Transforming Quality of Life in India’s Cities and Towns

India’s cities are home to more than 400 million people. By 2050, this number is expected to swell to 800 million, meaning for the first time, more Indians will reside in cities than in villages. This shift is not just a demographic statistic; it represents a profound challenge. 

India’s cities are already buckling under the strain of inadequate resources, limited capacities, disempowered leaders, fragmented governance structures, and non-existent citizen participation. These factors have severely affected urban quality of life. From everyday inconveniences like traffic congestion, waste management, and water scarcity to larger developmental issues like housing, healthcare, and education — the list of challenges facing India’s cities is formidable and only likely to worsen with the expected urban migration.

However, urban quality of life will shape our socio-economic future and influence everything from economic growth to democratic governance and climate change. The development of India, therefore, depends on the development of its cities. 

At Janaagraha, we have spent the last two decades working to fix India’s cities.

A Whole of Systems Approach to Cities

India’s cities do not have a hundred different problems, they have the same problems repeated a hundred different times, over time and place. These are symptoms of a deeper challenge: poorly-designed, ineffectual ‘city-systems’.

Our focus, therefore, is not on fixing the symptoms. Instead, we channel our efforts to fix the root causes, thus ensuring sustainable and irreversible improvements.

‘City-systems’ refer to the laws, policies, institutions, processes, capacities, and frameworks that are the root causes for most, if not all, aspects of quality of life in our cities. 

Robust city-systems are, we believe, the key to robust cities.

We work with governments to strengthen city-systems to deliver infrastructure and services. We also work with citizens, councillors, and ward-level officials to strengthen participatory governance by creating platforms and tools for mobilisation and engagement at the neighbourhood level.

In the last few years, we have sharpened our approach to work at the intersections of environment, public health, women, and the urban poor.

A Few Significant Milestones

Some of our key achievements over the last two decades have been:

• Successfully advocating with the XV Finance Commission on the publication of annual accounts by cities for accessing Finance Commission grants; our subsequent work with MoHUA lead to more than 4,200+ Urban Local Bodies (> 90% of ULBs) publishing audited accounts for FY 2021-22 in the public domain (www.cityfinance.in).
• 50% increase in property taxes for FY2017-18 over FY2022-23 with an absolute increase of INR 5,840 crores in property tax collections over the last two years (INR 28,050 cr in FY2021-22 to INR 33,890 cr in FY 2022-23).
• 1.6 million citizens in 2,900 urban poor settlements in Odisha covered under participatory governance systems.
• As official partners of the Swachh Bharat Mission, we developed the Swachhata mobile app, a grievance redressal app which has reached over 3,500 municipalities in India, is used by over 20 million citizens, with over 50 million interactions recorded in more than five years. 
• Pioneered and drafted India’s first design standards for urban roads through Tender S.U.R.E. (Specifications for Urban Roads Execution) guidelines with continuous even footpaths, safe pedestrian crossings, uniform lane width, and underground ducted utilities. Designed c. 200kms of Tender S.U.R.E. roads across 20 cities in 5 states namely Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh, and Odisha.

Looking Ahead

We are beginning to notice a significant increase in interest from state governments (along with significant budgets) to articulate and implement an urban reform agenda. The idea will be to catalyse such an urban reform agenda by providing programme design support to states along with a clear frame of thinking on how states can transform their urban areas with due weightage to economy, environment, equity, and engagement (of citizens). Through our work in Odisha, Assam (as part of the Ten Cities Development Programme, Doh Shaher Doh Rupayan), and Uttar Pradesh (as part of the Aspirational Cities Programme) where we are already a key governance partner in their existing urban reform strategies, we hope to begin working on a convergent and holistic urban transformation agenda. 

Our cities hold the key to India’s future, and at Janaagraha, we are committed to ensuring that this future is bright, inclusive, and sustainable. Our aim is to transform the quality of life in India’s cities and towns, and to create vibrant, sustainable cities that work for all.