The panel discussion on IMPRI’s 6th Annual Series of Thematic Deliberations and Analysis of Budget 2025-2026 on Cities, Local Governance, and the Union Budget 2025-26. Organized by the Center for Habitat, Urban and Regional Studies (CHURS) at the IMPR, Impact and Policy Research Institute, New Delhi.
The IMPRI Center for Habitat, Urban and Regional Studies (CHURS), IMPRI Impact and Policy Research Institute, New Delhi, hosted an engaging panel discussion on “Cities, Local Governance, and Union Budget 2025–26” on February 5, 2025, at 6:30 p.m. IST, as part of IMPRI’s 6th Annual Series of Thematic Deliberations and Analysis of the Union Budget. This session brought together leading policymakers, urban experts, and academics to examine the implications of the Union Budget on urban development, governance, and sustainability in India, offering key insights and recommendations for future urban policy reforms.
Almost a decade has passed since the Indian government announced the concept of “smart cities” as the new lighthouses of urbanisation. The June 2015 announcement of 100 smart cities aimed to create models of urban development. However, these lighthouses of urbanity have now been relegated to the annals of India’s urbanisation history.
Indian federalism, multilevel in its functioning, is based normatively on the principle of subsidiarity, which essentially means that the authority needs to be invested at the lowest possible level of institutional hierarchy. The subsidiarity principle seeks decentralisation and asserts, to deepen democracy, that the local levels, in relation to the central governments, must be ensured with some degree of functional independence and agency. The architecture of power distribution in the Indian Constitution indicates, more in spirit than in letter, that power must travel from Rajpath (the ruler’s site) to Janpath (where common people tread), down to gram sabhas, which is the real repository of people’s power.
Since 2014, under Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), India’s socio-political discourse has shifted to the right, driven by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s (RSS’s) ideology. The unprecedented moves like the triple talaq ban, Article 370 revocation, Citizenship Amendment Act-National Register of Citizens (CAA-NRC) legislation, and the Ram Janmabhoomi project reflect this shift, enabled by capturing institutions, media, judiciary, and public imagination.
Moving beyond its established role as a socio-political-cultural ideology with core philosophy of othering of those not belonging to the wider Hindu fold, Hindutva’s new phase is now possibly shaping cities and the urban lived environment, as a site for demonstrating ideology – socially, culturally and spatially. The targeted demolition of homes of Muslims as an act of collective punishment, and the recent cases of staged violence including at Sambhal mosque are only facets of a broader, emerging urban manifestation of the Hindutva ideology.
The Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT), launched in 2015 by the Government of India, marked a significant step towards addressing urban infrastructure challenges
The "National Heritage City Development and Augmentation Yojana" (HRIDAY), initiated on January 21, 2015, by the Ministry of Tourism, marked a watershed moment in India's urban planning and heritage conservation.