An overview of the AMRUT scheme

May 30, 2024

India is rapidly urbanizing, which is causing a big change in the country’s population. By 2047, it is expected that over half of the people will live in cities. It’s important to make big investments, says the World Bank. They say that basic urban infrastructure needs will cost about $840 billion over the next 15 years.

Introduction to the AMRUT Scheme

The NDA-1 government started the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) in June 2015 to deal with important building problems in cities. The main goal is to improve city life by providing better water and sewer connections, making public areas greener, and encouraging environmentally friendly ways to get around. AMRUT includes cities and towns with more than 100,000 people. The first part of the mission cost ₹50,000 crore and lasted for five years, ending in 2020.

Expansion under AMRUT 2.0

Building on AMRUT 1.0, which came out in October 2021, AMRUT 2.0 is more focused on making towns “water secure.” The new spending plan calls for ₹2,99,000 crore over the next five years. A lot of this money will go toward managing all sewage and making sure that all urban areas have working tap connections. Up to May 2024, ₹83,357 crore had been spent on the updated goal to improve urban services and infrastructure in a big way.

Challenges and Realities

Even though a lot of money has been spent and infrastructure has been improved, India’s cities are still having serious problems with water and sewage. Every year, bad water quality and hygiene cause a lot of deaths and a lot of diseases. Major cities are rapidly losing their groundwater supplies, and a lot of people in cities don’t have access to running water or good toilets. The problem is made even harder by the damage to the environment that happens because of bad planning.

Critique of the AMRUT Approach

People have said that AMRUT’s implementation was flawed because it was managed from the top down, there wasn’t a big-picture plan, and city governments weren’t involved enough. The plan is run by bureaucrats and private interests, and local elected representatives are often left out of the governance structure. This goes against the 74th Constitutional Amendment’s goals of decentralization and more local government. Also, the way water and garbage are usually managed doesn’t take local environmental conditions into account, and real estate gains often take precedence over urban planning, which makes urban sprawl and environmental problems worse.

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