SMART CITIES FOR TRANSFORMING INDIA
Cities are engines of growth for the economy of any nation, including India’s 2 trillion economy with an average growth rate of approximately 7% over the last two decades. Nearly 31% of India’s 1.28 billion population lives in urban areas and contributes 63% of India’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). With increasing urbanisation, urban areas are expected to house 40% of India’s population and contribute 75% of India’s GDP by 2030. This requires a comprehensive development of physical, institutional, social and economic infrastructure for improving the quality of life and attracting people and investments to the city. Development of Smart Cities is the smart solution adopted by India for dealing with this challenge of urbanisation. India is on the brink of an urban revolution with the launch of its Smart Cities Mission that targets creating 100 Smart Cities in India.
Smart Cities Mission of India
‘Smart Cities Mission’ of India was launched by the government in June 2015 with a vision of developing 100 Smart Cities as satellite towns of larger cities and by modernising the existing mid-sized cities. The initiative is India’s way of readying to tackle the complexity of massive urbanisation where about 843 million people are expected to live in urban areas by 2050.
While the conceptualisation of Smart City varies from city to city, the core infrastructure elements in a Smart City would include adequate water supply, assured electricity supply, sanitation, including waste management; efficient urban mobility and public transport; affordable housing; robust IT connectivity and digitalisation; good governance, especially e-Governance and citizen participation; sustainable environment; safety and security of citizens; health and education.
So far, 98 cities have been shortlisted to be developed. Of these 98 cities, 20 cities (Bhubaneswar, Pune, Jaipur, Surat, Kochi, Ahmedabad, Jabalpur, Visakhapatnam, Solapur, Davangere, Indore, New Delhi Municipal Corporation, Coimbatore, Kakinada, Belagavi, Udaipur, Guwahati, Chennai, Ludhiana and Bhopal) will be the first to receive funds for transforming them into ‘Smart Cities’ in the first phase.
The Smart City Mission will be operated as a centrally sponsored scheme and the central government proposes to give financial support to the mission to the extent of about $ 7.1 billion over five years.
The government has urged the 20 cities selected for the first phase to prepare bankable projects for obtaining loan assistance from the Asian Development Bank, the World Bank and the BRICS Development Bank. The participating cities have also proposed public-private partnerships for the initiatives.
The strategic components of development in the Smart Cities Mission are city improvement (retrofitting), city renewal (redevelopment) and city extension (greenfield development) and a Pan-city initiative in which Smart Solutions are applied covering larger parts of the city.
The government is not prescribing any particular model to be adopted by the Smart Cities. Rather, each city has to formulate its own concept, vision, mission and plan for a Smart City that is appropriate to its local context, resources and levels of ambition. Accordingly, they have to choose their model of Smart City.
For this, cities will prepare their ‘Smart City Proposal’ containing the vision, plan for mobilisation of resource and intended outcomes in terms of infrastructure up-gradation and smart applications. Cities will have to compete for funds which will be distributed to the cities on the basis of assessments made on specific scoring criteria.
The government has launched a ‘Smart Net Portal’, which is designed to enable cities to share ideas and source solutions for various issues during the implementation.
Collaborations with other countries
After the announcement of India’s Smart City Mission, various countries have been lining up to invest in Smart City projects in India and help in developing 100 Smart Cities by sharing technology and experiences.
The United States Trade and Development Agency (USTDA) has signed an agreement to develop Visakhapatnam, Allahabad and Ajmer as Smart Cities. France has announced an investment of 2 billion Euros in India to develop three cities - Chandigarh, Puducherry and Nagpur - as Smart Cities. Germany has signed up with India to develop Bhubaneswar, Kochi, and Coimbatore into Smart Cities.
Some other countries which will help develop Indian cities into Smart Cities include Singapore (Amravati), Japan (Varanasi), Spain (Delhi and Jaipur) etc. China has shown interest in developing Pune as a Smart City and investing $2.5 billion in the city’s security solutions and services.
Nearly 300 companies from 35 different countries are keen on joining hands with the Smart City projects of Pune. Sweden, Israel, the Netherlands, United Kingdom, and Hong Kong have also shown interest in investing in India for developing Smart Cities.
Italian companies will contribute in terms of design and technology for the Smart Cities, with services ranging from consultancy to actual building of infrastructure. Canada has offered to help in providing a solution to the residential problem by providing wooden multi-storey housing complexes.