Urbanisation in India: Meaning, Trends, Causes, Problems and Urban Governance

How the Census Defines Urban Areas

Statutory Towns and Census Towns

The Census recognises an urban place in two ways. A settlement is urban if the State has given it an urban local body, or if it meets three tests on its own.

• Statutory towns: Places with a municipality, a corporation, a cantonment board or a notified town area committee, whatever their size. Census 2011 counted 4,041 of them, against 3,799 in 2001.
• Census towns: Places not governed as towns by law that nevertheless pass three tests. Their population is above 5,000, at least 75 per cent of their male workers are outside agriculture, and their density is at least 400 persons per square kilometre. Their number rose from 1,362 in 2001 to 3,894 in 2011.

The jump in census towns matters because these places grew into towns without ever getting a municipality, so they are planned and financed like villages. In May 2016 the Union urban development ministry asked the States to convert them into statutory urban local bodies so that infrastructure could be planned in a coordinated way. It noted that statutory status brings Central assistance under the 14th Finance Commission guidelines and a 50 per cent weightage to the number of statutory towns in AMRUT allocations. Maharashtra converted 19 census towns after that letter.

Urban Agglomerations, Outgrowths and Size Classes

An urban agglomeration is a continuous urban spread made up of a town and its adjoining outgrowths, or of two or more physically contiguous towns with or without outgrowths. Under the definition used in 2001, it must contain at least one statutory town and have a total population of not less than 20,000. Outgrowths are contiguous suburban areas around a core town.

Towns are grouped into size classes, and Class I towns are those with more than one lakh people. They dominate the urban system. Over 70 per cent of urban residents lived in Class I cities in 2011.

Million-plus places are the next level up. Census 2011 shows 52 urban agglomerations or cities with a population of one million and above, against 53 in the provisional results; Chandigarh was dropped from the final list. These 52 metropolitan cities alone held 42.3 per cent of all urban residents.

The Constitution uses a separate test. Article 243P defines a "metropolitan area" as an area with a population of 10 lakh or more that spans one or more districts and has two or more municipalities or panchayats or other contiguous areas, specified by the Governor by public notification. That legal term decides where a Metropolitan Planning Committee must be set up.

Trends of Urbanisation in India, 1901 to 2011

Urban Share and Urban Population from 1901 to 2011

The share of urban people rose slowly for the first half of the twentieth century and faster afterwards. It was 10.84 per cent in 1901, 11.99 per cent in 1931 and 17.29 per cent in 1951, and it reached 31.16 per cent in 2011. The urban population grew from about 25.85 million in 1901 to about 377 million in 2011, which is about fourteen-fold. During the twentieth century alone it increased eleven-fold. Enlargement of existing urban centres and the emergence of new towns both drove this growth.

The growth rate of the urban population peaked at 46.14 per cent in 1971‑81 and fell in each of the next three decades, to 36.47, 31.13 and 31.08 per cent. The urban share, by contrast, rose faster in the last decade, by 3.38 percentage points between 2001 and 2011 against 2.07 points between 1991 and 2001. The census-town count explains part of this pattern. Many places that grew into towns between 2001 and 2011 were first recorded as census towns, and about 30 per cent of the urban growth of that decade is attributed to them. Urban growth in that decade therefore came partly from reclassification, not only from migration to existing cities.

Different Definitions, Different Urban Shares

The headline figure depends on the definition. The Census definition lets comparisons run across the years, but there is a growing case for measuring urbanisation with data on mobility, labour markets, density, built-up area and night-time light. Satellite-based settlement data from the Global Human Settlements Layer put India at 63 per cent urban in 2015, nearly double the 2011 Census rate.

This matters for the debate on whether India is "under-urbanised". Much of the growth sits in places that look urban on the ground but are governed and counted as villages. Kerala shows the gap. The State's statutory urbanisation level, updated for 34 new urban local bodies and boundary changes since 2011, is 53.81 per cent, and the estimate rises to about 80.8 per cent when spatially identified urban-type settlements are added.

Regional Variation and the Largest Urban Agglomerations

Urbanisation is uneven across the country. Among the States, Goa, Mizoram, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Maharashtra are the most urbanised, while Himachal Pradesh, Bihar, Assam and Odisha are among the least. Uttar Pradesh has a large urban population, but it is only about a fifth of the State's people.

Urban growth in the interior follows corridors. Rural-to-urban migration is most visible along the main road and rail links of the North Indian Plains and in the industrial belts around Kolkata, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Mysuru, Madurai and Coimbatore, Ahmedabad and Surat, Delhi and Kanpur, and Ludhiana and Jalandhar. Urbanisation stays low in the agriculturally stagnant middle and lower Ganga Plains, Telangana, the non-irrigated parts of Western Rajasthan, the remote hilly and tribal areas of the North-East, the flood-prone parts of Peninsular India and eastern Madhya Pradesh.

Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata, the three largest urban agglomerations, each had more than 14 million people in 2011.

Evolution and Functional Types of Indian Towns

From Ancient Towns to Planned Cities

Towns have existed in India since prehistoric times. Harappa and Mohenjodaro were towns in the days of the Indus valley civilisation, and urban growth continued with ups and downs until Europeans arrived in the eighteenth century. On the basis of their evolution, Indian towns fall into ancient, medieval and modern groups.

• Ancient towns have a history of more than 2,000 years and mostly grew as religious and cultural centres. Varanasi, Prayagraj, Patna (Pataliputra) and Madurai are examples.
• About 100 existing towns have medieval roots. They developed as headquarters of principalities and kingdoms and were fort towns that came up on the ruins of ancient towns, such as Delhi, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Lucknow, Agra and Nagpur.
• Modern towns began with the British and other Europeans, who first developed trading ports such as Surat, Daman, Goa and Pondicherry. The British later consolidated their hold around Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata, and added administrative and military areas and hill towns as summer resorts. Towns based on modern industry, such as Jamshedpur, evolved after 1850.

After Independence, many towns developed as administrative headquarters, among them Chandigarh, Bhubaneswar, Gandhinagar and Dispur, and as industrial centres such as Durgapur, Bhilai, Sindri and Barauni. Old towns such as Ghaziabad, Rohtak and Gurugram grew as satellite towns around Delhi. With rising investment in rural areas, many medium and small towns have also developed across the country.

Functional Classification of Towns

Towns are also classified by the activity that dominates them, and a town can fit more than one class.

Functions change as a city grows. A specialised city that becomes a metropolis turns multifunctional, with industry, business, administration and transport so tightly mixed that it cannot be placed in any single class.

Causes of Urbanisation in India

Push and Pull Factors and the Routes of Urban Growth

People move to towns because pressures at home and opportunities in the city act together.

• Poverty and pressure on land push people out of villages. A family that has to share a few acres among several brothers, and carries debt, sends a member to the city for wages that the farm cannot give.
• Land fragmentation and low profits from farming add to the push, and some villages have disappeared under roads, highways and dams.
• Employment is the strongest pull. Industrial development in towns, the expansion of government services after the Second World War and the growth of the private sector after 1990 all created jobs.
• Better education and urban infrastructure pull families as well.
• Migration at the time of Partition added to the population of several cities.
• Planning has backed the trend, and the Eleventh Five-Year Plan treated urbanisation as a way of speeding up economic development.

The migrant stream has a pattern. Poor, semi-literate and unskilled workers from villages usually end up in menial, low-wage jobs in the informal sector. Because their wages cannot support a family in the city, the spouse stays behind to look after children and elderly parents, and the rural-to-urban migration stream is dominated by males. Remittances flow back to the village and are spent on daily consumption, healthcare and schooling, with part going into land and housing.

Urban population grows by three routes. Births in towns can exceed deaths, people can move in from villages, and villages can be reclassified as towns or absorbed as town limits widen. The Census numbers show the third route clearly, because census towns rose from 1,362 to 3,894 in one decade. Better economic conditions and improvements in health and hygiene have also raised the growth rate of the urban population.

Industrialisation, Services and the Economic Role of Cities

Cities are now the centre of the economy. India is already deeply urban in economic terms, with the majority of its national output generated in cities. The ten largest cities hold about 9 per cent of the population and produce nearly 28 per cent of GDP, so their share of output is about three times their share of population, compared with about 1.5 in the United States and Germany and about 1.8 in China. By 2036, India's towns and cities are projected to hold 600 million people, or 40 per cent of the population, up from 31 per cent in 2011, and urban areas to contribute almost 70 per cent of GDP.

Urban settlements live on processing, manufacturing and a variety of services. Industrial towns such as Jamshedpur, Bhilai and Durgapur grew around factories, administrative capitals such as Chandigarh, Bhubaneswar and Gandhinagar grew around government functions, and satellite towns such as Ghaziabad, Rohtak and Gurugram grew around Delhi. Urban employment therefore has several bases.

Features of Urbanisation in India

Top-Heavy Cities and Peri-Urban Expansion

India's urban system is top-heavy, with a small number of big cities holding a large share of urban people. Over 70 per cent of urban residents lived in Class I cities in 2011, and 52 million-plus cities held 42.3 per cent of all urban residents. The largest agglomerations, such as Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Chennai and Hyderabad, rank among the largest in the world by population.

At the same time, the number of towns above one lakh people has risen from about 150 in 1971 to about 500, and rising investment in rural areas has produced many medium and small towns.

New urban growth increasingly happens beyond municipal boundaries. Metropolitan expansion is overwhelmingly outward, with growth concentrated in urban fringes. In Kerala the ratio of periphery growth to core growth reached 5.9 in Kannur and 5.2 in Kochi, and 526 settlements with urban traits were identified there from spatial data in 2025.

Informality as a Structural Feature

Slums, informal work and unregistered enterprises absorb surplus labour, provide low-cost housing near jobs and serve urban consumption that formal systems fail to meet. Informality is a structural outcome of rapid urbanisation under constrained formal systems, not a temporary aberration that planning failures create. This explains why clearing slums without providing affordable housing and livelihoods only moves the problem.

Without affordable housing, informal settlements cluster near residential areas, industrial zones and commercial establishments. They give low-income migrants and workers access to employment and services that would otherwise be out of reach. Where affordable housing is built, it increasingly appears in peripheral areas because land is cheaper and large plots are easier to get, which can place it far from jobs.

Problems of Urbanisation in India

Slums and the Segregated City

Indian cities are sharply divided. At the top are farm houses and high-income localities with wide roads, street lights, water and sanitation, lawns, parks, playgrounds and individual security. At the other extreme are slums, jhuggi-jhopri clusters and colonies of shanty structures. They are inhabited by people who came from villages in search of work and could not afford proper housing because of high rents and land costs. They end up on environmentally incompatible, degraded land.

Slums are residential areas of least choice, with dilapidated houses, poor hygiene and ventilation, and a lack of drinking water, light and toilets. Open defecation, unregulated drainage and overcrowded narrow lanes are serious health and environmental hazards. Census 2011 counted about 65 million people living in around 1,08,000 slums, which is roughly one in six urban residents.

Housing Shortage, Informal Work and Social Exclusion

The housing shortage drives slum growth. A technical group estimated an urban housing shortage of 18.8 million houses in 2012. A later research estimate puts the shortage at 29 million in 2018, with 99 per cent of it confined to low-income groups.

Most slum residents work in low-paid, risky jobs in the unorganised sector. They are often undernourished, prone to illness and unable to educate their children well. Poverty makes them vulnerable to drug abuse, alcoholism and crime, and ultimately to social exclusion. Dharavi in Mumbai shows the paradox. A settlement short of services still produces leather goods, pottery, embroidery and metalwork for rich markets.

Migration itself carries a cost. Because the rural-to-urban stream is dominated by males and wages are too low to bring a family along, spouses and children stay in the village. Migrants who move for work also have to adjust to a new culture and environment, and their jobs are often temporary. The speed of growth outruns the supply of housing, services and decent work, and the poorest households carry the cost of that gap.

Many urban pressures come from limits on the supply of land, housing and transport. Restricted density, unclear land titles and limited recycling of land hold back affordable housing, and transport systems depend heavily on private vehicles. The result is a policy contradiction: Cities are expected to deliver growth, productivity and jobs, yet policy restrains density, fragments authority and rations urban land.

Urban Services: Water, Sanitation and Waste

Core services such as sanitation, waste and water have expanded markedly, but they must now move from expansion to reliability, circularity and efficiency. Dense cities strain sewage and water supply. India generates an estimated 112 billion litres of domestic and industrial wastewater a day. Urban areas account for two-thirds of it, but only 28 per cent is treated, and cities reuse only 8 per cent of the treated water. Less than 27 per cent of households are connected to underground sewerage.

Solid waste shows both progress and gaps. Door-to-door collection of municipal solid waste was negligible in 2014‑15 and had reached 98 per cent of urban wards by 2025‑26. Urban India generates about 1.6 lakh tonnes of waste a day, of which about 80 per cent is reported processed, against 16 per cent in 2014‑15. Poor segregation, weak processing and weak enforcement persist in many cities.

Urban Floods and Their Causes

Urban flooding is flooding caused by rain or storm surge that overwhelms drainage in a built-up area. Paved and built-up surfaces stop rain from soaking into the ground, so more water runs off than the drains can carry. Encroachment on flood plains and natural drainage lines, unplanned building along rivers and clogged drains add to the effect. Climate change is expected to increase the frequency of intense rainfall and so the risk.

Two floods show the pattern.

• Mumbai, 26 July 2005: The Santacruz station recorded 944 mm of rain in 24 hours, the eighth heaviest ever recorded in a day. The storm-water system, built in the early twentieth century, could carry only 25 mm an hour. Approximately 1,094 people died, and commerce stopped for days.
• Chennai, November to December 2015: Heavy north-east monsoon rain over the Coromandel Coast led to floods that killed more than 500 people in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Puducherry.

The policy response has several layers. Urban flooding is a State and urban local body subject, and the Centre supplements it. The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) recognised urban flooding as a distinct discipline.

The Urban Flood Risk Management Programme earmarked ₹2,500 crore from the National Disaster Mitigation Fund for 2021 to 2026: ₹500 crore each for Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata and ₹250 crore each for Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune and Ahmedabad in Phase I. In October 2025 the High-Level Committee approved Phase II for 11 more cities. The housing and urban affairs ministry has issued a Standard Operating Procedure for urban flooding, the Urban and Regional Development Plans Formulation and Implementation Guidelines of 2014, River Centric Urban Planning Guidelines of 2021 and a manual on storm-water drainage. AMRUT had funded 838 storm-water drainage projects worth ₹3,022.39 crore by July 2026.

Urban Heat Islands and Heat Action

An urban heat island is an urban area that is significantly warmer than the surrounding countryside, with the difference usually larger at night than in daytime. The main cause is the modification of land surfaces, with waste heat from energy use a secondary cause. Dark surfaces such as asphalt, concrete and roofs absorb more solar radiation. Cities also lose cooling because there are fewer plants and less evapotranspiration. Tall buildings trap heat and block wind, an effect called the urban canyon effect.

Heat islands lengthen and strengthen heat waves in cities and affect the health of residents. Ahmedabad pioneered heat-action planning in India. Three kinds of response are recommended.

• Building codes: Climate-responsive codes with ventilation norms, shading, reflective materials and green roofs.
• Street design: Tree cover, shade and cool surfaces along streets and public spaces.
• Drainage: Storm-water drains linked to lakes and wetlands, so that they absorb floods instead of only channelling water away.

Urban Governance and the 74th Amendment

Evolution of Urban Local Government

Urban local government in India began under British rule. The first municipal corporation in India was set up at Madras in 1687‑88, and corporations were set up in Bombay and Calcutta in 1726. Lord Mayo's Resolution of 1870 on financial decentralisation visualised local self-government institutions, and Lord Ripon's Resolution of 1882 has been hailed as the Magna Carta of local self-government. Ripon is called the father of local self-government in India.

After Independence, municipal bodies grew weak. The Statement of Objects and Reasons of the 74th Amendment records that many local bodies had become weak and ineffective because of the failure to hold regular elections, prolonged supersessions and inadequate devolution of powers and functions. The Nagarpalika Bill of 1989 lapsed in the Rajya Sabha, a revised Bill of 1990 lapsed with the dissolution of the Lok Sabha, and the 74th Constitutional Amendment Act, 1992, came into force on 1 June 1993.

74th Constitutional Amendment Act: Part IXA Explained

The Act inserted Part IXA, "The Municipalities", containing Articles 243P to 243ZG, and added the Twelfth Schedule. Its companion, the 73rd Amendment, inserted Part IX on the Panchayats.

Composition, Reservation, Wards Committees and Tenure

All seats in a municipality are filled by direct election from territorial constituencies called wards (Article 243R). The State legislature may also provide by law for the representation of persons with special knowledge or experience of municipal administration, who have no vote, and of the MPs, MLAs, Rajya Sabha members and Legislative Council members whose constituencies or electoral registration cover the municipal area. It also decides how the chairperson is elected.

Wards Committees must be set up within the area of a municipality having a population of three lakh or more (Article 243S). Each committee has one or more wards, and the member of the municipality from a single-ward committee is its chairperson.

Reservation is proportionate and layered (Article 243T). Seats are reserved for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in proportion to their population in the municipal area. Not less than one-third of the total seats to be filled by direct election is reserved for women, including women from those castes and tribes, and chairperson offices can be reserved for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and women as State law provides. The State may also reserve seats for backward classes.

A municipality continues for five years from its first meeting, unless dissolved sooner, and it must be given a reasonable opportunity of being heard before dissolution (Article 243U). An election must be completed before the term ends, or within six months of dissolution. A person who has attained 21 years is not disqualified merely for being under 25 (Article 243V).

The Twelfth Schedule: Functions of Municipalities

The Twelfth Schedule lists 18 matters that the State legislature may entrust to municipalities (Article 243W). It was added by the 74th Amendment with effect from 1 June 1993, and none of the items has been changed since. The 18 items fall into five groups.

The word "may" in Article 243W matters here. The Schedule is a menu that each State legislature chooses from, so the same item, such as urban planning or water supply, can sit with the municipality in one State and with a State agency or development authority in another.

Planning Committees: District and Metropolitan

Planning is a constitutional task. A District Planning Committee is formed in every State at the district level to consolidate the plans prepared by the panchayats and municipalities and to prepare a draft development plan for the whole district (Article 243ZD). Not less than four-fifths of its members are elected by and from the elected members of the district-level panchayat and the municipalities, in proportion to the rural and urban population of the district. It looks at matters of common interest such as spatial planning, sharing of water and other resources, integrated infrastructure and environmental conservation.

A Metropolitan Planning Committee is formed in every metropolitan area to prepare a draft development plan for the area as a whole (Article 243ZE). Not less than two-thirds of its members are elected by and from the elected municipality members and the chairpersons of the panchayats in the area, in proportion to their populations. In preparing the plan the committee must consider the plans of the municipalities and panchayats, coordinated spatial planning, the sharing of resources, the priorities of the Union and the State, and the investments expected from them. The chairperson forwards the plan to the State Government. The committee prepares and recommends the plan. It does not implement schemes.

Municipal Finance and the State Election Commission

The State Election Commission supervises, directs and controls the electoral rolls and all municipal elections (Article 243ZA). The State legislature controls the money. It may authorise a municipality to levy and collect taxes, duties, tolls and fees, assign State taxes to it, provide grants-in-aid from the Consolidated Fund of the State, and set up funds (Article 243X). The Finance Commission that the Governor constitutes under Article 243I at the end of every fifth year also reviews the finances of municipalities, and it recommends the principles for sharing State taxes, the taxes that can be assigned, grants-in-aid and measures to improve the financial position (Article 243Y). The Governor lays its recommendations with an explanatory memorandum before the State legislature.

The actual position is weak. Indian cities raise less than 0.6 per cent of GDP in own-source revenues, borrow negligibly and depend overwhelmingly on transfers. Property tax, the largest own-source revenue, is only about 0.15 per cent of GDP, against 0.3 to 0.6 per cent for low and middle-income countries on average. For most large Indian cities own-source revenue covers only 30 to 40 per cent of municipal spending, and below 20 per cent for smaller cities.

The Centre has added new financing tools. The Urban Infrastructure Development Fund was announced in the Union Budget 2023‑24 with an initial outlay of ₹10,000 crore as a revolving fund to support Tier‑2 and Tier‑3 cities, operated through the National Housing Bank. The Urban Challenge Fund of ₹1 lakh crore was announced in the Union Budget 2025‑26 as a performance-linked fund for cities as growth hubs, creative redevelopment, and water and sanitation.

Types of Urban Local Bodies and Who Runs the City

Eight types of urban local bodies exist in India. They are the municipal corporation, municipality, notified area committee, town area committee, cantonment board, township, port trust and special purpose agency.

• A municipal corporation serves a big city and is created by a State Act (or by an Act of Parliament in a Union territory). It has a council, standing committees and a commissioner. The council is headed by a mayor, who in most States is elected for a one-year renewable term and is largely a ceremonial head. The municipal commissioner, appointed by the State Government and generally an IAS officer, is the chief executive authority.
• A municipality serves towns and smaller cities. Its council is headed by a president or chairman, who, unlike the mayor of a corporation, is the pivot of municipal administration and holds executive powers.
• Cantonment boards are administered under the Ministry of Defence.

The constitutional framework operates inside a crowded field. Urban functions are split among urban local bodies, development authorities, State line departments and parastatal agencies, and land use, policing, utilities and cadre management stay with the State. Part IXA also does not apply to Scheduled Areas and tribal areas (Article 243ZC), and Article 243Q lets the Governor declare an industrial township, where no municipality needs to be constituted.

Why Urban Local Bodies Remain Weak

The 74th Amendment made municipalities constitutional, but it left key decisions to the States. What a city can do and spend depends on how much its State devolves. Cities are economically central but politically peripheral. In many cities, strategic coordination across transport, land, housing and economic development is shaped outside the municipal tier, and mayoral accountability works within a system where authority is shared across levels.

Four points explain the gap between the text and the practice.

• Functions: The Twelfth Schedule items are matters that the State legislature may entrust, not a list of guaranteed functions.
• Funds: Taxation and grants depend on State law, and own revenue is a small fraction of GDP.
• Functionaries: Commissioners are State appointees, while mayors in most States have a one-year term and a ceremonial role.
• Parallel bodies: Missions such as the Smart Cities Mission work through special purpose vehicles that sit beside the elected council.

Government Schemes and Missions for Urban India

From JNNURM to Today: A Timeline of Urban Missions

Central urban missions have changed from reform-linked grants to area-based renewal and service delivery. The Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM), launched in 2005, tied central money to city reforms and closed in 2014. The year 2015 then brought four missions at once, HRIDAY, the Smart Cities Mission, AMRUT and PMAY-Urban, and from 2021 the second phases of AMRUT, SBM-Urban and PMAY-Urban took over the service and housing work.

Smart Cities Mission: Design, Progress and Closure

The Smart Cities Mission was launched by the Prime Minister on 25 June 2015 to improve the quality of life in 100 cities through efficient services, strong infrastructure and sustainable solutions. It promoted cities that provide core infrastructure, a clean and sustainable environment and a decent quality of life through smart solutions, and it aimed at sustainable and inclusive development by creating replicable model areas that act as lighthouses for other cities.

The design has four parts.

• Area-based development: Each city chose a defined area for targeted intervention, through retrofitting, redevelopment or greenfield development, selected with citizen participation.
• Pan-city projects: Every city also included technology-driven solutions such as a public bicycle sharing system in Chandigarh.
• Special purpose vehicle: Each city implemented the mission through its own SPV.
• Selection: Cities were chosen through the Smart Cities Challenge, a countrywide competition, and the first round on 28 January 2016 selected 20 cities.

The record is mixed. As on 9 May 2025, 7,555 of 8,067 projects, which is 94 per cent, had been completed, worth ₹1,51,361 crore of a total of about ₹1.64 lakh crore, and all 100 cities had Integrated Command and Control Centres. The Union budget allocation was ₹47,652 crore, of which 99.44 per cent had been released by 31 March 2025. The original deadline of 2019 was revised to 2023, and the mission closed on 31 March 2025. The Comptroller and Auditor General found deficient financial administration, including unfeasible projects and diversion of funds.

Water, Sewerage and Sanitation Missions: AMRUT and SBM‑U

The Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) was launched in June 2015 to provide tap and sewer connections in 500 cities. By the time AMRUT 2.0 was approved, 1.1 crore household tap connections and 85 lakh sewer or septage connections had been given.

AMRUT 2.0, launched on 1 October 2021, ran for five years, from 2021‑22 to 2025‑26, with the aim of universal functional tap connections in all 4,378 statutory towns and 100 per cent sewerage and septage coverage in the 500 AMRUT cities, with a central share of ₹76,760 crore. It targeted 2.68 crore tap connections and 2.64 crore connections to sewers or septage systems. Its other features included the Pey Jal Survekshan, a city water balance plan, a 10 per cent public-private participation requirement for projects in cities above 10 lakh population, and recycled water to meet 20 per cent of demand.

The Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) began on 2 October 2014 to eliminate open defecation and improve solid waste management. SBM‑U 2.0 was launched on 1 October 2021 for 2021‑22 to 2025‑26 and aimed at garbage free status for all cities through 100 per cent source segregation, door-to-door collection and scientific management of all fractions of waste, including safe disposal in scientific landfills. Its estimated cost was ₹1,41,600 crore, with a Central share of ₹36,465 crore and the balance from beneficiaries, States, urban local bodies and private sector partners.

PMAY-Urban and PMAY-Urban 2.0: Housing

The Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana-Urban (PMAY‑U) was launched in June 2015 to provide all-weather pucca houses to eligible urban beneficiaries under the goal of housing for all by 2022. It targeted one crore urban houses by March 2022. Its verticals included a credit-linked interest subsidy. By August 2024, 1.18 crore houses were sanctioned, and more than 85.5 lakh had been built and delivered. As on 24 November 2025, a total of 122.06 lakh houses had been sanctioned across the two phases, of which 96.02 lakh had been completed or delivered.

The Union Cabinet approved PMAY‑U 2.0 on 9 August 2024 to help one crore urban poor and middle-class families build, buy or rent a house in five years, with Government assistance of ₹2.30 lakh crore and an investment of ₹10 lakh crore. Eligible families have no pucca house anywhere in the country, and annual income limits are up to ₹3 lakh for the economically weaker section, ₹3 lakh to ₹6 lakh for the low income group and ₹6 lakh to ₹9 lakh for the middle income group. Its verticals are Beneficiary-Led Construction, Affordable Housing in Partnership, Affordable Rental Housing and an Interest Subsidy Scheme.

Livelihood and Heritage: DAY‑NULM, PM SVANidhi and HRIDAY

The Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana-National Urban Livelihoods Mission (DAY‑NULM) aims to reduce poverty and vulnerability of urban poor households by giving access to self-employment and skilled wage employment, through strong grassroots institutions. One of its components is shelter for the urban homeless, and another supports urban street vendors.

PM SVANidhi was launched in June 2020 to help street vendors restart businesses after the pandemic. On 27 August 2025 the Union Cabinet approved its restructuring, raising the first loan to ₹15,000, the second to ₹25,000 and the third to ₹50,000, aiming to benefit 1.15 crore street vendors including 50 lakh new beneficiaries, with lending extended to 31 March 2030.

HRIDAY (National Heritage City Development and Augmentation Yojana) is a central sector scheme launched on 21 January 2015 and implemented in 12 cities, including Ajmer, Amritsar, Badami, Dwarka, Gaya and Varanasi. It ended on 31 March 2019, and no new cities or projects were taken up after that date.

Way Forward for Indian Cities

Planning Capacity, Finance and Governance Reform

Urban planning is the foundation for the integrated development of cities, citizens and the environment. A NITI Aayog report of September 2021 on urban planning capacity recommended that every city aspire to become a "Healthy City for All" by 2030, with a central sector scheme, the 500 Healthy Cities Programme, over five years. It found a shortage of town planners in State departments, and recommended filling vacancies, sanctioning 8,268 additional town planner posts for lateral hires of three to five years, a statutory National Council of Town and Country Planners, a review of the Town and Country Planning Acts and a citizen outreach campaign to demystify master plans.

The Economic Survey 2025‑26 treats cities as critical economic infrastructure and calls for reform in governance and finance. It points to the narrow own-source revenue base of cities, notes municipal bond issuance by a number of corporations, and contrasts Indian mayors with those of global cities, who control planning, land use and transport through unified metropolitan plans. It also points to compact growth, transit-oriented development around rapid-rail stations, parking policy as a way of managing private vehicle use, and nature-based, circular water and waste systems.

Rural-Urban Linkages and Inclusive Cities

Urban and rural settlements are linked through the exchange of goods and services, with villages sending food and raw materials to cities and receiving goods and services in return, and through the flow of migrants and remittances. Poverty and pressure on land in villages push migrants toward towns, so the quality of rural livelihoods affects the size of the urban housing problem. Affordable housing near jobs, services for the urban poor and livelihood support such as DAY‑NULM and PM SVANidhi complete the inclusive agenda.

Sources

• NCERT: India: People and Economy (Class XII), Chapter 2, Human Settlements
• NCERT: India: People and Economy (Class XII), Chapter 9, Geographical Perspective on Selected Issues and Problems
• NCERT: India: People and Economy (Class XII), Chapter 1, Population
• Legislative Department: Constitution of India, Part IXA and Twelfth Schedule
• Ministry of Finance: Economic Survey 2025‑26, Chapter 15, Urbanisation
• PIB: States asked to convert 3,784 urban areas into statutory Urban Local Bodies, 17 May 2016
• PIB: 10 Years of Smart Cities Mission, 24 June 2025
• Prime Minister's Office: Cabinet approves AMRUT 2.0
• PIB: AMRUT 2.0, 31 March 2022
• PIB: Cabinet approves PMAY-Urban 2.0, 9 August 2024
• PIB: Garbage Free Cities under SBM‑U 2.0
• PIB: Restructured PM SVANidhi
• PIB: DAY‑NULM, Lok Sabha reply
• PIB: HRIDAY
• PIB: NITI Aayog report on urban planning capacity, 16 September 2021
• Lok Sabha: Unstarred Question 1847, Urban Flood Management in Metropolitan Cities, 30 July 2026
• Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs: Standard Operating Procedure, Urban Flooding
• NDMA: National Disaster Management Guidelines, Management of Floods
• UN DESA: World Urbanization Prospects 2018, press release
• Wikipedia: 2011 Census of India
• Wikipedia: Census town
• Wikipedia: List of million-plus urban agglomerations in India
• Wikipedia: Urbanisation in India
• Wikipedia: Slum clearance in India
• Wikipedia: Urban heat island
• Wikipedia: 2005 Maharashtra floods
• Wikipedia: 2015 South India floods
• Wikipedia: Smart Cities Mission
• Wikipedia: Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana
• Wikipedia: Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission
• Wikipedia: Swachh Bharat Mission
• UPSC: Civil Services Examination question papers