Smart cities: India
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Mission smart city
The Times of India, May 02 2015
Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi had announced his vision to set up 100 smart cities across the country soon after his government was sworn into power mid last year. Since then a race has been on among cities to land on the list that the ministry of urban development is compiling. The 100 smart cities mission intends to promote adoption of smart solutions for efficient use of available assets, resources and infrastructure. Dipak Dash explains what these smart cities are and how they will work
What is a smart city?
The vision, explained in a graphic
See graphic:
What is a smart city?
The reality: the priorities of the planners
From: Radheshyam Jadhav, Smart cities let transport take lead, put safety & waste disposal in back seat, July 10, 2018: The Times of India
Transport Gets 17% Of Funds, Garbage 2%
While urban transport is the topmost investment priority for cities selected under the Centre’s Smart City Mission, safety and solid waste management issues are at the bottom of the list.
In a presentation made to the parliamentary standing committee on urban development, the housing and urban affairs ministry has stated that 99 cities that are part of the mission are expected to make investments of Rs 2 lakh crore, of which the highest share, of over Rs 33,000 crore (16.6%), is proposed for urban transport.
Interestingly, while most cities in India are faced with a solid waste management crisis, only 2.4% (Rs 4,896 crore) of the total investment is directed towards this sector. Social sectors and storm water drainage are also a low priority on the investment agenda with just 2.5% (Rs 5,100 crore each) for projects in these areas.
Some of the core infrastructure elements in a Smart City include adequate water supply, assured electricity supply, sanitation including solid waste management, efficient urban mobility and public transport, affordable housing and safety and security of citizens, particularly women, children and the elderly. While many of these components are also covered and funded through other programmes like AMRUT and Swachh Bharat Mission, cities were free to also include them in the Smart City drive.
After urban transport, area-based development is the second most important priority, with proposed investment of Rs 30,600 crore. Under areabased development, cities pick one area and develop it fully so that the model can be replicated in other parts of the city.
According to the ministry, 3,183 projects worth Rs 1.45 lakh crore are in various stages of implementation. Projects worth Rs 4,960 crore have been completed. Work has begun on other projects worth Rs 23,000 crore while the tendering system is in process for the rest.
The Smart City Mission is one of the Modi government’s flagship programmes. The mission’s duration is five years — 2015-16 to 2019-20 as per the mission statement and guidelines, which add that it may be continued thereafter after an evaluation.
Smart city list
The Times of India, Aug 01 2015
Dipak Dash
Smart city list: Smaller cousins pip metros
State capitals which include Lucknow, Mumbai, Gandhinagar, Jaipur, Vijaywada, Bhubaneswar, Raipur and Guwahati have made it to the smart cities list while Patna, Kolkata and Bengaluru have not found place in the list of top 100 nominations. All Union Territories have nominated their names, including Delhi. Rather some of the lesser known cities and municipal areas such as Bihar Sharif in Bihar, Moradabad and Saharanpur in UP, Dharamsala in Himachal, Shivamogga in Karnataka have been nominated by the states.Sources in the urban development ministry said the big cities have not made it to the list because of the selection criteria. “States have been selected based on an objec tive mechanism. Cities with better capability to implement projects and generate their own resources have been selected. It's a move towards transparency and fair competition where none can influence the selection process,“ said an urban development ministry official.
In the first phase, Centre will pick 20 cities and in the next two years 40 cities each will be selected for receiving central funding of Rs 500 crore spread over the next five years. So, eventually all the cities and municipal areas nominated for this scheme will be developed as smart cities.
Smart cities, state-wise
Nomination of smart cities, UP
The Times of India, Aug 09 2015
Dipak Dash
Rae Bareli, Meerut tie for 13th UP slot
The race to be Uttar Pradesh's 13th smart city has ended in a tie between Meerut and Rae Bareli, and the Samajwadi Party government has decided to leave the final call to the Centre. Quite evidently, the state government appears torn between picking the bustling western UP township and Congress president Sonia Gandhi's parliamentary constituency . The Yadavs are apparently wary of displeasing Sonia by picking Meerut, which they see as their political passport to the state's western region.
The list containing names of 14 cities nominated by the UP government was discussed at a meeting recently where the apex committee also went through all the nominations from other states and Union Territories. UP was asked to nominate 13 cities as per the criteria set by the Centre in consultation with states. But it sent 14. Sources said the state's high-level committee had recorded that both the municipal areas had an equal score, which is why UP nominated two cities for the 13th position. Top officials of the UP government said they had sent the names to the Centre, and the ball was now in its court.
Sources said it would be tough for the Centre to accommodate both, since it would open the floodgates for other states to nominate more names. For example, the Jammu and Kashmir government has also been demanding an increase in its quota to two cities, since it is the only state with two capitals.
At 13, UP has the highest share of cities it can nominate, followed by TN with 12, and Maharashtra with 10. The quota was based on a formula that gives equal weight to population and the number of “statutory towns“ in each stateUT.
YEAR-WISE RANKINGS
2020
NEW DELHI: Four Indian cities — New Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Bengaluru — witnessed a significant drop in their rankings in the global listing of smart cities that was topped by Singapore.
The Institute for Management Development (IMD), in collaboration with Singapore University for Technology and Design (SUTD), has released the 2020 Smart City Index, with key findings on how technology is playing a role in the COVID-19 era.
In the 2020 Smart City Index, Hyderabad was placed at the 85th position (down from 67 in 2019), New Delhi at 86th rank (down from 68 in 2019), Mumbai was at 93rd place (in 2019 it was at 78) and Bengaluru at 95th (79 in 2019).
"Cities in India (New Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru) suffer significant drops this year. This can be attributed to the detrimental effect that the pandemic has had where the technological advancement was not up to date," the report said.
It further added that "Indian cities have suffered more from the pandemic because they were not prepared".
From 15 indicators that the respondents perceive as the priority areas for their city, all four cities highlighted air pollution as one of the key areas that they felt their city needed to prioritise on.
For cities like Bangalore and Mumbai, this was closely followed by road congestion while for Delhi and Hyderabad it was basic amenities, the report said.
The 2020 Smart City Index (SCI) was topped by Singapore, followed by Helsinki and Zurich in the second and the third place respectively. Others in the top 10 list include Auckland (4th), Oslo (5th), Copenhagen (6th), Geneva (7th), Taipei City (8th), Amsterdam (9th) and New York at the 10th place.
2021
Abhijeet Singh, August 20, 2021: The Times of India
In the six years since the Smart Cities Mission was launched to redevelop 100 cities across the country, just about 47% of projects have been completed, a new study by the thinktank Observer Research Foundation said.
“The progress of the Mission has been best in the states of Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat,” the report said. “Chennai and Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu, Indore, Bhopal and Ujjain in MP, and Surat and Rajkot in Gujarat figure repeatedly among the best performers on different criteria.” Delhi and Nagaland have completed over 70% of their projects while seven other states have finished 50-60% — Rajasthan, Gujarat, Karnataka, MP, Goa, Tripura and Andhra Pradesh.
Among cities, New Delhi has the highest percentage of completed projects, followed by Chennai, Indore, Surat and Coimbatore. Rajkot utilised its funds best, followed by Indore, Ujjain, Bhopal and New Town Kolkata. At the bottom of the list project completion, among cities, are Puducherry, Amaravati, Bhagalpur, Muzaffarpur and Shillong. Not one project has been completed in these. Among states, Meghalaya has not completed a single project.
Why the disparity? “No doubt the Covid has impeded progress, but there are also various administrative and financial reasons for the underperformance,” the report said. “In some cities, the special purpose vehicles set up to implement the Mission are not functioning well due to inadequate managerial, technical, and financial capabilities. Deficiencies were observed in data handling and its analysis, levels of digitalisation, fund mobilisation, release, and utilisation.”
