"The 74th Constitutional Amendment promised devolution to urban local bodies, but three decades later, the promise remains largely unfulfilled."* Examine the structural reasons and suggest reforms needed for effective urban governance in India. *

The 74th Amendment (1992), effective 1 June 1993, inserted Part IXA (Articles 243P–243ZG) and the Twelfth Schedule listing 18 municipal functions [1]. Yet devolution stayed formal rather than real: cities generate about 60% of GDP on just 3% of land [2], but their governments remain the weakest tier of Indian federalism.

Structural reasons for unfulfilled devolution

• Functional incompleteness: transfer of the 18 Twelfth Schedule functions is left to State discretion [1]; most States retain water, planning and sanitation with parastatals, leaving mayors responsible without authority.
• Fiscal dependence: municipal own-source revenue is thin, with property tax — the single largest local base — severely underexploited; the 15th Finance Commission had to make grants conditional on States notifying property tax floor rates and improving collection [3].
• Planning vacuum: Metropolitan and District Planning Committees (Articles 243ZE, 243ZD), the constitutional device for integrated city-region planning, are largely non-functional [1].
• Scheme-driven verticals: national missions run as sectoral silos — AMRUT 2.0 for tap water and sewerage in 4,378 statutory towns [4], SBM-U 2.0 for waste, PMAY-U 2.0 for housing — so ULBs execute Centre-designed projects instead of setting local priorities.
• Capacity deficit: shortage of urban planners, engineers and finance staff; the outdated HPEC (2011) baseline, projecting only to 2031, still anchors investment decisions.

Reforms for effective urban governance

• Enact State activity-mapping laws fixing which function, fund and functionary sits at which tier, with a fixed timetable.
• Strengthen own revenues: GIS-based property registers, periodic rate revision, user charges, and deepening the municipal bond market.
• Operationalise MPCs as statutory metropolitan planning authorities with directly elected mayors holding fixed five-year tenures.
• Constitute the High-Level Expert Committee recommended by the Standing Committee on Housing and Urban Affairs (2026) to build an integrated urban investment framework to 2047 [5].
• Institutionalise a municipal cadre and outcome-linked untied grants.

Devolution failed not in constitutional design but in political and fiscal follow-through. Making cities genuinely self-governing — with funds, functions and functionaries aligned — is the precondition for realising both SDG-11 and the Viksit Bharat 2047 vision.