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India began the transformation from a closed economy to an open, market-based economy in the early 1990's by taking steps towards economic liberalisation, decentralisation, good governance and improved infrastructure. This change in approach emphasised the important role of cities in India's future economic development. Cities contribute about 50-55 percent to the country's GDP. In order to address challenges faced by growth engines of Indian economy, the Government of India launched Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JnNURM) under the aegis of Ministry of Urban Development in December 2005 to create economically productive, efficient, equitable and responsive cities and towns.
 

The mission aimed to improve urban management supported states and cities in carrying out a number of functions ranging from planning, project development, monitoring and evaluation including implementation of reform agenda. This reform-linked funding from the Government of India represented a culmination of two decades of experimentation with various development models in the country. JnNURM's multi-pronged approach covered governance-oriented reforms and city-wide project funding for 63 cities across the Country.

In order to operationalise the mission activities, JnNURM Mission Directorate, appointed us as a Project Management Unit (PMU) to provide cutting-edge technical assistance and capacity building support to India's central, state, and local governments in the creation of an enabling environment in which state and local governments are empowered to plan, implement, and manage urban infrastructure projects to improve the delivery of urban services with an emphasis on the poor. Some of the key areas of support include :

1. Adopting policy environment and institutional frameworks to build managerial and financial capacities to implement projects and reforms;
2. Supporting states and cities in adopting best project management, financial management and institutional development practices;
3. Strengthening partnerships between national, state and local governments for successful implementation of projects and reforms;
4. Facilitating information sharing and feedback from local, state and central governments including handholding and capacity building support to the state and urban local bodies;
5. Encouraging cities to structure performance based contracts for operation & maintenance of urban services including support in monitoring service level benchmarks;
6. Inculcating a focused approach on training, knowledge exchange and dissemination for augmenting in house capacities of urban local bodies to manage & implement projects and reforms, and development of mission documents for new missions.

Our Approach

The technical assistance relied on a three-pronged approach: (1) Working with local, state and central governments for grounding policy interventions at local level; (2) Strengthening consultative, participatory process to not only to achieve project milestones in a timely manner but also to align reforms with project outcomes; and (3)Providing hand holding support to the national, State and City governments.

Key Achievements

1. 1339 projects in 733 urban local bodies related to water supply, sewerage, solid waste management, and roads/flyovers were approved;
2. Implementation of reform agenda outcomes: 84 percent of reforms for strengthening administrative and financial capacities were implemented by states and cities;
3. Capacity Building of implementing agencies: Supported states and cities in disseminating knowledge of the urban challenges and solutions including strengthening state and local government structures to carry forward the project management and reform efforts.
4. Contributed to the design and roll out of three new missions (Swachch Bharat Mission, Smart Cities and Atal Mission for Urban Rejuvenation and Transformation - AMRUT ) to address the challenges of Urbanisation.

Lessons Learned

This support not only strengthened and institutionalised the overall implementation process of policy intervention, but clearly established the need for appropriately designed handhold and technical assistance for operationalising policy interventions and managing envisaged outcomes of centrally driven missions and programmes.

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