JNNURM: Transforming India’s Urban Infrastructure

Indian cities were growing faster than their roads, pipes, and drains could handle. By the 2001 Census, around 286 million people, or about 28% of the population, were living in urban areas, and that share was climbing every year. Yet most cities ran on infrastructure designed decades earlier. Water flowed for only a few hours a day, sewage systems overflowed, and slums expanded without basic services. In 2005, the government responded with its largest urban programme ever: the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM). This post explains what JNNURM set out to do, how it was structured, and what it actually achieved.

What JNNURM was and why it was launched 🔗

JNNURM was launched on 3 December 2005 by then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, under the Ministry of Urban Development. It came directly out of the commitments made in the National Common Minimum Programme, the policy agenda of the ruling coalition, which promised major investment in urban renewal and basic services. The mission was conceived as a reform-linked investment programme, the first of its kind in the country, with an initial planned outlay of around ₹50,000 crore from the central government over a seven-year period running from 2005 to 2012. It was later extended by two more years and formally closed in 2014.

The scale was unprecedented. As documented in records of the scheme, JNNURM envisaged total investment running into tens of billions of dollars once state and local contributions were added. The official mission statement captured its purpose clearly: to encourage reforms and fast-track planned development of identified cities, focusing on efficiency in urban infrastructure and service delivery, community participation, and the accountability of Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) and parastatal agencies towards citizens.

Which cities were covered 🔗

JNNURM did not try to fix every town at once. It initially targeted 63 cities, later expanded to 65, selected on a clear basis. These included cities and urban agglomerations with a population of one million or more according to the 2001 Census, all state capitals, and a set of cities of religious, historic, or tourist importance. The logic was to concentrate resources where the urban pressure and economic stakes were highest. Smaller towns were not ignored; they were served by two parallel schemes discussed later in this post.

Mission objectives and strategy 🔗

The primary objective of JNNURM was to create cities that were economically productive, efficient, equitable, and responsive. This was a deliberate shift in thinking. Earlier urban schemes often focused narrowly on building assets. JNNURM instead tied money to reform, meaning a city or state could access central funds only if it committed to changing how it governed itself.

In line with its core objective, the mission focused on the integrated development of infrastructure services, securing the link between asset creation and long-term maintenance, accelerating investment into urban infrastructure, and the planned development of cities including their peri-urban fringes. The stated objectives also stressed strengthening municipal governance and improving the performance of local authorities so that improvements would last beyond the life of the mission.

Inclusive development 🔗

A defining feature of JNNURM was its attempt at inclusive urban development. Many earlier projects displaced the poor rather than serving them. JNNURM built in explicit provisions for slum improvement, affordable housing, and basic services for low-income residents. The reasoning was simple: a city cannot be considered developed if a large share of its population lives without secure housing, clean water, or sanitation.

Public-private partnerships 🔗

The mission actively encouraged Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) to bring in private-sector efficiency and additional financing for project development, management, and implementation. This was relatively new in a sector where services had traditionally been delivered entirely by government. States were advised to follow the Finance Ministry’s guidelines for private participation, including appointing transaction advisors to structure these partnerships.

Reform-linked funding 🔗

The strategy that held everything together was conditional funding. Central assistance was released in stages, and cities had to sign a Memorandum of Agreement committing to a list of mandatory and optional reforms. Mandatory reforms at the state level included implementing the 74th Constitutional Amendment by assigning planning functions to ULBs and constituting District and Metropolitan Planning Committees. At the ULB level, mandatory reforms required a double-entry accounting system, the use of e-governance techniques, property-tax reform using GIS, and reasonable user charges for services. This conditionality was the lever JNNURM used to push long-delayed governance change.

The components of JNNURM 🔗

JNNURM was cleverly split into two main sub-missions for the larger mission cities, each handled by a different ministry and targeting a different problem.

Urban Infrastructure and Governance (UIG) 🔗

The UIG sub-mission, administered by the Ministry of Urban Development, was the heavy-lifting component. It funded large infrastructure projects such as water supply, sewerage, sanitation, solid waste management, urban transport, storm-water drainage, the renewal of inner-city areas, and the preservation of water bodies. Alongside physical works, UIG carried the bulk of the governance reform agenda, pushing cities to modernise how they were managed. The funding pattern for UIG varied by city category, with the central share typically being very high for smaller cities and lower for large metros, the balance coming from states and local bodies.

Basic Services to the Urban Poor (BSUP) 🔗

The BSUP sub-mission, run by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation, focused on the urban poor. It funded the integrated development of slums, providing shelter, affordable housing, water supply, sewerage, drainage, community toilets, and related civic amenities. Crucially, BSUP also aimed to provide security of tenure at affordable prices, so that poor families were not simply evicted but given a recognised place in the city. It tried to ensure that government services in education, health, and social security actually reached slum residents.

The schemes for smaller towns 🔗

Because UIG and BSUP only covered the larger mission cities, two parallel schemes served the rest. The Urban Infrastructure Development Scheme for Small and Medium Towns (UIDSSMT) handled infrastructure in non-mission towns, while the Integrated Housing and Slum Development Programme (IHSDP) handled housing and slum work there. Researchers later noted that a larger share of the urban population lived in these smaller towns, yet they received a much smaller share of central assistance than the big-city schemes, an imbalance that drew significant criticism.

Achievements of the mission 🔗

JNNURM left a real mark on Indian urban governance. Its most visible achievements were on the reform side rather than only in concrete and pipes.

The conditional-funding approach forced governance changes that had been stalled for years. According to a government review of reform progress, municipal elections were held in Jharkhand after a gap of 22 years and for the first time in Sikkim, directly because of mission requirements. Twenty states constituted District Planning Committees, and twelve states made legislative provisions for community participation in municipal functions. Several states amended their Municipal Acts or passed separate Bills for public disclosure of municipal information.

On administration, cities adopted e-governance systems, double-entry accounting, and property-tax reforms. Hyderabad, for example, introduced online property-tax self-assessment and a real-time monitoring system to improve how citizens interacted with the local body. The push to move ULBs onto modern, transparent financial systems was one of the mission’s most durable contributions. On infrastructure, the mission funded thousands of projects covering water supply, sanitation, roads, transport, and slum housing across participating cities.

Challenges and criticisms 🔗

JNNURM’s record was uneven, and honest assessment matters as much as celebration. Reform implementation varied widely between states. One assessment of the reforms found that by mid-2013 only a handful of states had achieved over 90% compliance, only about 23 cities fully levied user charges, and only around ten states had fully enacted community participation laws. States readily adopted easier reforms like computerised registration but resisted politically harder ones.

A deeper structural criticism was the separation of UIG and BSUP. By compartmentalising infrastructure investment and services for the poor into different sub-missions, the design of UIG projects often left out the needs of poorer residents. Flyovers and air-conditioned buses, for instance, did little for people who walked or cycled. Many ULBs also lacked the institutional capacity to implement projects, and Project Management Units staffed by short-term consultants tended to focus on delivery rather than building lasting local capacity. When JNNURM closed in 2014, its components were carried forward and reshaped under the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) and the Smart Cities Mission, which absorbed many of its lessons.

What do you think? Was JNNURM’s strategy of tying funds to mandatory reforms the right way to push reluctant states toward change, or did it set conditions that many cities were never equipped to meet? And if you were redesigning the mission today, would you keep infrastructure and services for the poor in separate streams, or merge them into a single integrated plan?

References

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jawaharlal_Nehru_National_Urban_Renewal_Mission
2. https://www.impriindia.com/insights/jawaharlal-nehru-national-urban-missio/
3. https://civicspace.in/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Community-participation-laws-analysis-by-Shyam-Singh-1-1.pdf
4. https://ud.hp.gov.in/sites/default/files/documents/Status_of_UIG.pdf
5. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-81-322-3616-0_13
6. https://www.pib.gov.in/newsite/PrintRelease.aspx?relid=68151
7. https://www.academia.edu/11193256/Urban_Reforms_under_JNNURM_An_Assessment
8. https://www.effective-states.org/the-jawaharlal-nehru-national-urban-renewal-mission-jnnurm-lessons-learnt/