JNNURM was one of
India’s prestigious and ambitious programmes aiming at the development of
infrastructure related activities in urban areas mostly related to drinking
water, sanitation, housing and also other service / governance related issues
with expected outlay of Rs. 66000 Crores over a period of 5 years. The JNNURM
programme succeeded in providing much required financial assistance to needy
ULBs / Corporations who were either not financially stable or could not take up
such works due to other local priorities including lack of political vision to
take up schemes of drinking water and sanitation , housing for poor, waste
management schemes etc and in many of the States these programmes were
implemented with desired results. Gujarat,
Maharashtra, Tamilnadu, Chandigarh etc were few states where by and large the
sanctioned projects were completed with success. Another big achievement of the
project is implementation of various reforms in the ULBs relating to tax,
e-governance, town planning regulations, property tax, citizen services,
financial management of the ULBs which have helped considerably to make ULB
financially strong and independence and also efficient in the cases of service
deliveries thereby assisted to fulfill the objectives enshrined in 74th Constitutional amendment.
However this
prestigious and ambitious programme could not fulfill the required targets not
only in utilization of allocated funds by the State Governments apart from other
shortcomings which ultimately deprived the Citizens of required
provisions/outcome envisaged under objectives of the scheme. Few reasons
responsible for this failure are summarized as under.
1. Lack of
Participation of Communities/Stakeholders: The main reason
which affected housing scheme most was lack of participation of the communities
while planning and implementing programmes. In most of the cases, the projects
were prepared based on political then social needs and grounded. In many of the
housing projects whether it was selection of housing sites or allotment of
houses to the needy, no due care was taken to involve the beneficiaries in
programmes resulting either completion of not much desired projects or non
occupation of beneficiaries causing huge waste of money. Apart from this, reluctance
of slum dwellers to shift in case of in-situ development of project and
availability of encumbrance-free land also posed a major challenge to the
States to expedite the housing projects especially under BSUP sub-mission where
it was meant to improve conditions for urban slum dwellers in 63 identified
mission cities in 31 States and UTs for 479 projects.
2.
Lack of political
support for housing and slum development projects: The role of local
representatives to motivate and facilitate the negotiations for housing related
projects is very crucial to make or mar the progress of any government scheme
however in many of the ULBs this active role of local representatives was found
missing in housing related projects like
Basic Services for the Urban Poor (BSUP) scheme and Integrated Housing and Slum
Development Programme (IHDSP).
3. Lack of capacity and
expertise of local officials: Many of the projects specially related to SWM(Solid
Waste Management), water supply and sanitation were implemented adopting latest
technologies however these were not put to its maximum use only because either
the local officials responsible for implementing the projects were professionally
ill equipped due to lack of required knowledge or they were not professionally
experienced enough and committed too .
4. Non involvement of
Administrators: May be sound awkward but it is also one of the reasons
that most of the Administrators at Government level or Commissioners at ULB/
Corporations level were not fully involved in timely completion of projects .
There role was limited to sanction the projects or at most completion of
agreement with contactors. Most of them have left the completion of projects
with lower level engineers.
5. Lack of planning : Many of the
projects especially those related to availability of land became victim of this
factor. Most of the State Governments got the projects sanctioned without
examining the issue of areas of land and its availability at the time of
execution of project which became a serious factor later on causing delay and
even partial closure of projects because of non availability of land.
6. Adoption of
technology without examining the local acceptance and ensuring the
post project maintenance by ULBs.
7.
Corruption: One of the major
reasons though not acknowledged ,was the corruption at all levels while
implementing the projects. Right form selection of projects, preparation of
Project report and selection of bidder / Contractor to making payment,
prevailing corruption has affected the
completion of project or sub-standard completion of schemes.
8. Apathy of State
Governments to provide matching State
share: The state governments were to bear a portion of the cost
of the project depending upon the sector or size of the city. The general
principle being ' smaller the ULB, higher the govt support'. But in
practice, the state governments conveniently avoided this commitment or simply
put it on paper without releasing the money.
9. No scope for
Coordination among other related department ( Lack of Integrated approach ): All the programmes
undertaken under JNNURM were not related to single department but were in fact
the core areas of other sister departments like Panchayat Raj, health, Housing,
IT, Women development, Education etc but while planning or during implementation there was
no mechanism made available to ensure their cooperation and coordination . The
irony was that even at Central Government level this coordination was found
missing leave the State Government and District administration. This single
line of implementation with lack of convergence also affected the success of
the programme.
10. Incapability of Small and medium towns to provide required financial resources and
also difficulty to take up requisite reforms has also resulted into non
completion of projects or delay in grounding of scheme. Apart from this in many
of the States the share of ULBs which was supposed to be given by the ULBs only
duly taking up necessary reforms meant for achieving self sufficiency of the
ULB were not allowed to happen and the State Govt also bore the Share of ULBs
thereby defeating the objective of financial stability /self sustainability.
This has also deprived the ULBs of facing the challenge of mobilizing resources . In
many cases the sanctioned projects were
considered as a free gift from
the Government.
11. Diversion of funds: In many of the ULBs the funds meant for
sanctioned projects were diverted either due to non-starting of project or some
time to make payments for other schemes or activities in the ULBs. Even in many
of the States, the State Level Nodal Agency (SLNA) failed to follow the
guidelines of the mission while releasing money to the implementing ULBs/ Govt
departments under pressure from administrative / political quarters.
12. Poor monitoring of the projects by ministry
of Urban development: Though the ministry has introduced a web enabled programme for
monitoring of various components of all 4 sub missions and also to ensure
monitoring at regular interval to provide a helping hand for policy makers and
senior managers at State and Central levels, this was failed miserably due to
poor architecture and lack of initiative to continue and improve the monitoring
programme.
13. Putting difficult targets or objectives under
Reforms: Many of
the reforms proposed under the mission were found to be unrealistic and
completion of these reforms was made one of the criteria for release of balance
funds. The best example of this is Property title registration which could not
be achieved by any of the ULBs because of lack of support from political and
bureaucratic quarters due to obvious reasons. Similarly the revision of
building bye laws proposed for revision by 2011 was not implemented by ULBs. Finally
the "one
size fits all" approach to reform
adopted under JNNURM-I,
witnessed significant inter-state
variations in completion of reforms and this has indirectly affected / delayed
the release of balance installments of funds for different projects.
14. Least concern of accountability and failure
to win the confidence of Citizens: The concerned ULBs and para-statal agencies lacked the required will
and also their accountability towards citizens to provide them various
services.
15. Putting the cart before the horse : The other factor which can also be
considered responsible for affecting the success of programme was non
consideration of local needs and socio-political environments which are very
diverse in a multiparty system like
India. Though the mission objectives were very high but many of the
schemes/ projects envisaged under mission were imposed on the State Governments
without properly examining the local conditions and needs/priorities.
16. Delay in getting departmental permissions: In many of the infrastructure projects and Under Ground
Drainages (UGD) the delay from the other departments like railways ( for
completing works near railway track / under railway track ), National Highways ( for getting
permission to work under their jurisdiction), Military organizations (works
in Military areas) etc caused considerable
delay affecting the progress.
17. Encroachment problem: One of the biggest problems to take up
housing or other developmental works under UGD or UIDSSMT (like side drains,
water supply line, BRTS route etc) was
of encroachment in the Cities/ Towns which not only hampered the progress but
many times forced the Authorities to change the alignment or even cancel the
project.
In nutshell we can say that though the JNNURM programme was having ambitious
objectives but failed to deliver mainly
due to mismatch among planning and expectations of people. It aimed at
involving all the three tiers of govt, the central, state and local but the
connecting thread found to be missing. Each of the stakeholders acted in their
own silos and this not only delayed projected outcomes, but also wasted the
resources.
The new Government is likely to replace
JNNURM with a fresh mandate to build 100 SMART cities based on
latest technologies (GIS) and focus on infrastructure, better connectivity ,
better governance and safe environment.
