It is perfectly appropriate to dream, and to dream big. Viksit Bharat by 2047 is now a stated goal towards which all economic policy is directed. What was previously the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee, and before that simply NREGA (‘A’ for the Act of 2005), has been re-enacted as the Viksit Bharat Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) Act of 2025.
What does the term ‘viksit’ actually mean to people? By now, it would be hard to find any member of the Indian establishment—across government, the judiciary, corporate sector, armed forces and the media—who does not have at least one close family member resident in a developed (viksit) country.
A 2025 book by Sanjaya Baru, Secession of the Successful: the Flight out of New India, delineates how Indians have voted with their feet, or more accurately, their air tickets. They want to live in a viksit country. Can we get there by 2047?
Let me pick up just two issues. One is specific to the current season of the year. The other is an all-season issue (one of many). I will confine my attention to urban India where the establishment lives.
The monsoon season, which is currently on, has traditionally been a season of rural floods, landslides, and now, catastrophic glacial melts. But urban flooding can be traced to specific cases of intervention and/or neglect. As urban water bodies, which acted as sinks into which rainwater flowed, were drained for urban construction, and as rainwater drains get choked with silt, construction residue, plastic, discarded packaging material and organic garbage, urban flooding has become a robust annual feature.
A spell of 100mm of rain, as on 24 August in Delhi, is by no means unknown in Delhi, Mumbai or other cities. But predictably, key arteries in Delhi around Parliament and the Supreme Court were severely grid-locked and knee-deep water collected in some key wholesale market areas. School buses were stranded for several hours. There are electrocution deaths from live electric wires trailing in pooled water.
The following day, the Delhi government announced an additional ₹11,430 crore for drinking water infrastructure on top of earlier smaller commitments, added to ongoing funding for sewage treatment plants. The Delhi Jal Board, a state government entity, will get this funding and execute the work on water and sewage treatment plants and pipelines. It is important to note that the new provision will not address rainwater drains, which fall under the municipality and the state public works department.
Nevertheless, the new initiatives are most welcome and will hopefully prevent sewage overflow and drinking water contamination during the monsoons. Half the funding will come from the state government matched by the Central Urban Challenge Fund, and half from private partners.
The funding is for infrastructure, not for maintenance of pre-existing sewerage channels in a preventive rather than crisis-driven way. Hopefully, some of it can be used to get mechanical sewage cleaning equipment, to replace the inhuman practice of manual sewer cleaning that still goes on despite Supreme Court judgements and directives against it.
The rainwater problem has not received the attention it desperately needs in all major cities of India. Corroded drain pipes need replacement, sieves are needed to redirect material blocking rainwater flow, with arrangements for that material to be carted away to processing centres, rather than heaped up within the city. Unfortunately, commercial waste-to-energy generation has taken off only in a few smaller cities like Indore and Lucknow.
Moving to all-season urban issues, urban spaces are increasingly claimed by four mammalian species. Dogs in small groups or large packs were perhaps the first to reduce humans in many cities, Delhi among them, to a state of cowering fear. Children and adults were bitten.
Municipalities directed by the Supreme Court to handle the problem lack the fiscal wherewithal to do so. Municipality annual revenue, still aggregating nationally (including grants) to less than 1 % of GDP, will need more fiscal assistance from state governments to tackle the problem.
Rodents abound in informal housing enclaves (jhuggies) where food has to be weighed down in heavy containers that can’t be knocked over, and clothing tightly locked. Rodents thrive in situations where there is a high density of organic garbage. These include upmarket food courts. There is no pied piper.
Monkeys have moved from towns like Shimla towards cities like Delhi, where monkey assaults and bites, apart from damage to water storage tanks, are now everyday occurrences. There is need for a national population-control strategy to solve this problem.
And finally there are unsheltered cows blocking traffic while they search for food in garbage heaps. Formal fiscal provisions for cow shelters are in state government budgets, under the major heads 2403/4403 (current/capital), but the minor sub-heads for cow shelters vary across states, so the aggregate allocation across states cannot be (easily) obtained.
A pre-existing Central provision through which urban infrastructure can be funded is the popular Special Assistance for Loans to States for Capital Investment, budgeted at ₹2 trillion (including Union territories) for 2026-27. There are many claimants jostling in the fiscal trough.
The author is an economist.