Top Government Programmes Supporting Smart Cities in India

When most people picture a smart city, they think of sensors, surveillance cameras, and apps that tell you where to park. But a city cannot become “smart” if its residents still queue for water, wade through flooded streets during the monsoon, or live next to overflowing garbage dumps. Behind the headline-grabbing Smart Cities Mission sits a quieter but equally important set of government programmes that build the basic foundation on which smart solutions can actually work. These missions tackle water, sanitation, housing, and urban governance, and the Smart Cities Mission was explicitly designed to converge with them. This post walks through three of the most significant programmes that support smart city development: JNNURM, AMRUT, and Swachh Bharat Mission Urban.

Why smart cities depend on other urban programmes 🔗

Smart city development in India was never meant to happen in a vacuum. The Smart Cities Mission, launched on 25 June 2015, follows an area-based approach, meaning it concentrates intensive development on a selected pocket of a city. In contrast, missions like AMRUT follow a project-based approach that spreads basic infrastructure across many cities. At the planning stage, cities were expected to align their Smart City Proposals with programmes such as AMRUT and Swachh Bharat Mission so that funds and outcomes reinforce one another rather than overlap wastefully.

This logic of convergence is the thread connecting all the programmes below. A smart traffic system is only useful if roads are not waterlogged. Digital governance only helps citizens who already have access to toilets and clean water. The programmes discussed here are the groundwork, and understanding them explains how India’s broader urban strategy is supposed to fit together.

Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) 🔗

The story of modern urban policy in India arguably begins with JNNURM. Launched on 3 December 2005 by the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, it was the first investment programme of its kind in the country’s history. With an initial outlay of around ₹50,000 crore, it was the largest national urban initiative attempted up to that point, and it set the template that later missions would build upon.

Objectives and structure 🔗

The primary objective of JNNURM was to create economically productive, efficient, equitable and responsive cities. The trigger was simple demographics. India’s urban population had grown from 286 million in 2001 to 377 million by 2011, and existing infrastructure could not keep pace. The mission focused on integrated development of infrastructure services, linking new assets to long-term maintenance, accelerating investment into urban infrastructure, and ensuring planned development that included peri-urban areas.

JNNURM was organised into two broad sub-missions. The Urban Infrastructure and Governance (UIG) component handled water supply, sanitation, solid waste management, road networks, and urban transport in larger cities. The Basic Services to the Urban Poor (BSUP) component focused on integrated development of slums, including housing and security of tenure for poorer residents. Two further components, including the Urban Infrastructure Development Scheme for Small and Medium Towns (UIDSSMT), extended assistance to smaller settlements.

Reform-linked funding 🔗

One of JNNURM’s most influential ideas was reform-linked funding. Central assistance was not handed over unconditionally. Cities had to prepare a City Development Plan and commit to governance reforms, and funds flowed from the Central and State governments to a designated state-level nodal agency, which then disbursed money to urban local bodies for approved projects. This linkage between money and reform pushed states and municipalities to modernise how they functioned.

What it achieved and where it fell short 🔗

JNNURM ran from 2005 to 2012 and was later extended to March 2014. Its record was mixed. A Comptroller and Auditor General review found that many projects remained incomplete, with only a fraction of sanctioned housing and infrastructure projects finished within the timeline. Yet its real legacy is conceptual. JNNURM shifted the mindset of states and urban local bodies, and it set the tone for every urban mission that followed, including AMRUT and the Smart Cities Mission.

Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) 🔗

If JNNURM was the pioneer, AMRUT is its more focused successor. Launched on 25 June 2015, the very same day as the Smart Cities Mission, AMRUT was described by the government as the first focused national water Mission. It targeted 500 cities and towns, covering roughly 60% of the urban population.

Core focus areas 🔗

AMRUT concentrates on a handful of basic but essential services. Its main components are water supply, sewerage and septage management, storm water drainage to reduce flooding, green spaces and parks, and non-motorised urban transport such as walking and cycling infrastructure. A set of urban reforms and capacity-building measures were folded into the mission as well. The central idea is straightforward: improve the everyday quality of life in cities by ensuring reliable water and sanitation, with particular attention to the needs of children, women, and the elderly.

Measurable outcomes 🔗

AMRUT’s progress is easier to quantify than JNNURM’s. Government figures report that more than a crore household tap connections and lakhs of sewer connections were provided, alongside the development of sewage treatment capacity and the elimination of thousands of urban flooding points. Hundreds of parks covering thousands of acres were also created. The World Economic Forum noted that, together with the Smart Cities Mission, AMRUT represented one of two strategic initiatives recognising that urban centres are engines of growth and employment.

The shift to AMRUT 2.0 🔗

On 1 October 2021, the government launched AMRUT 2.0, which runs through the financial year 2025-26. This second phase widens the ambition considerably. Instead of focusing only on 500 cities, it aims for universal coverage of water supply through functional taps in all statutory towns across the country, plus complete sewerage and septage management in the original 500 AMRUT cities. AMRUT 2.0 also introduces the idea of a circular economy of water, encouraging cities to recycle and reuse treated sewage, rejuvenate water bodies, and conserve water through a City Water Balance Plan. The goal is to make cities “water secure” and self-sustaining.

Swachh Bharat Mission Urban (SBM-U) 🔗

Clean water and good infrastructure mean little if a city cannot manage its waste or guarantee basic sanitation. That is the gap Swachh Bharat Mission Urban was created to fill. Launched on 2 October 2014 as a tribute to Mahatma Gandhi, SBM-U is implemented by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs.

The two big goals 🔗

SBM-U set out with two headline objectives: making urban India free from open defecation and achieving 100% scientific management of municipal solid waste across thousands of statutory towns. To get there, the mission funded the construction of individual household toilets, community toilets, and public toilets, while building systems for collecting, segregating, and processing solid waste. A third, less visible objective ran through everything: behaviour change, promoted through a public movement, or Jan Andolan, supported by information, education, and communication campaigns.

Understanding ODF and scientific waste management 🔗

A key concept under the mission is the Open Defecation Free (ODF) status. A city or ward can be declared ODF only when, at any point of the day, not a single person is found defecating in the open. Scientific solid waste management goes beyond simply removing garbage. It involves door-to-door collection, segregation of waste at the source, and proper processing rather than dumping everything into a single landfill. The Asian Development Bank noted that the first phase of the mission eliminated open defecation among hundreds of millions of people, reducing acute health risks and pollution of land and water.

SBM-U 2.0 and garbage-free cities 🔗

Like AMRUT, Swachh Bharat Mission Urban moved into a second phase. SBM-U 2.0 was launched on 1 October 2021 and runs until October 2026. Its vision is to make all cities “Garbage Free” and to institutionalise clean behaviour among citizens. A notable new priority is legacy waste remediation, which tackles the old, unprocessed mountains of waste that have piled up in dump sites over decades, releasing harmful gases and leaching toxins into soil and groundwater. Tackling these legacy dumps is essential to the broader goal of genuinely clean cities.

How these programmes feed into smart cities 🔗

The connection between these missions and smart city development is deliberate rather than accidental. The Smart Cities Mission, which the government officially concluded on 31 March 2025, was always intended to layer advanced solutions on top of the basic services that AMRUT and SBM-U deliver. Cities were encouraged to seek convergence in their Smart City Proposals with AMRUT, Swachh Bharat Mission, Digital India, and Housing for All, among other schemes.

Viewed together, the programmes form a layered system. JNNURM established the idea of reform-linked, planned urban investment. AMRUT delivers the water, sewerage, and drainage that make daily life functional. SBM-U keeps cities clean and healthy. Only with these foundations in place do the “smart” elements, such as integrated command centres, intelligent transport, and digital governance, become genuinely useful rather than cosmetic. A smart city, in the Indian context, is one that plans judiciously to meet its challenges sustainably while practising good governance, and these supporting programmes are what make that ambition realistic.

What do you think? If a city has flashy digital dashboards but still struggles with reliable water supply and waste collection, can it really be called “smart”? And which should an Indian city prioritise first when resources are limited: building the basic infrastructure that AMRUT and SBM-U target, or investing in the advanced technology that defines a smart city?

References

1. https://www.ibef.org/government-schemes/smart-cities-mission
2. https://www.impriindia.com/insights/jawaharlal-nehru-national-urban-missio/
3. https://prsindia.org/theprsblog/status-of-jawaharlal-nehru-national-urban-renewal-mission
4. https://www.pmindia.gov.in/en/news_updates/cabinet-approves-the-atal-mission-for-rejuvenation-and-urban-transformation-amrut-2-0-till-2025-26/
5. https://www.weforum.org/stories/2015/11/building-indias-smart-cities-of-tomorrow/
6. https://www.adb.org/projects/56286-001/main
7. https://www.drishtiias.com/daily-updates/daily-news-analysis/smart-cities-mission-4