Jaga Mission is the largest land titling and slum upgrading scheme in India and one of the largest in the world. The project is ongoing and is scaling up across Odisha state thanks to a mentoring model, under which 62 specially trained mentors from 28 pilot cities have gone to support other cities during their slum upgrading work. Their experience has helped orientate newer cities to the programme’s nuances, speeding up the upgrade process.
The success of the programme to date has led to Jaga Mission’s decentralised delivery model being held up as an example to be replicated elsewhere in India. Transfer to other states requires strong political will to drive collaborations between sceptical city authorities, slum dwellers’ associations, and local non-governmental organisations. In the northern state of Punjab, however, the project is already being replicated to directly benefit an additional 1.4 million slum dwellers.
Jaga Mission demonstrates that empowering these marginalised communities is a very effective way to achieve large-scale slum upgrading schemes and promote equality for millions of India’s urban poor.
