COVID Alert: Only 1 per cent of Smart City projects dedicated for Health Infrastructure

As urban centers struggle to put down the outbreak of Covid-19, the creation of health infrastructure seems to be a very low priority in projects for 100 cities being developed as smart cities under a central government scheme.

Scrutiny of publicly available data of projects taken up under the Smart City Mission reveals that only 69 of 5,861 projects were for health infrastructure and capacity building — this works out to a little over 1 percent of total projects selected since 2015.

These 69 projects, located in 55 of the 100 smart cities being developed, will cost an estimated Rs 2112.06 crore — about 1 percent of the total Mission investment of Rs 205,018 crore. In percentage terms, it’s even lower than the combined health expenditure of Centre and states — 1.6 percent of the GDP — in 2019-20.

As urban centres struggle to put down the outbreak of Covid-19, creation of health infrastructure seems to be very low priority in projects for 100 cities being developed as smart cities under a central government scheme.

Scrutiny of publicly available data of projects taken up under the Smart City Mission reveals that only 69 of 5,861 projects were for health infrastructure and capacity building — this works out to a little over 1 percent of total projects selected since 2015.

These 69 projects, located in 55 of the 100 smart cities being developed, will cost an estimated Rs 2112.06 crore — about 1 percent of the total Mission investment of Rs 205,018 crore. In percentage terms, it’s even lower than the combined health expenditure of Centre and states — 1.6 percent of the GDP — in 2019-20.

(Source: Indian Express)