Prime Minister Narendra Modi is India's first Prime Minister elected primarily as an urban icon. Previous Prime Ministers were typically senior party figures, bearers of family legacies, or consensus appointees in coalition governments. Modi, however, campaigned for a prosperous, confident, and unapologetically nationalist India, resonating deeply with the self-made, newly prosperous voters whose numbers have grown significantly since 2014 and will continue to dominate Indian politics in the foreseeable future.
Urban India has since developed a profound, enduring admiration for Prime Minister Modi. He symbolizes India’s aspirations, embodying national pride, ambition, and the desire for global recognition. Indian cities have consistently supported Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), remaining loyal through various political landscapes.
Now in his third term, Modi has an unprecedented opportunity to establish a lasting institutional legacy by transforming Indian cities into world-class urban centers. TerraCogent Insights previously explored the economic justification for such transformation. This article discusses the political rationale and envisions what urban transformation could mean for India.
The Significance of an Institutional Legacy
Creating an institutional legacy beyond PM Modi’s personal achievements is crucial. Already recognized as the most consequential leader of India’s nation-building project, Modi’s legacy could be further amplified by a transformative urban agenda.
His towering political achievements make him the perfect candidate for being remembered as the Nietzsche’s “thinker or artist whose better self has fled into his works." The urban transformation will ensure his vision and accomplishments resonate well beyond the current generation.
His first two terms revolutionized intercity and interstate infrastructure, resulting in impressive highways, advanced trains, state-of-the-art airports, and robust bridges nationwide. Most people might see pictures of such projects and read the user testimonials on social media. However, such projects aren’t experienced daily by most citizens, who primarily reside within limited urban environments. And hence the compelling case for picking urban transformation as a critical focus area.
Resource Provisioning & the Shift to Urban Transformation
When considering government capital expenditure, India has transitioned from a challenge of budget constraints to a shortage of transformative ideas. In 2014, India could not build essential infrastructure due to insufficient resources. By 2020, resources became available, yet infrastructure development lagged due to limited execution capabilities. Now, in 2025, the government acknowledges ample resources, execution capability, and demonstrated economic absorptive capacity—but innovative ideas remain elusive.
To clarify, it is not that the central government has unlimited financial resources. Rather, the current level of central capital expenditure appears sufficient to meet national requirements.
According to Sajid Chinoy of JP Morgan, India has already reached "peak capex".
This is a fascinating evolution of India’s perspective on what productive assets should the government invest in. Enter urban transformation.
Full Throttle on Urbanization
Indian economic growth will inevitably stem from rapid urbanization—a fact undisputed by policymakers of any political or ideological background. Yet, should our cities appear the same at $3,000 per capita as they will at $15,000?
Thus far, our cities have expanded reactively to economic demands rather than through deliberate planning. As India's population stabilizes and economic growth transitions from labor-intensive to productivity-driven, our cities must become livable, matching the standards of their global counterparts. With an anticipated expatriate workforce arriving in the next two to three decades, planning now to attract top global talent to India is imperative.
Idea Slate 1
The central government can launch an urban transformation agenda for India’s top 50 cities, focusing on three core areas:
Efficient urban mobility
Clean neighborhoods
Improved air quality
Focusing exclusively on these priorities, diverse projects can be initiated in the top 50 cities over the next 5 to 10 years. While each city will have unique requirements, the central government could standardize an "ideas package" comprising five primary themes:
Cleanliness: Implementing advanced sewage treatment systems achieving 100% processing.
Drainage Infrastructure: Constructing comprehensive underground drainage tunnels for effective rainwater management and flood prevention.
Urban Mobility: Upgrading city roads to ensure durability and quality for at least 20 years.
Metro Connectivity: Establishing a minimum 300 km metro network extending to suburban regions.
Air Quality: Setting achievable pollution control goals, maintaining annual PM2.5 levels below 50 for at least 100 days.
These solutions draw on successful global experiences, setting the minimum standard needed for India's urban areas to match international benchmarks.
The central government can champion this "ideas package" by emphasizing outcome-oriented objectives, strategically sequencing city selection to align with political and electoral considerations. The additional budgetary borrowing that the central government has been facilitating in the last few years against relaxed fiscal responsibility and budgetary management targets can be used for these projects. Concurrently, state governments could adapt and implement localized versions of this package to address their unique urban issues effectively.
Idea Slate 2
The central government can strategically select urban clusters with populations between half a million and one million to develop into “model urban clusters.” Although entirely new greenfield cities might not always be feasible, this initiative closely replicates such an approach by transforming existing brownfield cities using greenfield development principles. Thus, it best suits locations that have not yet experienced intensive urban growth but show strong potential for near- to medium-term expansion.
Each selected urban cluster should be proactively planned to support anticipated economic growth, population influx, and industrial expansion, effectively preventing the typical urban stresses seen in many Indian cities over recent decades.
A standardized “ideas package” for this initiative should emphasize meticulous urban planning, architectural design, and efficient traffic management. Fundamental measures like clearly marked road lanes, disciplined traffic flows, defined public and private spaces free from encroachment, and technology-driven governance coupled with behavioral reforms could significantly improve urban livability.
Ideal candidates for these model clusters would be emerging industrial cities along the Delhi-Mumbai Expressway or those designated as Purpose-Specific Industrial Smart Cities by the central government. Gift City in Gandhinagar offers a practical example, showcasing transformative potential through proactive, ground-up planning.
By establishing such model clusters every five years, focusing particularly on efficient traffic management and behavioral adherence to regulations, these cities could serve as benchmarks, inspiring other regions nationwide to replicate their success.
Idea Slate 3
The central government can challenge state governments of India's eight largest cities—Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Chennai, Ahmedabad, and Pune—to rapidly elevate these metropolitan areas to global standards. While Idea Slate 1 remains applicable to these cities, this additional initiative would specifically address the unique governance and administrative challenges inherent in India's legislative framework.
Unlike Western urban governance structures, India’s cities are unlikely to adopt empowered, elected mayors soon due to the constraints of India's established three-tier governance system. Indian cities traditionally serve as political power bases, making state governments resistant to empowering independent municipal leadership. Similarly, central oversight through designating these cities as union territories is politically costly and impractical.
Therefore, the central government could adopt an alternative approach: encouraging state Chief Ministers to actively participate in PM Modi's legacy by personally championing urban projects. Chief Ministers could be tasked to spearhead transformative projects directly, ensuring focused oversight without delegating to subordinate political operatives. The central government would provide funding, technical expertise, and execution support once projects are clearly defined, designed, and agreed upon.
This model would enable Chief Ministers to contribute to a shared legacy without creating rival political centers, facilitating smoother implementation and robust urban development.
Execution Model
The primary challenge of implementing such an ambitious urban transformation lies in ensuring predictable, reliable, efficient, high-quality, and future-proof execution. Indian states generally have limited execution capabilities, often overwhelmed by daily administrative challenges. Political, administrative, and domain expertise at the local level is constrained, with systems focused more on maintaining status quo rather than initiating transformative change. Past experiences, such as the Smart Cities initiative announced in 2016, illustrate these limitations. Municipal corporations, tasked with execution, struggled significantly due to their inexperience handling complex projects, with sudden substantial funding allocations often leading to administrative paralysis.
Thus, central government oversight is crucial to ensure project success, which must be non-negotiable, with high stakes for failure. This necessitates structural adjustments within India's federal framework. Execution of each project or sub-project should occur through a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV), involving equity stakes from central, state, and local governments, although primary funding would predominantly come from the central government.
Each SPV should be managed by a Chief Executive Officer (CEO), appointed by the central government, who could be a bureaucrat, politician, or experienced private-sector professional. The CEO must effectively navigate the diverse, often conflicting interests of stakeholders, including IAS officers, politicians, and private-sector experts. To mitigate friction, state governments should participate in nominating potential CEO candidates, ensuring shared responsibility and commitment to project success.
Crucially, all SPVs should report directly to the Prime Minister’s Office, with their progress monitored via the PRAGATI platform and implemented transparently through the PM GatiShakti platform. This approach can also extend the revolutionary GatiShakti platform to private-sector entities involved in project execution. Ensuring accountability at both central and state executive levels will greatly enhance the likelihood of success. Ultimately, the greatest hurdle to overcome will be eliminating systemic inefficiencies and bureaucratic inertia that often hinder effective governance in India.
History as Motivation
The good news amidst these ambitious expectations is that history is on India's side. Today, India's per capita income stands around $3,000. Although our urban areas currently appear chaotic, similar conditions prevailed in major cities of countries like the United States and the United Kingdom when their per capita incomes were at comparable levels.
The United States reached a per capita income of $3,000 in the 1920s, an economically turbulent decade heavily influenced by the global aftermath of World War I, which strained governmental resources and led to economic instability, eventually culminating in a recession. The bustling yet disorderly streets of 1925 New York City closely resemble urban scenes in modern-day India.
New York in 1925 Source: history101.nyc
Similarly, the United Kingdom attained the $3,000 per capita income level in the 1950s, a tumultuous era marked by rapid decolonization and severe pressures on the Pound Sterling, causing macroeconomic turmoil. London's Portobello Road during this period, characterized by smog, chaotic traffic, and pedestrian congestion, mirrors present-day Mumbai's crowded streets.
China reached this economic milestone around 2008, coinciding with its prominent international showcase, the Beijing Olympics. To manage severe pollution and congestion issues, China temporarily shut down factories and coal-fired power plants, imposed stringent traffic regulations, utilized cloud seeding to control weather conditions, and halted construction activities. By 2013, Beijing's pollution levels had reached a critical point, prompting a robust Air Pollution Action Plan in 2014, resulting in significant air quality improvements by 2017.
Thus, the urban transformation strategies proposed for India are neither unprecedented nor insurmountable. However, careful contextual adaptation is crucial, emphasizing the necessity for top-down conceptualization and decisive implementation.
Why PM Modi's legacy?
Addressing India's urban decay poses a complex challenge requiring visionary leadership and comprehensive re-imagination—qualities rarely demonstrated by Indian political leaders historically. The question of why Prime Minister Modi should shoulder this responsibility answers itself: If not Modi, then who else?
Urban decay in India has become deeply entrenched and complex, demanding a creative and visionary approach that few politicians have exhibited thus far. Prime Minister Modi has already embraced the responsibility of reversing numerous long-standing systemic problems, and tackling urban decay represents another significant challenge perfectly suited to his leadership and capabilities. If not addressed decisively within the next decade, India's cities risk irreversible decline, underscoring the urgency and necessity of Modi's personal leadership in driving this transformative urban agenda.
Bhagavad-Gita, India’s foremost text on Purusharth, states (3:21)
यद्यदाचरति श्रेष्ठस्तत्तदेवेतरो जन: |
यत्प्रमाणं कुरुते लोकस्तदनुवर्तते ||
This verse translates to – “Whatever action a great man performs, common men follow. And whatever standards he sets by exemplary acts, all the world pursues.”
By the time India morphs into Viksit Bharat, Indian cities have an opportunity to add livability to their legendary hospitality, rich history and unmatched empathy. They are waiting to be “Modified”.
Comments