Progress To Making Every City A Smart City

Narendra Modi unveiled the Smart City programme on 15th June 2015 to upgrade 100 cities and to make it a world-class dwelling place with proper management along with smart solutions. As of January 2018, 99 cities had been added to the list and Shillong was the 100th place which was to be added to the list after it had submitted the plan. 

According to reports, about 100 million people have been affected by Smart City projects so far. A total of 2.03 lakh crores worth of projects have been proposed by the 99 cities which would cover around 4500 projects in total. Out of this proposed amount, around 4000 crores worth of projects has been completed. Affordable housing projects have been made available after an investment of 18,000 crores in around 60 of the selected cities. Cities such as Bhubaneswar, which was ranked first in the initial batch albeit making it the first Smart City of India, has introduced a common payment system with the help of a Public Private Partnership(PPP). Pune will be setting up a centralised command centre which will integrate management of various functions that will be undertaken. Cities have set-up an effective response system against natural calamities which will save them from extreme damage. Cities under this scheme have been vying for cleanliness, and this has propelled them to some major distinctive levels.

Talking about the downside of this scheme, we can say that it is one of the Urban Schemes which has the lowest fund utilisation rate. The conflict between the SPV (Special Purpose Vehicle), meant for implementing the projects, and the Municipality is a major concern, and it needs to be sorted out soon. Projects are getting sanctioned at a faster rate than other urban schemes, but implementation gets a hit because of these conflicts.

We have to resolve these petty issues to implement the schemes properly to achieve the larger picture that we have wanted.