JNNURM as a Window on Urban Governance

Owing to its scope, the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission is an excellent window for understanding the evolution of urban governance in India, despite its closing in 2014. The JNNURM’s aspirations were belied by its realities of progressive centralisation, degraded local capacities, commercially-oriented infrastructure development, and intercity and intra-city inequalities. We identify and discuss three signatures that shaped its conceptualisation, operationalisation, and outcomes: flexible networks of policy actors and advisors; mobile policy ideas, best practices, and norms; and the pervasive role of consultancies. These signatures appear to endure, to varying degrees, in new urban programmes, with potentially far-reaching ramifications for urban governance.