90 percent of the world’s urban population growth is expected to take place in developing countries, with India featuring a significant share of that. While the urban population is currently hovering at around 31 percent of the total, it contributes over 60 percent of India’s GDP. It is projected that urban India will contribute nearly 70 percent of the national GDP in the next 15 years.
It is in this context that the Government of India has decided to develop 100 Smart Cities across the country. Accordingly, in his budget speech of July 2014, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had stated as follows: “As the fruits of development reach an increasingly large number of people, the pace of migration from the rural areas to the cities is increasing. A neo middle class is emerging which has the aspiration of better living standards. Unless new cities are developed to accommodate the burgeoning number of people, the existing cities would soon become unliveable.”On July 10, 2014 the Indian Government announced the vision of developing ‘one hundred Smart Cities’, as satellite towns of larger cities by modernising the existing mid-sized cities.
To establish 100 smart cities is no mean task. The Ministry of Urban Development, Government of India has been painstakingly working to kick off the project over the last six to nine months. Finally, the project was approved by the Union Cabinet on April 29, 2015. According to the latest plans of the government, apart from 100 Smart Cities, another scheme – the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) – has been approved for 500 towns and cities with a population of over 100,000.
The Government of India has earmarked central outlay of Rs. 48,000 crores for 100 Smart Cities over the next five years. The plan is to have a city challenge competition for selecting 100 smart cities across India. A SPV (special purpose vehicle) will be created for each city to implement the action plan.
There are many ways to describe a Smart City. It is a change of culture, and not just about technology. Smartness in a city means different things to different people. The key pillars on which a Smart City relies are institutional infrastructure (including Governance); physical infrastructure; social infrastructure; and economic infrastructure. A Smart City is ecologically friendly, technologically integrated and meticulously planned, with the intervention of information technology to improve efficiency. A Smart City leverages data gathered from smart sensors through a smart grid to create a city that is livable, workable and sustainable.
According to another school of thought - the criteria for qualifying as a smart city is that it must have three of the five infrastructure requirements matured and well established – energy management, water management, transport and traffic, safety and security and solid waste management.
Whatever be the definition of a smart city, people migrate to cities primarily in search of employment and economic activities beside a better quality of life. For its sustainability, a Smart City, needs to offer economic activities and employment opportunities to a wide section of its residents, regardless of their level of education, skills or income. In a nutshell, a Smart City needs to offer to all its citizens the following: assured water & electricity supply, sanitation and solid waste management, efficient urban mobility and public transport, robust IT connectivity, e-governance and citizen participation as well as safety and security of citizens.
A smart city has to be equipped with basic infrastructure to provide a decent quality of life for its citizens as well as a clean and sustainable environment though application of some smart solutions.
