports (DPRs), which states were required to submit to access JNNURM funds for infrastructure projects.
The availability of central funding for projects resulted in states and ULBs planning infrastructure projects through the DPR route while disregarding the long-term statutory Master Plans (called Development Plans in some states) which are the spatial development blueprints of cities with an implementation window of 20 years. This resulted in various infrastructure projects being supported through DPRs and other non-statutory Central funds linked plans such as City Sanitation Plans (CSPs) and Comprehensive Mobility Plans (CMPs). The approach to urban infrastructure planning and development has largely remained ad-hoc, driven by sporadic centrally sponsored schemes and programmes, without any binding statutory mandate and addressing only short-term priorities.
Since 2014, the Government of India (GOI)has been making significant investments in developing and upgrading urban infrastructure through national missions aimed at targeted governance and institutional reforms at the state and local levels. As India continues to urbanise, cities need to explore cutting-edge planning tools for managing peripheral expansion and renewing their central core areas. It must also utilise tools to capture land values to finance sustainable urban development.
The Government of India (GOI)has been making significant investments in developing and upgrading urban infrastructure through national missions aimed at targeted governance and institutional reforms at the state and local levels.
The first significant attempt towards planned and integrated urban development was made through the centrally supported AMRUT 1.0, launched in 2015, wherein over 460 cities were selected for the preparation of GIS-based Master Plans. This was a crucial urban planning reform initiated by the Centre with a budget outlay of INR 5.15 billion, to enable cities to prepare base maps, land use maps, and various other thematic maps for infrastructure planning. Building on this initiative further in phase two, AMRUT 2.0 in 2021 introduced GIS-based master planning under its incentive reform on urban planning for Class II cities (or those with a population of 50,000-99,999). This had a sub-scheme for the preparation of the Local Area Planning and Town Planning Scheme (TPS) covering 25 cities to utilise their land potential and capture land value.
Thus, from JNNURM in 2005 to AMRUT 2.0 in 2021, there has been a shift from a project-oriented infrastructure development approach to a more reform-linked integrated approach that connects land use and infrastructure planning. However, the preparation of a city-level infrastructure investment pipeline for quality infrastructure investments is yet to be realised.
Non-statutory plans for sustainable and resilient urban growth
Its size and geographical diversity make India vulnerable to extreme climate-induced risks, shocks, and stresses. According to the Germanwatch Climate Risk Index (2023), India, along with China and the United States (US), are home to 80 percent of the world’s top 50 vulnerable states and provinces. Recognising these risks, the Indian government has placed cities at the centre of national climate change mitigation and adaptation plans and actions. India was ranked seventh in the Germanwatch’s Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI) of 2024, the highest among the G20 nations, primarily for its enhanced NDC and commitment to achieving net-zero status by 2070.
The Central Government recognises that maintaining the national growth momentum requires improving, upgrading, and building sustainable and resilient urban infrastructure. For instance, the National Infrastructure Pipeline (NIP), with projected capital investments of INR 111 trillion during the FY 2020-25 period, focuses on building high-quality, reliable, sustainable, and resilient infrastructure, including regional and trans-border infrastructure, that can support economic development and human well-being. It seeks to pay attention to affordable and equitable access for all as a primary strategy to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 9 (SDG 9), which aims to “build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialisation and foster innovation.”
Tapping into such investment opportunities could enable systematic “planning” for infrastructure through spatial planning tools like master plans, local area plans, and town planning schemes.
Cities have also responded to emerging climate threats by introducing thematic and sector-specific plans, such as blue-green infrastructure plans, climate action plans, low-carbon cities, and strategies for urban resilience. However, like the centrally funded grants under specific missions and schemes, these plans are facilitated by development cooperation sector agencies and thus lack the necessary integration with long-term statutory plans; they remain more of an ‘obligatory’ measure rather than a statutory mandate. Globally, such city-level climate-smart infrastructure plans in emerging markets have tremendous potential, attracting estimated investments of US$29.4 trillion through climate finance by 2030. Tapping into such investment opportunities could enable systematic “planning” for infrastructure through spatial planning tools like master plans, local area plans, and town planning schemes.
India’s concerns are compounded by the absence of a clear urban planning hierarchy in cities and the limited linkage of diverse strategic, sectoral, and thematic instruments with statutory planning mandates. The proactive agency and engagement of national governments have led to tangible transformations at the local level in several developed countries. For example, Infrastructure Australia (IA), a national-level agency established in 2008, is mandated to prioritise, implement and monitor nationally significant infrastructure projects and reforms in Australia, ensuring jurisdictional cooperation and process improvements for PPPs. Similarly, the United Kingdom’s (UK) National Infrastructure Commission (NIC), set up in 2015, charted out a 30-year strategic vision for infrastructure-led economic development in cities.
The way forward
Currently the fifth-largest global economy, India is predicted to surpass Japan and China to emerge as the world’s third-largest economy by 2027. However, for these predictions to materialise, there is an urgent need to integrate infrastructure investments with long-term Master Plans or Development Plans. Learning from the limitations of the 74th Constitutional Amendment Act to bring about the desired level of decentralised ULB governance, India needs to implement second-generation urban planning and governance reforms.
The appeal of various short-term DPR-based grants and incentives for infrastructure development is also causing cities to miss out on long-term, statutory planning processes.
The role of the Central Government remains crucial in facilitating land-use-linked, sustainable, and resilient infrastructure development. The appeal of various short-term DPR-based grants and incentives for infrastructure development is also causing cities to miss out on long-term, statutory planning processes. However, the role of statutory spatial planning and its result-oriented implementation in combatting long-term challenges such as climate change cannot be understated.
India’s cities can only advance their adaptation, mitigation, and resilience agenda through a government-mandated combination of systemic, risk-informed land-use planning and zoning proposals, development control regulations, and identification of critical infrastructure projects. This transformation would require national frameworks to prioritise long-term goals in a city infrastructure investment pipeline of projects and programmes aligned with land-use-based city development plans that can leverage the appreciation in land value through planned urban growth.
Saswat Bandyopadhyay is a Professor, and Gargi Mishra is a Doctoral Candidate and Visiting Faculty at the CEPT University, Ahmedabad
This essay is part of a larger compendium “Policy and Institutional Imperatives for India’s Urban Renaissance”.
[1] The first NDC, submitted on 2 October 2015 to the UNFCCC for the period up to 2030, was revised in August 2022 under the Paris Agreement.
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