The fulcrum of PRIA’s work over the past decade in the area of urban governance has been to make cities inclusive by engaging citizens and municipalities through participatory planning. By facilitating actors and actions in both the demand and supply side to build better cities for tomorrow, PRIA makes democracy work for all.

PRIA’s team of urban planners and designers, social development experts, urban environment experts, and GIS and remote sensing specialists have worked in over ten states preparing physical plans; promoting devolution of funds, functions and functionaries to municipalities; municipal finance; capacity building; strengthening JnNURM reforms; and addressing urban poverty.In its urban governance and poverty initiative, PRIA conducts research interventions in strengthening urban governance by enabling the poor and marginalised sections of urban society to understand, organise and act upon their needs and priorities and to make demands upon the system of service delivery.

PRIA also took up a Study on Devolution to Urban Local Bodies in Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Haryana to generate a body of knowledge on the extent of devolution to Urban Local Bodies as per 74th Constitutional Amendments in the states of Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Haryana.

Campaigns have also been a major intervention through which engagement of the supply side of governance could be encouraged and maintained. The Campaigns on Birth and Death Registration through Municipal Engagementis one such intervention which was exercised to engage the municipality in carrying out birth and death registration in a citizen friendly and effective manner.

The promotion of accountability in urban governance has always been a significant aspect of PRIA’s work over the years. Capacity building programmes for officials and preparation of training modules and training workshops have highlighted PRIA’s commitment of strengthening the urban bodies in the devolution of their work. Preparation of Training Strategy, Training Modules and Learning Materials for elected representatives in Urban Local Bodies in Rajasthanhas been one such activity wherein facilitation of the Government of Rajasthan to formulate a training strategy for elected councillors of Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) in the state took place. Capacity building work like participatory mapping and preparation of ward profiles has also been extended to the formation and strengthening of Area Sabhas and Ward Sabhas in Selected JNNURM Cities. Here efforts were made to establish models of Area Sabhas and Ward Sabhas in JNNURM cities of Jaipur in Rajasthan, Raipur in Chhattisgarh, Ranchi in Jharkhand, Patna in Bihar, Shimla in Himachal Pradesh and Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh as suggested in the Model Community Participation Law.In its project Democratising Urban Governance: Promoting Participation and Social Accountability, PRIA has attempted to tackle the problem of ineffective and non-responsive service delivery arising due to the lack of transparency and accountability existing within the local governance institutions, in this case two cities each in Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Orissa.The project particularly focuses on understanding the issues related to medium size/class towns and their relationship with the higher tier of governance institutions in the city.

A City Issue Paper regarding the work done in Bilaspur, Chhattisgarh has also been released with the objective of identifying and documenting various city level development issues in a structured manner. In addition, another document, Bihar Sharif City Issue Paper, was also released to bring the city-level issues that plague the city to the attention of all stakeholders affected by Bihar Sharif’s urbanisation.

The exercise to strengthen the capacity of networks and organisations of the urban poor has been another area in which PRIA has been actively involved. This exercise was carried out to enable each organisation to strengthen its participatory monitoring and internal learning systems and capacities; to facilitate collective sharing of such learning among the grantees with a view to enhance their own practices; and to facilitate dissemination of such lessons in a manner that can have wider impacts on policy-makers and donors working on this set of issues.In “Strengthening Civil Society Voices on Urban Poverty in India”, PRIA and Society for Promotion of Area Resource Centres (SPARC) have come together to orient, support and enable CSOs in 30 cities of 6 states to engage with city governments for planning Rajiv Awas Yojna (RAY) in Year.

The project will deepen engagement in a further 20 cities in Year 2. The State level and national consultations and policy briefings will help advocacy efforts with planning and government officials. These practice-oriented studies will also help bring best practices to engaged CSOs to enable them to learn from each other’s challenges and opportunities.

PRIA publishes a quarterly newsletter called “PRAKRIA” which is a platform to share PRIA’s experience on issues of urban governance.

PRIA’s efforts to make urban governance institutions accountable to its poor and excluded citizens have now been going on for a decade. Despite many obstacles and failures, PRIA continues to make effort in understanding urban poverty in India and other regions of the world. It shares its knowledge with other civil society practitioners, researchers and policy-makers with a view to convening multistakeholder dialogues around these emerging issues.