• Home
• Participate
  • Forums
  • Groups
• Editorial
  • Articles
  • Videos
  • Editorial Blogs
  • Editor's Picks
  • Community Blogs
• Maps
• Janaagraha
• Tools
• Get in Touch

Suresh is a driver. He has a wife and a kid. Originally from Doddaballapur, he lives with his family in a congested area in North West Bangalore. The house is owned by his in-laws, who also live with them. He dreams of his own home one day. With an income of Rs 7000, he’s confident that he could invest in a home that costs around 5 lakhs.

(JNNURM was launched on December 3, 2005 with the objective of focused attention to integrated development of basic services to the urban poor. It is the largest national urban initiative to encourage reforms and fast-track planned development of 63 identified cities. Ramesh Ramanathan’s article, written shortly after the launch and reproduced here, is an introduction to the JNNURM and explores its reforms-linked central assistance to State Governments for development of urban infrastructure.

In India, as with the rest of the world, we have a heavy dependence on ground water. Over the last 5 decades, demands on water have mounted with the increasing population from 17 percent to 28 percent. Of India’s current population, approximately 28 percent live in urban areas, which comprises of 5161 towns – an increase of 2.1 percent over the proportion of urban population in 1991 census.

Despite significant investments over the last 20 years, India still faces the most daunting sanitation challenge than any other country in South Asia. According to an estimate, India stands second among the worst places in the world for sanitation after China.

Are you aware that the Ministry of Urban Development is setting up a process to rate the urban services (like water and sanitation) provided in Indian cities? Find out more about Service Level Benchmarking, as Sanjeev Ranjan, Coordinator of the SLB initiative, explains the process. 

Background

The Ward Infrastructure & Services Assessment (WISA) initiative is a citizen centric quality of life index, as affected by infrastructure and services.

Essentially, WISA assess how well the government meets the benchmarks that they’ve promised each ward, in terms of facilities and basic services that they’re meant to provide.

For us Indians, bad quality roads seem to have become synonymous with the identity of urban India. A recent opinion poll conducted by a leading television channel to find out which city has the worst roads, generated overwhelming response from viewers across all cities. No matter which city, no matter what time of the year, no matter which locality within a city, our civic agencies never seem to get it right.