SMART CITIES MISSION

Smart Cities Scheme has two components – Area Based Development (ABD) and Pan City Development. 60 ULBs in all have submitted smart city cost proposals of Rs. 138828 crore out of which Area Based Development Proposals constituted Rs. 104147 crore (75 % share) and Pan City Development Proposals constituted Rs. 26877 (19.4 % share) while Rs. 7803 crore (5.6 % share) are estimated for Administrative and operating cost of Smart City Plan implementation.

106 Cities Were Selected For Rollout Of Smart Cities Mission

37 Consultants Were Recruited To Draft Plans For The Initial Set Of 88 Cities.

• CRISIL Risk and Infrastructure Solutions Limited in association with Pri Move Infrastructure Development Consultants Private Ltd and Probity Soft Private Limited has bagged the contract for six cities
• Jones Lang La Salle Property Consultants India Pvt Ltd in association with Townland Consultants Pvt Ltd and Tata Consulting Engineers
• KPMG prepared the action plan for New Delhi Municipal Council area
• McKinsey will do it for Pune
• ICRA Management Consulting Private Limited in association with NJS Engineers India Private Limited and All-India Institute of Local Self-Government for five cities each. ICRA will do it for Rajkot, Kochi, Ajmer,
• Erode and Coimbatore and All-India Institute of Local Self-Government (Mumabi) will prepare plans for Chandigarh, Raipur, Bilaspur, Karnal and Faridabad.
• Vadodara, Bhubaneswar, Amritsar, Chennai and Tiruchirapalli will be covered by Jones Lang La Salle.
• Bihar Sharif (Bihar), Oulgaret (Puducherry), Tiruppur and Thoothukudi (Tamil Nadu) will take service of Mahindra Consulting Engineers Ltd in association with SUEZ Environment Co ..
• Ahmedabad, Rourkela, Kota and Agartala are assigned with Feedback Infra Pvt Ltd in association with Happold Engineers India Pvt Ltd and CISCO Systems.
• Gandhinagar, Indore and Jabalpur will take professional help from Mehta and Associates in Joint Venture with Oswal Computers and Consultants.
• Gwalior, Sagar and Satna will take help from Voyants Solutions Pvt Ltd in association with MINRAJ Consultants.
• Kanpur, Ghaziabad and Thanjavur are to prepare plans with ..
• Greater Mumbai, Muzaffarpur, Durgapur (Bengal) will take help from Alia Consulting Solutions Pvt Ltd and Genesis Fin.
• Ujjain and Dahod are to finalise plans with Haskoning DHV Consulting Pvt Ltd in Joint Venture with Haskoning DHV Nederland B.V and Grant Thornton Green Boulevard.
• New Town Kolkata and Bidahannagar are assigned with Deloitte Touche Tohmastsu India Pvt Ltd in association with Urban Management Consultant and Hijli Inspiration.
• Tirupati and Tumakuru (Karnataka) are taking help from Lea Associates South Asia Ltd in association with Crux Consultants Pvt Ltd and VB Soft Private Ltd.
• Mangaluru and Udaipur are assigned with IIDC Ltd in association with Urban Mass Transport Company Ltd and Building Design Partnership Ltd.
• Allahabad and Aligarh are assigned with Aarvee Associates Architects, Engineers and Consultants Ltd in association with Mars Telecom Systems Pvt Ltd.
• Lucknow and Namchi (Sikkim) are work with Data World Pty Ltd in association with Innovest Advisory Services Pvt Ltd and Caritas Eco Systems Pvt Ltd for finalising plans.
• Rampur and Moradabad are with Engineers India Ltd in association with JPS Associates Pvt Ltd and Salem and Madurai with Infrastructure Development Corporation (Karnataka) Limited in association with IDFC Foundation.
• Vellore and Tirunelveli are assigned with Shah Technical Consultants Pvt Ltd.
• Agra and Bareilly are to work with International City Management Association with Urban Management Centre and Edge Soft India Pvt Ltd.
• Aizawl and Haldia are assigned with Arki Techno Consultants (India) Pvt Ltd and IRS Systems South Asia Pvt Ltd.
• Hyderabad and Aurangabad are with Knight Frank (India) Pvt ltd., with Fortress Infrastructure services and PSP Financial Consultants Pvt Ltd.
• Bhagalpur will prepare the plan with Ecorys Nederland BV with Ecorys India Pvt Ltd and Dharmashala with TERI with Tractebel Engineering SA, Belgium and Avalon Inrastructure solutions Pvt Ltd.
• I K Worldwide with SCP Consultants Pvt Ltd will do it for Ranchi and CRP Risk Management with Infrastructure Management and Advisory services Pvt Ltd will do it for Davanagere (Karnataka).
• Shivamogga is assigned with Srei Infrastructure Pvt Ltd with Navayuga spatial Technologies and RSP Design Consultants.
• Navi Mumbai has to preapare plan with Tandon Urban Solutions Pvt Ltd with Spatial Decisions and Maha Infortech Pvt Ltd while Bhopal will do it with Price Waterhouse Coopers with Rudrabhishek Enterprise and CPG Consultants Pvt Ltd.
• DDF Consultants Pvt Ltd with MSN Infrastructure and SGI Studio Galli Ingenieria Pvt Ltd is assigned for Dehradun.
• Visakhapatnam and Ludhiana are to take assistance from AECOM India Pvt Ltd with AECOM Asia Company Ltd and Varanasi and Jhansi from N K Buildcon Pvt Ltd.

Master System Integrators Already Selected:

Larsen & Toubro Limited for Jaipur, Nagpur, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Pune

Countries That Partnered With The Smart Cities Mission To Assist In Developing 15 Indian Smart Cities.

United States Trade Development Agency (USTDA): Visakhapatnam, Ajmer and Allahabad,
United Kingdom: Pune, Amaravati (Andhra Pradesh) and Indore,
France:  Chandigarh, Puducherry and Nagpur.
Germany:  Bhubaneswar, Coimbatore and Kochi.
Japan:  Chennai, Ahmedabad and Varanasi

 

A SUMMARY OF PROJECTS (Pan-City Projects) UNDERWAY IN INITIAL SELECT CITIES

L&T implemented Surveillance and intelligent traffic management systems for the Government of Gujarat in AHMEDABAD, GANDHINAGAR and VADODARA and a surveillance and management system of critical infrastructure at the Sabarmati Jail, the business has since executed the smart city project in Jaipur and is executing Projects are also underway in Delhi, Lucknow and Hyderabad.

Integrated Command & Control Center projects which enable fast and efficient citizen service delivery in an integrated way, are being developed in 20 cities and are already operational in cities like Pune, Surat, Vadodara, producing positive results. 10 more cities have issued tenders for developing command and control centers in their cities.

Smart Reuse & Wastewater projects, 33 cities have issued tenders, and work has begun in 16 of them.

Solar Projects On Rooftops Of Government Buildings have been encouraged. Till date, 44 cities have issued tenders, and work has begun in 38 cities.

NAGPUR:

Phase 1 (2016) for L&T’s Smart World Communications business vertical, which is a part of L&T Construction, will cover laying of 1200 km of optical fiber network backbone, creating 136 City wifi hotspots at key locations, establishing 100 digital interactive kiosks and developing city surveillance systems with 3800 IP based cameras.

MUMBAI:

L&T implemented India’s largest city surveillance project comprising 6000 cameras across 1500+locations in Mumbai for the Government of Maharashtra.

PUNE:

L&T to enable WiFi at 200 strategic locations in the city and to also establish emergency call boxes, public address systems, environmental sensors, network connectivity and video analytics. Smart City Operation Center transportation command and control centre (SCOC) that will integrate all services and applications on a single platform. Improve bus services through Intelligent Traffic Management System (ITMS) and real-time tracking of over 2,000 buses with. Also includes intelligent lighting systems, pay and use parking systems, city guide map available through web browser, intelligent transport system, city level Wifi touch screens across the city, display boards in the city for providing real time information, emergency alert and crisis response systems, traffic re-routing applications based on real time traffic data. The SCOC centre would also manage CCTV based city surveillance, drone-based aerial surveillance, pan-city kiosks for municipal services including death and birth certificate registration, traffic signal violation system, automatic traffic management, parking lots, water and electricity supply. The command-and-control centres, which would cost the city between Rs 100 and Rs 500 crore.
Mobility integration card, India’s first ‘Interoperable Smart Card’ which is designed to be a single payment card for various transport modes across the city. Around 1,750 busses have been fitted with a GPS tracking system. A pilot vehicle health monitoring system is operational on 30 buses, and another important project is the street and pedestrian walkway in Aundh. (Pune is the only municipality to have raised Rs 200 crore via bond issue in the month of June.)
GPS in garbage vehicles MoVe (Monitoring of Garbage Vehicle Tracking System) under the Smart City mission has been initiated. The aim of this project is related to solid waste management under the Swachh Bharat Mission and development of open and green spaces. To provide better facilities and services for citizens, the PMC is using new technology. The main purpose is managing solid waste through various technologies like GPS Vehicle Tracking System, Ultra high frequency (UHF) Radio frequency identification reader (RFID) Readers, Internet of things (IOT) sensors along with innovative mobile and web based application to improve and smoothen ground level mechanism for waste collection and re-cycling of waste.
PUNE CYCLE PLAN #PuneCyclePlan: The ambitious #PuneCyclePlan aims to revive #Cycling in the city. The ?350 crore Pune Bicycle Plan is among the most ambitious projects of its kind in the country. Pune Municipal Commissioner Kunal Kumar gave an overview of the project at a Round Table discussion organized by the Hindustan Times.
December 2015, we had selected a consortium of three companies- Prasanna Desai Architects, CEE (Centre for Environment Education) and ITrans to prepare a bicycle plan for the city of Pune. The net cost of the project is ?350 crore which will be shared by the government of India (GOI) and the Pune Municipal Corporation. While the PMC will invest 20 per cent of the total cost, 80 per cent cost of the project will be given by the government of India. plan is to create a total of 880 kms of cycle track, which includes tracks on both sides of the road. It will include retrofitting of the existing tracks that were created under the Bus Rapid Transport (BRT) project. a policy to boost cycling. do this by encouraging those who want to cycle and by engaging corporates such as IT companies and others to give incentives to employees to cycle to work. creating nearly 900 cycle parking zones across the city and gradually these will come under CCTV. integrated a concept called as the Public Bicycle Sharing System. This is a dock-less system. We don’t want to create a monopoly. For example, Bhopal has spent ?6 crore and introduced 500 cycles. Instead, PMC has decided to become a facilitator and invite companies to introduce cycle sharing through the market force. We will extend support to the operators but won’t own the bicycles. This will also lead to people moving away from motorised two-wheelers and cars to cycles.

BHUBANESWAR:

Bhubaneswar Smart City Limited (BSCL) has approved the Master System Integrator (MSI) project which would leverage technology for traffic management, parking management, City Wi-Fi, emergency response system, multi-modal city transport and city surveillance. The MSI would cost around Rs 585 crore and integrate all these services on a common platform. Expected to completee 2019/20. capital expenditure of about Rs 350 crore. The concessionaire contract will be responsible for operation and maintenance of the systems for a period of seven years from the date of commissioning at an operational expenditure of Rs 235 crore.
Smart traffic management module: It will focus on reducing traffic congestion and improve commuting experience. Traffic signaling, traffic network flow monitoring, variable signage, red light
violation detection at 25 major intersections and e-challan system will be a part of this module.
Smart tracking management application: The Computer Aided Dispatch and Automated Vehicle Location system will furnish tracking, monitoring and dispatch of about 475 public service vehicles
like PCR vans, ambulances, fire service trucks, water tankers, and municipal solid waste carriers.
Smart parking management system: It will provide an efficient and customer-friendly parking management system for the city. This will include up to 5,500 units of on-street and 1500 multilevel car
parking lots. The availability and booking of parking spots can be done over a mobile app.
Emergency Management and Incident Response System: With monitoring of daily operations, the system will consist of a surveillance system through 850 fixed and 150 PTZ CCTV cameras, 30 call boxes to trigger emergency services.
Under the City Wi-Fi component, the proposed city-wide fiber-optic (OFC) network will be setup. Total 1800 Wi-Fi access points will be installed which shall provide free Internet connectivity to users for first 30 minutes or 50 MB (whichever happens earlier) at 2 Mbps download per user per session.
The Intelligent City Operations and Management Centre (ICOMC) with video wall of 40,000 sq ft will provide centralised operations control.
Other components of the MSI will include – environmental monitoring sensors, e-governance of the
city agencies, improvement in health centres and schools and integration with the Common Payment Card

OTHER RELATED NATIONAL INITIATIVES

Several Other National Initiatives Preceded Smart Cities Mission. Its important to understand them as context for the current one.

 

AMRUT – The Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation with outlay of Rs. 50000 crore in five years for all the Cities in India having more than 100,000 population to create infrastructure to provide basic services to households and to build amenities. Allocation of funds to the States is on the basis of total population and number of Statutory Towns. The State contribution has to be minimum 20 per cent or more, thus State will have to put in minimum Rs. 10000 crore as matching contribution.

Each City to prepare Service Level Improvement Plan (SLIP) and based on these plans State to prepare State Annual Action Plan (SAAP) which will be sanctioned by GOI and funding will be provided on basis of SAAP. This mission mandates a set of 11 reforms to be completed in five years. 10 per cent funds (Rs. 5000) crore set aside as incentive funds which will be given to States on the basis of each year’s reform achievement.

The AMRUT and Smart Cities Missions can be seen as inter-linked programs where AMRUT follows a project-based approach and Smart Cities Mission an area-based strategy.
Tier-1 aim to accelerate on-going key financial and service level reforms in cities.
Tier-2 aims to launch of 11 Urban Management and governance reforms comprising of 54 milestones. Additionally, five areas of “New Reforms” which include Value Capture Financing, credit rating and Municipal bonds, municipal cadre professionalization, trust and verify approach for frontline services like building permissions and land titling.
Tier-3 aim to enhance downstream accountability mechanisms. Also creates an Incentive fund with a focus on ‘rapid’ and transformational reforms along the three main pillars: governance, planning, and financing focusing on strengthening devolution, own source revenue mobilization, and flexible urban planning.

 

HOUSING FOR ALL – Prime Minister Awas Yojana Urban launched on 25 June, 2015 to cover all 4041 statutory towns and beneficiaries belonging to EWS (a family with annual income up to Rs. 3 lakh), LIG (a family with annual income from Rs. 3-6 lakh) categories to overcome estimated shortage of 20 million housing units. The “Housing for All” Plan of Action (HFAPoA) has four componentsfor its beneficiaries to take advantage of –
1) “In situ” Rehabilitation of existing slum dwellers using land as a resource through private participation, GoI grant at Rs. 100000 per house;
2) Credit Linked Subsidy (CLS) for new house or incremental housing – Upfront subsidy @6.5% for EWS and LIG for loans up to Rs. 6 lakh, calculated at NPV basis
3) Affordable Housing in Partnership – Central Assistance of Rs. 1.5 lakh per EWS house in projects where 35%houses for EWS category.
4) Subsidy for beneficiary-led individual house construction or enhancement – For individuals of EWS category for new house or enhancement Cities to prepare a separate integrated project for such beneficiaries Central assistance ofRs.1.5 lakh per beneficiary.

 

HRIDAY – National Heritage City Development and Augmentation Yojana scheme with outlay of Rs. 500 crore in four years (To be completed November, 2018). The scheme aims to preserve and revitalise soul of the heritage city to reflect the city’s unique character by encouraging aesthetically appealing, accessible, informative & secured environment. The Scheme is being implemented in 12 identified Cities namely, Ajmer, Amaravati, Amritsar, Badami, Dwarka, Gaya, Kanchipuram, Mathura, Puri, Varanasi, Velankanni and Warangal.

 

SBM – Swachh Bharat Mission launched in 2014 with the total outlay of Rs. 62009 crore to achieve scientific disposal of solid waste in all 4041 urban bodies by constructing household toilets for 1.04 crore urban households, 2.56 lakh public toilets, 2.52 lakh community toilet seats.

This significant (non-Smart Cities Mission) national initiative launched with a lot of fanfare is the Prime Minister sponsored Clean India Mission (“Swachh Bharat Abhiyan”). While not directly a part of smart cities projects, this promises to be a strong accompaniment to the smart cities mission itself, and may have the most visible impact for citizens.
However, the initiative has meandered in and out of public attention, and barring high profile public service messaging on television, did not appear to gain significant traction in terms of attainment of its measurable goals.
Housing and urban affairs ministry data show that while solid waste is picked up from doorsteps in nearly 68% municipal wards, only 30% of the waste generated in urban areas is being treated. In other words, 70% of untreated solid waste either gets dumped at landfill sites or at dump yards. The goal for cities is to build enough public toilets and treat more than 80% of the collected waste” said a government official, who was associated with the Swachhta mission.
This is expected to receive fresh impetus after the MoUD re-launched a nationwide survey (“Swachh Survekshan”) early Jan 2018 with the aim of scrutinizing its successes and failures.

Surveyors will reach out to more than 200 urban local bodies on the first day of launch and the entire exercise is expected to be completed by March. For the first time, the Swachh Survekshan “Cleanliness Survey 2018” (publicized as one of the largest of its kind in the world), will be conducted from January 4 to March 10, 2018 to evaluate achievements in cleanliness level of our urban areas. Covers more than 4,041 towns in the country and cover a population of about 400 million people, said V.K. Jindal, mission director of Swachh Bharat Mission at the ministry of housing and urban affairs. Citizen feedback would also have a much higher weightage this year compared to previous years.
A key metric in the 2017 survey is the Number# of downloads for Swachhata app. Citizens’ feedback through this app is an essential criterion under Swachha Survekshan. The city earns a certain number of points if the total downloads exceeeds a preset threshold volume before the target start date of Dec 31.
Under the first survey, Swachh Survekshan 2016, 73 cities with over 10 lakh population and all the state capitals were ranked. Mysuru had topped the list. In the 2017 survey, 434 cities with over 1 lakh population and all the state capitals were ranked. Indore had emerged as the cleanest city. The 2018 survey is the first such pan-India exercise.

INITIATIVES POWERING THE GOALS OF DIGITAL INDIA

SMART ENERGY (Power Sector): States and privately owned discoms pursued smart metering and energy efficiency.
Smart-Metering: Tata Power Delhi Distribution announced that in March 2018 it would begin distributing 250,000 smart meters to customers. The smart meters are internet-enabled, allowing them to communicate with the central system and give consumers more control over how and when they use electricity.
LED Lighting: Andhra Pradesh announced that it will work with Energy Efficiency Services Ltd (EESL) to replace one million conventional streetlights with LED lights, creating savings of $25 million per year.
LED Lighting: Odisha, too, announced that it would replace all conventional streetlights with LED lights in every town in the state.
Digital Payments: Two of Andhra Pradesh’s discoms began accepting digital payments through BharatQR, the first discoms in India to do so.

DIGITAL e-GOVERNANCE
Minimum Employment Guarantee: Nagaland has moved its entire Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme payment architecture to digital payments. Workers’ wages will now be credited directly to their bank accounts, increasing transparency and minimizing opportunities for fraud.
Benefits Disbursement: Maharashtra launched the MahaDBT portal, which will allow beneficiaries of all state government schemes to have cash benefits deposited directly into their bank accounts.
eProcurement: Six states (Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Gujarat, Telangana and Uttar Pradesh) as well as the Union territory of Puducherry announced that they would use the Central government e-marketplace (GeM) to conduct procurements.
Crop Price-Forecasting To Support Farmers: Karnataka’s agriculture department is working with Microsoft to use Big Data to develop a price forecasting model that will help farmers determine what crops to plant to obtain the best return on their investment.
Benefits Disbursement: In a boost for manual labourers, the Punjab labour department has decided to use an online portal to register construction workers and to increase transparency and accuracy in the distribution of benefits to them.

CITIZEN-FACING BASIC HEALTHCARE DELIVERY
Child Health-Screening: Telangana signed a memorandum of understanding with Microsoft India to use cloud-based analytics to improve the state’s child-health screenings. The programme will draw on the Big Data contained in Microsoft’s Intelligent Network for Eyecare to catch vision issues before they are detectable.
Digital Health Records: Telangana, specifically Hyderabad, is also home to a pilot of digital health records that will test whether digitization can increase access to state-provided benefits for women and children while also reducing the administrative load.
Digital Health Records: Karnataka is partnering with Tata Trusts to open a health services hub that will use digitization of records to better track whether area residents are receiving benefits. The project hopes to increase use of local primary healthcare centres by 50%. Karnataka also rolled out a universal health coverage programme, covering 14 million households, that uses Aadhaar to track patients.
Telemedicine/Teleconsultation For Rural/Remote Areas: Uttar Pradesh will introduce telemedicine clinics to expand healthcare reach to citizens who are not in areas with easy access to hospitals. Control rooms in five cities will be armed with a team of doctors available 24×7 to provide consultations to patients.

LEVERAGE DIGITAL TOOLS FOR BROADER ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
Digital Business Platform For SMEs & Entrepreneurs: Gujarat signed a memorandum of understanding with Google to advance its ‘Digital Gujarat’ agenda to train small and medium entrepreneurs to use digital platforms for business development.
Skills & Training Delivery: Haryana’s chief minister partnered with the Dell Foundation to create a cell in his office to lead efforts to raise the quality of education and skills training in the state.
Information Access On Smartphone For Women: Chhattisgarh has decided that empowering women through distribution of smartphones will be a way to improve access to services and information which can be used to conduct small business.
Industrial Licensing: West Bengal has decided to launch a new portal to support a new state agency created by the passage of the state’s Single Window System Bill to expedite industrial clearances for businesses.
e-Governance: Digital governance holds out the exciting possibility that even India’s smallest and least-developed states can see huge gains in their governance capabilities—as seen by the presence of Nagaland in this quarter’s round-up. Given the global interest in the potential for innovation in this area, states should have no trouble finding partners willing to provide funds and expertise.

 

CREATING A STANDARD TO MEASURE SMART CITIES PROGRESS

Efforts to create a baseline standard to measure achievement of smart cities goals was characterized by an internal disagreement between two stakeholders – The Bureau Of Indian Sandards (BIS, the national standards body), and the Ministry Of Urban Development (MoUD, the sponsor of the Smart Cities Mission)

The standards proposed by BIS (under ministry of …) were created to emphasize success and outcomes of smart cities project.

The BIS standards were rejected by MoUD, which then proposed an alternate method for measuring smart cities outcomes based on the “Liveability Index”.

The LIVEABILITY INDEX proposed by MoUD is a comprehensive “Quality of Life” type metric built on several all-encompassing sub-metrics. Its intended as a strategy to measure the ongoing pulse of progress of “quality of life” improvements via smart cities projects.

The latest City Liveability Index survey which will help a city to know where it stands in ensuring the quality of life to its citizens, will be taken up in 116 cities — covering all smart cities, capitals and cities with over one million population each. Launched in June 20117, the first ranking are expected to be published in 2018.

Some concerns about the Liveability Index include the following:
(1) The mere task of reporting on the first “Liveability Index” number will be a terrible distraction and onerous energy consuming task. Let alone having a system of managing such measurements in an ongoing basis. May defeat the very purpose of such measurements and metrics.
(2) Probably intended to mask the potential failures of smart cities projects, as implementations move along.
(3) Designed for a idealized world. Requires a complex data gathering exercise, and involves difficult-to-measure parameters. Highly susceptible to “fudging”, nearly impossible to audit the authenticity of data.

 

SOME POTENTIAL FAILINGS OF THE SMART CITIES MISSION

– FINANCIAL SUSTAINABILITY GOALS: ‘Financial sustainability’ has been mentioned only at one place (see Figure 1) in the smart city plan format but it is neither defined nor the financial sustainability indicators or parameters which will be considered while analysing the SCP of the city have been outlined in the guidelines or other smart city mission documents. Financial sustainability is not a mandatory condition or prerequisites to receive funds.

– PROPOSED PROJECTS COSTS DISPROPORTIONATE TO THE CITIES’ FINANCIAL HEALTH: The gap between annual financial outlay or cost of the proposed SCP, and the annual average revenue or operating receipts potential of the ULB is quite extreme. As an example, in case of Pune City, the annual cost of its smart city proposal implementation is just 20 per cent of Pune cities average annual revenue while in case of Dharmashala City annual cost of its smart city proposal implementation is whopping 77 times of average annual revenue of the ULB. The picture looks even more distorted when these annual cost of smart city plan implementation are compared against their operating surplus (operating receipts – operating expenditure).

– RESOURCES CONTRIBUTED BY ULBs TO SMART CITIES PLANS: most of the ULBs have not fulfilled mandatory condition of putting 25 percent share that is Rs. 250 crore from their own funds for financing SCP. Only 10 out (cities from Gujarat and Maharashtra) of 60 cities have fulfilled this mandatory conditions. Only about 6.5% of contribution of the overall resources planned come from the cities themselves, over 90% are expected to come from their respective local and state governments, and from private and land based monetization sources.

– EXCLUSIONARY BIAS IN COVERAGE: The Smart Cities projects cover onnly 18.7 per cent of total urban population (70.5 million out of 377 million) of India in 2011. Of this, the direct beneficiaries residing in ABD area are only 6.16 million, about 1.63%.
The aggregate municipal area of 60 cities is 9104 sq. km. and these cities together have proposed area based development of 285 sq. km., that is just 3.31 per cent area of the cities have been proposed for smart development.

– LACK OF RELIABILITY OF PROPOSED FUNDING SOURCES: Questiona have been raised regarding feasibility of raising proposed funds through Public Private Partnerships (PPP). Though India has many successful PPP projects at national and state level but there are not many successful examples at urban local body level due to several factors – such as lack of capacity among ULBs and among the private entrepreneurs, lack of appropriate revenue model, lack of appropriate sharing of risk, among others.

 

PRIVATE SMART CITIES INITIATIVES

As the smart cities mission struggles to keep up its quiet disjointed pace, our study discovered several alternate privately funded initiatives that have gained significant momentum.
One such example are the initiatives in the city of Jamshedpur (near Kolkata) sponsored by the Jamshedpur Utilities and Services Co. Ltd (JUSCO) , which provides utility services such as water, power and waste management in the city. JUSCO is a one-of-its-kind utility company in the country—carved out of Tata Steel from its Town Services Division in 2004—that provides the services as an integrated entity; elsewhere, different companies provide different utility services.
The industrial city of Jamshedpur in the state of Jharkhand, while not on the official list of cities under the central government’s Smart Cities Mission (also known as Tata Nagar, or Steel City, because of its industrial affiliation), is witnessing benefits from several internet of things (IoT) applications designed to make the lives of its 1-million-plus residents better.
JUSCO has built a reputation for many “pioneering initiatives” it has undertaken over the years using technology to improve the people’s quality of life. Accorrding to Ashish Mathur, managing director of Jamshedpur Utilities and Services Co. Ltd (JUSCO), “Our journey started almost 10 years back when JUSCO set up the first call centre, called JUSCO Sahyog Kendra, in the city to engage customers and address their issues with any of our services,”. Since then, the company has continued using different technologies as they came along such as combined billing for all kinds of utility services, e-billing, e-payments, well ahead of the curve.
The city is now workig with Tata Communications Ltd, to roll out a city wide low-power communication networks (LPWAN) for smart city services such as smart metering and lighting. Besides doing Proofs of Concept (PoCs) for smart streetlighting—in which lights can automatically adjust their brightness based on factors such as the available natural light or density of traffic, JUSCO has now expanded its use-cases to projects such as storm and floodwater monitoring, intrusion prevention (to protect valuable equipment), waste management, water quality control and predictive asset management.
It has begun installing sensors under the manholes in the city so that the water level can be monitored and preventive action taken before water actually gushes out of the sewers onto city streets. The monitoring is done from a centralized command and control (C&C) centre that is manned jointly by JUSCO and Tata Communications personnel.
Jamshedpur is probably the only city in the country where one million people drink water directly from the tap and do not need any kind of purification system on their premises. Before it embarked on IoT, the company would collect water samples from various parts of the city and take them to a certifying lab.

After the quality testing was done at the lab, JUSCO would “accordingly adjust the back-end supply parameters” to ensure that the quality continues to be at the recommended levels. “Now all that process is tech-driven, in which sensor-fitted devices are taken to various places, dipped into the water there and a signal is generated based on the quality of water. This signal is received at our C&C centre and the concerned people are alerted through SMS (short messaging service) about the changes they need to make in the supply system,” he explained. The result is quicker redress of water-quality issues.
In another project, JUSCO is monitoring a number of parameters for the hundreds of electricity transformers it has deployed across the city.

Tata Telecommunications has also launched a nationwide connectivity via a using LoRa Low Power WAN technology network across India. The first phase of the roll-out targets Tier 1, 2, 3 and 4 cities in India, touching over 400 million people. Alongside successful field trials in Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore, there are also 35 proof-of-concept applications being trialed at present. This IoT network will have unprecedented reach and signal strength, enabling communications up to 50 metres underground. This makes it suitable for use in metro stations and car parks, and through half a dozen walls inside buildings.

INTEREST IN USING BLOCKCHAIN

A fundamental issue with smart cities. Where smart city projects require departments or agencies to collaborate and share money and data in new ways, they may be just be asking the physically impossible; or they may impose a zero-sum calculation on those entities – the more collaboration, the less power, budget and funds, and the less reason for the separate existence of each entity.
The problem that is likely to be encountered as cities and other agencies attempt to use blockchain to streamline multi-entity processes. Blockchains – distributed ledgers that enable multiple parties to interoperate on a basis of mutual trust without the need for a central coordinating or clearing entity – can have “smart contracts” embedded in them that streamline transaction lifecycles. Thus, a blockchain could be used to deliver major consumer benefits and major cost savings by enabling the seamless exchange of data between all of the parties to the lifecycle of a car – buyers, sellers, financiers, insurers, licensors, maintainers, police forces et al – without the need for a central registry. DMVs fulfil that function today – but which DMV is going to volunteer to implement a system that undermines a lot of the rationale for its existing budget, headcount and influence, and perhaps for its very existence.