Jammu’s Urban Transformation: Persistent Swachh and Smart Challenges

Dr Varinder Sharma

drvarindersharmabjp@gmail.com

Jammu, the City of Temples, has long been a city of contradictions. Its ancient ghats and heritage havelis coexist uneasily with choked lanes and streets barely passable on two wheels. The Jammu Municipal Corporation (JMC), the body entrusted with transforming this historic urban centre into a 21st-century Smart City, finds itself simultaneously commended for its ambition and criticised for its execution. Over the past two years, JMC has registered genuine, measurable progress. Yet the scale of the challenge - compounded by chronic under-resourcing, bureaucratic inertia, encroachment, and an ever-expanding city footprint - means the road ahead remains long and arduous.

Once confined to the narrow stretch between Mubarak Mandi and Gumat Gate, Jammu has expanded dramatically in every direction. Proposals to amend Master Plan 2032 would see the city's administrative area grow from just over 300 square kilometres to more than 700, a recognition that urban governance must catch up with ground realities. Old Jammu is, in the truest sense, crammed to the brim. Roads that once accommodated city buses and ration trucks can barely manage a single motorcycle today. Streets near the Civil Secretariat, the Chief Minister's residence, the Deputy Commissioner's office, and the JMC Commissioner's own headquarters have been narrowed by as much as ten feet due to encroachments - a damning indictment of institutional will. The irony is inescapable: Hari Market, one of the most egregiously encroached-upon zones in the city, lies barely a hundred metres from the JMC Commissioner's office. Every shopfront spills into the street; every footpath has been annexed by private enterprise. Pedestrian mobility, a fundamental urban right, has been effectively abolished. In Tallab Tillo, JMC executed an admirable project, covering a running water canal along the entire stretch to create a functional pedestrian walkway - a genuine civic achievement. However, in the old city, the same initiative has produced precisely the opposite of the envisaged outcome. Widened footpaths have simply become extended shopfronts. Shopkeepers have rented out the road-facing sections of their establishments to vendors, creating a chaotic, congested landscape where the Smart City vision has curdled into an urban nightmare. The Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh High Court has stepped in with a directive ordering stringent action against encroachments, a ruling described by many civic observers as long overdue. With judicial backing now firmly in place, the ball is squarely in JMC's court. The way forward is notifications to market associations and mandates for monthly progress reports on anti-encroachment drives. Digital platforms should be harnessed to crowdsource encroachment data, enabling citizens to photograph and geolocate violations in real time. This is not merely a governance improvement; it is a restoration of the city's dignity.

The UT Government's affidavit before the NGT is a sobering document. Jammu & Kashmir generates approximately 1,557 tonnes of municipal solid waste every single day. JMC alone accounts for roughly 380 tonnes per day, and even this flagship urban body lacks the infrastructure for fully scientific disposal. Approximately 50 per cent of solid waste is being processed through scientific means. That is progress, and it deserves acknowledgement. But it also means that half of every day's waste stream - nearly 190 tonnes in Jammu alone - remains inadequately managed. The infrastructure deficit is stark: J&K has no dedicated Refuse Derived Fuel pellet or briquette plant anywhere in the UT, even as significant quantities of combustible material accumulate at processing sites. The economic potential of this material is being squandered. Solid waste, intelligently managed, is not a burden but a resource stream. Wet waste yields compost and biogas. Dry waste produces RDF and recyclable raw materials. Construction and demolition debris, currently a major visual blight across Jammu, can be reprocessed into building materials. Recycled wastewater can be used for horticulture and secondary industrial applications. JMC must pivot - urgently and decisively - from treating garbage as a problem to managing it as an economic asset. Scientific waste processing must become a non-negotiable baseline, not an aspirational target.

The workforce problem compounds everything. Sanitation staff are predominantly contracted through NGOs, a model that has proven structurally fragile. Elected MLAs press for increased manpower across their constituencies, but the chronic shortfall in revenue generation undermines JMC's capacity to fund expansion. A proposed online payment system, linked to GPS-mapped unique digital household numbers, offered a promising solution to revenue leakage but has been abandoned for the time being. The same is the story with the property tax issue, announced but implementation deferred.

If solid waste management is a slow-burning emergency, the state of sewage treatment plants represents a more acute threat to public health. Of Jammu city's four STPs, three remain either non-operational or in a trial phase. The sole functioning plant operates at barely two-thirds capacity. The Bhagwati Nagar STP, despite largely meeting physico-chemical parameters, continues to fail faecal coliform standards - a direct indicator of pathogen contamination. Meanwhile, numerous nullahs from Nagrota, Panjthirthi, Peer Kho, Gujjar Nagar, and beyond carry raw sewage directly into the Tawi River, which serves as Jammu's primary drinking water source. The Ranbir Canal faces the same fate. After more than Rs 150 crore spent on Jammu's sewerage infrastructure over a decade and a half, the city still cannot prevent its own waste from contaminating the water it drinks. This is not merely an environmental failing. It is a public health emergency. Water sourced from the Tawi - lifted through schemes such as Sitlee, Boria, and Dhonthly - is being distributed to residents whose exposure to contaminated water carries severe and compounding health risks. The proposed artificial lake near Tawi Bridge, a flagship urban development, risks being filled with polluted water unless the STP crisis is resolved before the project's completion. The need for functional, compliant STPs is a prerequisite for every other infrastructure ambition JMC has set its sights upon. The UT's UEED bears significant responsibility here, but it too faces chronic staff shortages and acute funding scarcity. JMC's CAPEX budget has been curtailed at precisely the moment when large-scale infrastructure investment is most urgently needed. The government must address these structural constraints as a priority, not as a deferred obligation.

Groundwater depletion adds another layer of urgency. JMC has sanctioned new tube wells and pumping stations, but several existing installations have fallen inoperative, and progress on new ones is minimal. The Chenab Water Lift Project, which would divert drinking water from the Chenab River at Akhnoor, has received preliminary central approvals but remains stalled. This project must be expedited. AMRUT Mission funds present an opportunity to diversify Jammu's water supply, but only if the Jal Shakti Department and JMC operate in genuine coordination rather than in parallel silos.

Heritage restoration offers a more encouraging picture, though much remains to be done. Library cum Cafeteria at the historic Mubarak Mandi complex, alongside a proposed Heritage Parking facility, signals an intention to breathe life back into old Jammu's landmarks. The façade lighting of Bahu Fort, the Tawi Bridges, and Maharaja Hari Singh Park has transformed Jammu's evening landscape. The renovation of Apsara Road and Raghunath Bazaar under the High Street project has been widely praised. But Gumat Gate and Denis Gate await their own restoration. Parks that once served as community gathering spaces - at Gole Market, Purani Mandi, and Mubarak Mandi - have been converted into parking zones or granite floorings, eroding green space at precisely the moment when urbanisation makes it most valuable. Although city roundabouts have been placed under the jurisdiction of the JMC, with personnel from the Floriculture Department deputed for their upkeep, the much-needed beautification remains conspicuously absent. The lush greenery and vibrant floral displays that offer a refreshing visual appeal are largely missing from Jammu's urban landscape today. The Blue Green Ranbir Canal project, which has created attractive walkways with landscaping and swings along the canal banks, points to what is possible when vision is matched by execution. The forthcoming Tawi Riverfront and Artificial Lake projects promise to transform Jammu's waterfront. But these assets will be rendered hollow if the STP and solid waste crises are not resolved before their inauguration.

The development demands from urban areas- shifting of garbage collection points, new tube wells, playgrounds, parks, open gym installations, removal of hazardous electricity poles, parking slots, and repair of pedestrian stretches damaged by contractor work - are emblematic of the gap between citizen expectations and civic delivery that JMC must close. These are not extravagant demands. JMC's response to these and similar demands across Jammu's wards must be structured around clear, time-bound commitments. The introduction of civic fines for violations, a dedicated Safai Karamchari task force, annual awards for the cleanest mohalla and the best sanitation worker, a people-friendly municipal approval process, active social media engagement for local issue resolution, and the adoption of modern equipment and technology - these are not aspirational additions but the operational minimum for a corporation serious about urban transformation. Mohalla committees and Ward Volunteers, already being mobilised by JMC, can serve as the connective tissue between citizens and the corporation, particularly in the absence of elected corporators. Their role in fostering public awareness and driving compliance with waste collection norms must be formalised and resourced.

JMC has demonstrated in the past two years that it is capable of genuine, tangible improvement. Its rankings in national sanitation surveys have risen. Its Smart City infrastructure - the Integrated Command and Control Centre, the Intelligent Traffic Management System, and the e-bus fleet - represents real progress. The corporation's readiness to confront hard challenges is commendable. But Jammu cannot aspire to be a Smart City while its old quarters choke on encroachments, its rivers absorb raw sewage, and its solid waste fills open dumps instead of powering biogas plants. The gap between ambition and execution must be closed with urgency, accountability, and the kind of determined, sustained governance that Jammu's citizens both deserve and demand. The moment for incremental improvement has passed. What is required now is transformation - systematic, swift, and uncompromising.

(The writer is Co-convenor, Health Cell, J&K BJP)