Shimla still carries the storybook charm of the “Queen of Hills” — its winding lanes shaded by deodar trees, ridge views worthy of postcards and a colonial legacy that tourists flock to year after year.
Urban India generates nearly two-thirds of the national GDP, yet its municipalities control less than one per cent of the country’s tax revenue. Indian cities are not generating revenue, not because they are inefficient, but because the fiscal architecture has failed them. Today, municipal finance is dependent on intergovernmental transfers, loans, and schemes. The core of the problem lies in the centralisation of taxation powers.
Kerala is a tapestry of villages rippling into towns, of backwaters, and midlands and highlands woven together in a living continuum. Capital cities and hamlets bleed into each other, forming a unique "rurban landscape.
It is the season of digital spectacle. From Smart Cities to the National Urban Digital Mission (NUDM), the Union government never misses an opportunity to announce a grand plan for “transforming urban India.” Glossy dashboards, artificial intelligence claims, and billion-dollar contracts are flaunted as if technology alone can rescue India’s cities.
On July 9, 2025, Gurugram – a city waterlogged by floodwaters – witnessed severe inundation that crippled traffic and claimed lives. In the days that followed, other major cities such as Delhi, Chandigarh, Jaipur, and Lucknow faced similar scenes of urban flooding, exposing the vulnerability of Indian cities to monsoon extremes.
It began as a heavy rain, the kind that Himachal Pradesh has seen before. But by the night of June 28, it became clear that this was no ordinary monsoon rain. Cloudbursts over the upper reaches of the Beas basin triggered a chain reaction — landslides, glacial run-off, river swelling, and catastrophic flooding.