Smart Cities: Are they the solution to India’s Urbanization Needs?

'The road to the city of emerald is paved with Yellow brick' – L. Frank Baum

With nearly 31% of India’s current population living under the ‘urban’ tag and contributing 63% to India’s GDP, comprehensive development of physical, institutional, social and economic infrastructure becomes one of the fore-most necessities for any city climbing the urbanization ladder . In the imagination of any city dweller, the magnificently painted picture of a smart (Sustainable, Metric, Adaptive, Reporting, Technical) city contains a desire list of developing the entire urban eco-system, upgrading infrastructure, ameliorating services and garnishing it all with layers of ‘smartness’.

Between 2014 and 2050 India will add 404 million people to its cities, according to the United Nations -- equivalent of one Sao Paolo or two Singapore a year for the next 36 years. Thus the 98K crore Smart City Project will not only focus on sustainable and inclusive development but also create a replicable model which can act as a light house to other aspiring cities.

The smart city model being proposed for Indian cities consists of E-Governance and Citizen Services, Water, Energy and Waste Management, Urban Mobility and many similar ’Smart’ solutions under its umbrella. Area based development will retrofit and redevelop existing areas into better planned ones, thus revamping the livability of the city. Intelligent Traffic Management System that reduces average commute time and cost, waste water recycling and smart metering can ostensibly have positive impacts on lives of the citizens. Consider for instance street lighting, which today accounts for 1.5% of total electricity consumption in India according to McKinsey.

Cities that use networked motion-detection lights can save 70-80 percent of electricity and costs, according to an independent, global trial of LED technology. Smart street lighting initiatives can also reduce crime in the area by seven percent because of better visibility and more content citizenry, according to Cisco's estimates. The opportunity for start-up companies to develop solutions for City Infrastructure Management (CIM) including Smart Parking, Smart CCTV Surveillance, Smart Street Lighting, Smart Water Management/Leak Detection and Community Messaging is tremendous.

 Some perfect illustrations of cities on the path of smartness are the ‘Saifee Burhani Upliftment’ Project in Mumbai as well as the East Kidwai Nagar in New Delhi. There are some inclusive city-wide insightful strategies that have been deployed to ensure that all city residents felt there is something in it for them. The approach is not ‘one-size-fits-all’ and each critically chosen city has to formulate its own concept, vision, mission and chalk out a plan that is most fitting to its local context, resources and levels of ambition, technically referred to as a Smart City Proposal (SCP). The allocation of funds for these projects will be done under the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation- (AMRUT). A significant element of these projects is that the SCP must converge with AMRUT, Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM), National Heritage City Development and Augmentation Yojana (HRIDAY), Digital India, Skill Development, Housing for All and many such programs connected to social infrastructure such as Health, Education and Culture.

Barcelona is one of the finest examples of smart cities as the city's 2012 master plan includes projects such as remote control of street lighting and fountains and a programme that includes remote watering of the city's green spaces. The UAE is building a city, Masdar City, in Abu Dhabi, which will be a carbon-neutral and zero-waste city. Even as the government is working on the plan, a few smart cities are already coming up across the country. These include Kochi Smart City, Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT) in Ahmedabad, Naya Raipur in Chhattisgarh and Wave Infratech's 4,500-acre smart city near New Delhi.

A competitive tax regime, proactive and alternative dispute resolution and single window clearance for ease of business need to be effectively implemented to harness the tremendous potential in India to build an effective ecosystem to enable our burgeoning urban areas to become smart. Embellishing India with this cap of smartness will create employment opportunities and contribute to economic growth through innovation.

For India, adding this ‘Smartness’ to its cities is no less than Robert Frost’s road not taken. Numerous challenges like capacity assistance in concepts of retrofitting, redevelopment and green-field development are needed. Major investments in time and resources will have to be made during the planning phase prior to participation in the challenge. Citizen involvement and their active participation in governance and reforms is required through use of ICT via mobile-based tools. Developing Human Resource by training people, smooth transport facilities linking cities, on-time availability of resources and a strong infrastructure upfront are important pre-requisites for initiating a ‘Smart India’. Many-a-times our local governments have limited say in reshaping our cities and local problems might not be addressed effectively due to top-down approach. We have unique challenges like large scale slums, limited finances and web like city planning and a limited scope for expanding our roads and bridges in the mid of our cities.

Many experts as well as political pundits are critical of these projects because the current plans proposed by government for such cities will prove to be preferential and inequitable. Some even believe they may turn out to be ‘Social Apartheid’ cities with powerful corporates ruling the city by overriding local laws and government. Large investments that will be gobbled to provide these world class smart cities would justify services at exorbitant prices, thus making these smart cities exclusive for so called elite, affluent, rich people henceforth turning them ultimately into social enclaves. Prohibitive pricing will keep millions of poor Indians debarred from these services and if we do not do this, then ability to maintain such infrastructure will be overridden. Current template of smart cities mandates only infrastructure, but what we need is democracy, rule of law and decrease in income gap not governance by Fiat. There is no mention of affordable housing in government plans which consist of malls, multiplexes, golf clubs and luxury housings indicating where this project is heading. If the government succeeds in building these premium 100 cities and does nothing to alleviate people out of poverty and impecunious conditions, it can very well lead to a social revolution. These visible forms of inequalities engender mistrust and even violence.

Many such incidents of developing feeling of social inequality among bottom line can already be seen in ever-expanding metro cities like Noida, Bangalore, Gurgaon and Bombay where crime rate is picking up and corporates are being targeted. This reminds us of an incident in one of the ‘Opulent Bungalows’ of Bangalore. One day when owner came back she found a young man having beer from her fridge sitting on her porch. As she was about to take out her mobile phone he showed his knife and indicated to sit. He finished his beer and then quietly left. He wasn’t there for Beer, He wasn’t a thief but he was there to enjoy moment of luxury which he probably will never get in his life. This shows the underlying feeling of resentment in him which if not treated might become dangerous. 

In this dynamically progressing and technologically advancing world, we need to stay ahead of the times. If India wants to shrug off the tag of a poor and developing country and emerge as one of the eminent super-powers in the world, we will have to ensure that it climbs this ladder of urbanization. At the same time, it has to be taken care of that we work in the interest of the poor and the underprivileged sections too. As our honorable PM Narendra Modi in his 15th August 2015’s address to the nation said that every single step India takes has to be by ‘Team India’ and for ‘Team India’ which comprises of 125 crore Indian citizens. “Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because and only when, they are created by everyone”. Our cities are fast becoming the defining units of human habitation. How smartly we build, manage and operate our cities will be the single biggest determinant of our people's future. We owe it to our future generations to make our cities smart through the use of technology. A smaller city which is part of a regional cluster can offer remote management services like infrastructure monitoring to other cities and may eventually become a center of excellence in this particular domain. So, cities can concentrate on some parts of the overall Smart Cities services and solutions industry and build an ‘economic engine’ around them.