PURA and JNNURM: India’s Rural and Urban Development Strategies

PURA: bring the city to the village

• PURA stands for Provision of Urban Amenities in Rural Areas.
• Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam proposed it while he was President.
• The goal is urban-quality facilities in villages, so people need not migrate.
• PURA rests on three links: physical, electronic and knowledge connectivity. Together they build a fourth: economic connectivity.
• The Ministry of Rural Development ran a pilot in seven clusters. See Wikipedia on PURA.

JNNURM: make the city stronger

• JNNURM was launched on 3 December 2005.
• It funded infrastructure and services in major cities.
• It had sub-missions for big cities and for small and medium towns.
• Later missions, Smart Cities and AMRUT, replaced it. See Wikipedia on JNNURM.

Inside JNNURM

• It had two parts for cities: Urban Infrastructure and Governance (63 mission cities) and a scheme for small and medium towns.
• Two other parts served the urban poor: Basic Services to the Urban Poor, and the Integrated Housing and Slum Development Programme.
• Funds were linked to reforms, such as better property tax, e-governance and giving local bodies more powers under the 74th Amendment.
• Cities had to prepare City Development Plans to qualify.
• Critics said weak local bodies could not use money well, and many projects ran late.
• The Rajiv Awas Yojana (2011) later aimed at a slum-free India.

Where PURA came from

• Kalam spoke of PURA in his Independence Day address in 2003.
• He saw villages as a base for growth, not as places to leave.
• The idea was to link roads, power, telecom and markets across a cluster of villages.

Clusters, not single villages

• PURA groups nearby villages into one cluster.
• A cluster can share a school, a clinic, roads and markets.
• Sharing makes a good facility affordable for small villages.
• Development in one place spreads to its neighbours.
• Private firms were expected to run some services in a PURA cluster. This was a public–private model.
• Pilots showed real gaps in funding and running costs.
• Planners also worried that clusters could end up as small towns without strong local jobs.

• The two ran side by side. Neither replaced the other.

From PURA to Rurban

• The Shyama Prasad Mukherji Rurban Mission was launched on 21 February 2016.
• It is a distinct, later programme. It is not PURA renamed.
• It targets 300 Rurban clusters of villages. Source: PIB explainer, February 2023.
• Each cluster is a group of 15–20 villages, with 25,000 to 50,000 people in plain areas.

Related reading

• The next urban missions: Smart Cities and AMRUT and PMAY (Urban) and Swachh Bharat Mission (Urban).
• The pull of cities: why big cities attract migrants.