
For cities to develop it is essential that decision-making power is given to the local administration — holistic and sustainable city-specific development cannot happen in a top-down approach where the Centre or state decides.
A prerequisite for development is uniformity in the governance structures from top to bottom. This is what Prime Minister Narendra Modi said while inaugurating a metro project in Mumbai on January 19. He called upon the people of Mumbai to vote for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the municipal corporation elections, which are long overdue. He exhorted that the ‘triple engine’ governance model — the Centre, the state, and the Mumbai corporation — should be run directly or in partnership with the BJP for the development in the metro city.
Under the series, The State of Gender Equality– #Gender Gaps, Gender Impact Studies Center (GISC), IMPRI Impact and Policy Research Institute, New Delhi organized #WebPolicyTalk on the topic The State of Discrimination: Sub-National Comparison of Legal Barriers to Women’s Right to Choose Work in India with Bhuvana Anand on July 1, 2022. Ms Bhuvana Anand is the Co-Founder and Director at Trayas. The session was chaired by Prof Vibhuti Patel, a Visiting Professor at IMPRI & Former Professor at Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai.
As part of its series, The State of Cities – #CityConversations, #IMPRI Center for Habitat, Urban and Regional Studies (CHURS), IMPRI Impact and Policy Research Institute, New Delhi, organized a panel discussion under IMPRI #WebPolicyTalk on the topic Municipal Legislative' Reform' through the Lens of Politics and Techno-Bureaucratic Processes on March 23, 2022 with Mr Vinay Baindur, Researcher and Activist, Urban Reforms, Governance, Water Reforms, and Policy, as the speaker.

The Supreme Court ruling holding the decisions of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council to be recommendatory, rather than binding on the Centre and the states, and that these nodes of federal power can legislate on subjects falling within their domain, brings welcome clarity on the tax. It does not undermine GST or undo the intent and purpose of the Constitution’s 101st Amendment that brought in GST. It strengthens India’s federal structure. The only damage the ruling does is to the boast that GST means one nation, one tax — in any case, GST already has seven percentage rates: 0, 3 (on gold), 5, 12, 18, 28 and 28 plus sin-good-cess.
On behalf of the Center for Habitat, Urban and Regional Studies (CHURS), IMPRI Impact and Policy Research Institue, New Delhi and Indrastra Global organized a session under the series The State of Finances of Cities – #CityConversations with Dr Soumyadip Chattopadhyay, Associate Professor, Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan and Senior Fellow, IMPRI. The cogitation done on October 15th, 2020 was part of the #WebPolicyTalk with Dr Ravikant Joshi, Advisor, Urban Management Centre, Ahmedabad and Former Chief Accounts Officer, Vadodara Municipal Corporation.

The recent elections to the city governments, called the urban local bodies, in a few states like Tamil Nadu, Odisha, West Bengal etc., have proven one fact hard and straight- the city governments are no more than adjuncts of the state governments.
Jyotsna Jha The Budget entirely depends on infrastructure and increased public capital investment to seek to boost private investment ‘Making our rich poorer is not going to solve the issue of inequality is an often-heard response to any suggestion to…