changeadminThe Minister of Housing & Urban Affairs, Mr Manohar Lal, launched the Swachh Bharat Mission – Knowledge Management Unit (KMU) at the National Urban Conclave 2025 at Yashobhoomi, New Delhi, today.
The Knowledge Management Unit is established by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) as a dedicated unit at the National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA). The KMU will serve as a national platform for capacity building, knowledge creation, and institutional learning under the Swachh Bharat Mission–Urban framework.
The capacity building component under the Garbage Free Cities (GFC) initiative, a key pillar of Swachh Bharat Mission–Urban 2.0, aims to strengthen the skills and competencies of diverse stakeholders – including elected representatives, state/city officials, sanitation workers, NGOs, civil society – through a structured and strategic framework.
This framework encompasses needs assessments, targeted training on sanitation and waste management, knowledge exchange, and continuous skill development, ensuring sustained and impactful outcomes in urban sanitation and waste & used water management. Under the Swachh Bharat Mission – Urban, 3% of the total funds are allocated for Capacity Building.
As the Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) are already moving at an accelerated pace to advance Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban 2.0, there is a need to capacitate them to fast-track and progress the projects and provide state-of-the-art training to do so.
MoHUA will establish a time-bound, goal-oriented Knowledge Management Unit at the NIUA to drive capacity building, knowledge creation, and institutional learning.
While behaviour change has been a core focus of the Swachh Bharat Mission–Urban, empowering ULBs and States through technical training and expertise in areas such as solid and liquid waste management, Compressed Bio Gas plants, and legacy waste remediation is key to sustaining that change.
Key functions of the Swachh Bharat Mission – Knowledge Management Unit?
- Creation of standardised and high-quality training content
- Designing an appropriate pedagogy for training different stakeholders,
- Competency-based training for ground-level functionaries
- Creating a pool of Master trainers to train States and ULBs
- Quality assurance in the delivery of training
- Institutionalising knowledge in States and ULBs
The National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA) will facilitate co-creation and deliver high-quality, demand-driven training at scale.
NIUA will help create and map a national pool of master trainers to enable cascading. Each of these master trainers will train and develop experts at the State and ULB levels. The goal is to have 100,000 such trainers nationwide.
The KMU will operate through a collaborative network that includes Administrative Training Institutes (ATIs), State Knowledge Partners (SKPs), Technical institutions, sectoral experts, International organisations, and civil society partners.
An IT-enabled portal is envisaged that will host all learning resources, including curated training modules, knowledge products, a training calendar, and an inventory of trained personnel across the country. The platform will follow a capacity-building model similar to iGOT and Karmayogi, enabling trainees to access online content, connect with trainers, and foster a collaborative learning ecosystem.
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