The Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT), launched by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA), aims to enhance urban infrastructure by improving water supply, wastewater and septage management, and developing parks and green spaces in cities. To ensure that projects under AMRUT 2.0 meet quality standards and stipulated project timelines, regular monitoring and evaluations are conducted. These assessments help identify challenges, provide feedback to states and MoHUA, and recommend corrective actions. This process also plays a key role in determining the release of subsequent central fund instalments.

While project feasibility—such as its necessity and viability—is assessed before approval, the Independent Review and Monitoring Agency (IRMA) focuses on evaluating project implementation, identifying obstacles, and facilitating timely interventions.

As part of this initiative, the National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA) has been tasked with independently reviewing contract-approved projects across 1,000 Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) in 11 Indian states under AMRUT 2.0. Unlike traditional approaches to assessing infrastructural projects, AMRUT 2.0 integrates third-party independent monitoring through IRMA, ensuring real-time on-site evaluation and necessary course correction for better project outcomes.

On 10 December 2019, during the National Ganga Council Meeting in Kanpur, the Hon’ble Prime Minister emphasised the need to adopt new thinking in river cities, one with a facilitatory outlook rather than a regulatory approach. In the 5th meeting of the Empowered Task Force on River Ganga in February 2020, NIUA and the Town and Country Planning Organisation (TCPO) were directed to provide suggestions on holistic river-centric planning. Accordingly, the Urban River Management Plan (URMP) framework was conceived of and launched on 4th November 2020 by NIUA in partnership with the National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG). The framework is a general template for river cities to develop city-specific river management plans that take into account the ecological and socio-economic significance of rivers. URMPs have since been formulated by Kanpur, Ayodhya, Chatrapati Sambhaji Nagar, Bareilly, and Moradabad. 

With support from the World Bank, 60 additional cities within the Ganga Basin states of Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Bihar, and Jharkhand will now prepare their URMPs. From the hill cities of Uttarakhand to the impact of rapid industrialisation on the rivers of Bihar and Jharkhand, this project will focus on a multitude of verticals - all aimed at strengthening urban river management in India. Over the duration of this project, it will focus on preparing the URMPs in partnership with the 60 identified Ganga Basin cities. In the first phase, 27 cities will be targeted, while the remaining 33 cities will be taken up in the subsequent phase.

India is the largest extractor of groundwater in the world. About 55% of the water demand in our cities is met by groundwater. Indian cities use groundwater in both formal water supply and through informal water abstraction to meet the growing freshwater demand. In most cases, this is the water stored at shallow depths below the ground or in shallow aquifers. However, because of indiscriminate abstraction, several Indian cities have exhausted their shallow aquifers. While there is a tendency in cities to dig deeper for water, an easy solution would be to just manage their shallow aquifers more judiciously. 

The reason is that shallow aquifers are not only easily accessible water reserves but also relatively much quicker to recharge when compared to deep aquifers. To promote sustainable shallow aquifer management (SAM), a pilot project was initiated in 2022 under AMRUT 2.0 in 10 cities.

The overarching objective of this pilot project was to create an enabling environment for mainstreaming shallow aquifer management in a city’s water management strategy. It focuses on interventions aimed towards developing water secure cities through the restoration of the shallow (unconfined / phreatic) aquifers which have stood the test of time in India’s long-standing water history. 

The project has two components. First, to enhance the practical and action-oriented knowledge of city stakeholders on managing shallow aquifers in a scientific manner. Second, to demonstrate the use of recharge wells as one of the means for shallow aquifer management.

A variety of approaches/structures as means for shallow aquifer recharge were designed for the pilot cities, which also address the larger problems of groundwater depletion, urban flooding and contamination of groundwater reserves. The SAM project cities are Bengaluru, Chennai, Dhanbad, Gwalior, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Kolkata, Pune, Rajkot, and Thane.