If the nation is to actualise the aspirational dream of “Viksit Bharat" by 2047, it will need transformative changes in many realms, none more important than rebooting and reimagining urban India on multidimensional metrics of liveability, inclusivity, sustainability, world-class infrastructure, and a robust democratic urban governance architecture built on trust and accountability to citizens.

The Salience

Making the above happen assumes much greater salience owing to three primary reasons:

Road Untravelled

The road ahead is untravelled and full not only of plentiful thorns but also of impenetrable mountains and unbridgeable valleys. To traverse it will require embarking immediately on a nationwide “Viksit Bharat Festival" for at least the next 25 years, 365 days a year, not only 24×7 but every nanosecond—and even then, it will remain only a work in progress.

It will require resolute national conviction, complete ownership at the apex level of governance—central, state, and city—an unprecedented level of policy transformation, programme and project conceptualisation, within-cost and ahead-of-time completion, and laser-focussed attention at the level of every stakeholder.

Bharat will have to rewrite the history of the way India has developed in past decades. Bharat—it is time for action. The clock started ticking yesterday. And there is no template from the past to guide us.

But how do we get there?

The Initiative

In an endeavour to aid in making “the impossible become possible," News18, as a responsible member of the Fourth Estate, is embarking on the difficult journey of a weekly series on both sectoral and city-specific challenges and actionable pathways to achieve the unachievable.

When the task is so onerous, I must begin with Nepathya—the curtain raiser.

The Curtain Raiser

The subject that automatically selects itself as the “Curtain Raiser" is the urgent need to reboot and recreate a robust “urban governance architecture" in the country that can rise to the level of the task ahead.

But why recreate? The one-line answer is: it has comprehensively broken down and is beyond repair or refixing. And if we cannot have a robust, people-driven urban governance architecture, it is futile even to dream of making “Bharat Viksit."

Broken Down Rule of Law

I must begin with the judgement passed on 10 May 2022 by the Supreme Court of India bench led by Justice A.M. Khanwilkar. Noting that years of delay in conducting elections for local bodies “borders on the breakdown of the rule of law," their Lordships passed the following judgement: “State Election Commissions across the country cannot skip their constitutional obligation to conduct polls to local bodies every five years."

The Supreme Court further held: “Ongoing activity of delimitation or formation of wards cannot be a legitimate ground to be set forth by any authority, much less the State Election Commission, to not discharge its constitutional obligation in notifying the election programme at the opportune time and to ensure that the elected body is installed before the expiry of the five-year term of the outgoing elected body."

This judgement, applicable nationwide, followed the court’s finding that, besides a staggering 23,000 rural local bodies, polls had not been held in 321 urban local bodies in Madhya Pradesh for more than two years since 2019–2020.

I will soon return to the prevailing situation. Suffice to say for now that the Supreme Court is being disregarded by all state governments, plunging the nation into the throes of complete constitutional breakdown with no solution in sight.

Why Local Self-Governance?

As per the United Nations Population Prospects, with 1.46 billion people in 2025, India has dethroned China as the most populous country in the........

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