Smart Cities

It was launched in 2015 by Ministry of Housing and Urban affairs with the objective of promoting smart cities that provide core infrastructure and give a decent quality of life to its citizens and a clean and sustainable environment by enabling local area development and harnessing technology, especially technology that leads to Smart outcomes.

• The strategic components of Smart City initiative are area-based development involving city improvement (retrofitting), city renewal (redevelopment) and city extension (Greenfield development) plus a Pan-city development in which Smart Solutions are applied covering larger parts of the city.
• Under the program 100 smart cities were selected. Of the total proposed projects under SCM, 6655 projects (115% by number) have been tendered so far, work orders have been issued for 6060 projects (101% by number). 3366 projects (52% by number) have also been fully completed and are operational (as on 11 Jan 2022).
• Smart Cities Digital Payment Awards were launched in 2018 to guide, motivate, recognize, and reward the smart cities for promoting digital payments and carrying out innovative payment initiatives.
• Ineffective Urban Local Bodies (ULBs), Fund constraints and long gestation periods in projects have acted as a hindrance in tapping full potential of the mission.

Government must strive hard to overcome these follies by strengthening ULBs, coming up with innovative fund augmentation strategies, ensuring speedy administrative clearances etc.