This webinar will present India’s unique experience in scaling up slum upgrading and affordable housing from projects to national programs and policies in the past decade. Today, India is a major global economic player in world with rapid economic and population growth. This growth has met with increased urbanization and as a result increased growth of urban slums across the country. In 2011, 31% of India’s total population of 1.2 billion was living in urban areas projected to grow at a rate of 2.3%. India’s slum population has double in 10 years from 43 million in 2001 to 93 million in 2011 with a projected growth rate of 5%. Past national programs focused primarily on rural development with only incremental efforts to address the growing challenge of slums through small-scale projects on water supply, sanitation, health, education and income generation. These efforts led to increased challenges that did not address the larger issues in cities. The Basic Services to the Urban Poor (BSUP) program of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JnNURM) was launched in 2005. The BSUP marked a shift in the national development policy focus from the Ghandian principle of rural self-reliance towards thinking about an urban future. It calls for investments to improve the lives of the urban poor. The BSUP came at a time of robust macro-economic growth, a strong political will and a long-term strategy institutionalized within the parameters of the Indian constitution. Unlike ever before, the BSUP is aimed at tackling issues of adequate housing, basic services and civic amenities through an integrated slum upgrading approach. The BSUP is to be completed by 2014. Following the JnNURM model, the government of India launched the Rajiv Awas Yojana (RAY) for the Urban Poor in 2009 to initiate necessary policy changes. RAY envisions a “Slum Free India” with inclusive and equitable cities, moving from a project focus to a city-wide approach, emphasizing tenure security, and promoting a more comprehensive and flexible fin