Global fame

Flagship government programmes like the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) have their fair share of critics, while others like the Rajiv Awas Yojana to provide property rights for slum dwellers are too new to have made any impact. But the two schemes have generated a lot of interest in the international community. At the recently held World Urban Forum in Rio de Janerio, many ministers from different countries kept asking Saugato Roy, the minister of state for urban development, about these schemes. Roy and others were also shown how the Brazilian government was trying to use slum development as a tool to curb the spread of the drug business in these slums.