Smart City Mission Tanya Tanya Fish ... not even half completed in five years

- Government indifferent in fund allocation: About 50 per cent of the funds were received from advertisements, 3 per cent from PPP and corporate social responsibility funds and 3 per cent from loans and 1 per cent from user charges.

The Big Upade Smart City Mission was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014 to make India's cities livable and provide all the basic amenities to the citizens as per global standards. In which 100 cities of India were selected. Covering 31 per cent of the country's population, these cities were to be transformed into smart cities in four phases from January 2018. Each city was given a five-year deadline to become a smart city. However, even though the deadline is approaching, unfortunately even 50 per cent of the projects have not been completed. The selected cities under the Smart City Mission were to improve key infrastructure facilities and services to make the cities more vibrant, economically prosperous and environmentally sustainable.

However, according to government figures, 9 per cent of the 212 projects ordered in India's 100 smart cities are still unfinished. In 6 cities where 3 years of smart city mission have been completed, 5% projects are incomplete.

Of the Smart City Mission

Why is the operation incomplete?

Urban planners and experts said that the institutional and structural issues with Special Purpose Vehicles (SUVs), lack of public-private partnership to implement the mission - lack of unskilled manpower and staff, lack of funding, etc. Could not be completed.

He also criticized the mission for not including 'sustainable' and 'inclusive' factors in development plans. In addition, rapid urbanization has been challenged by waste management, air pollution, dangerous traffic, scarce resources and other factors. Of course, the smart city was conceived to solve these problems.

In fund allocation

The government is indifferent

According to government figures, the central government has not allocated funds for two cities for four years, 12 cities for three years, 13 cities for two years and five cities for one year out of the six cities selected in the first phase during the financial year 2015-16 to 2021.

The central and state governments had proposed to spend Rs 5,000 crore each in five years. As on June 7, 2021, out of Rs 5,000 crore, Rs 20.6 crore (4 per cent) was allocated. According to the certificates submitted by the states, the analysis revealed that out of this, Rs 4.5 crore (4 per cent) was used.

A 2013 study by the Delhi-based think tank Center for Policy Research (CPR) on 5 Smart Cities found that about 40 per cent of the funding came from public sources, followed by 3 per cent from PPP initiatives and corporate social responsibility funds and 1 per cent from loans and 1 per cent from loans. Has been found.

Extreme shortage of skilled town planners and engineers

According to IndiaSpend, there was a shortage of 1.1 million urban planners in India by 2020. There are currently 200 town planners working under this mission, which is very low. The Kakinada, Kanpur and Gwalior projects have seen a huge ceiling of experts.

Growing inequality

The bitter reality of this mission is that in the year 2015 alone, 12,500 people were evicted from their homes for the Smart City Mission, i.e. their houses were demolished. As per the report, 6 vacancies have been created in 100 smart cities including Coimbatore, Nagpur, Bhopal and Varanasi. No detailed statistics are available on whether these people were rehabilitated or not.

The Smart City proposal emphasizes digital reach and feedback through applications like My Government website, Facebook, Twitter, etc., but people are marginalized by the process of India's digital partition.

What to do now

According to experts, there is a need to aim for a universal and equitable approach in all cities across the country due to access to housing, services, water supply-health care and unemployment. The use of smart technology to stay one step ahead in the case of Smart City requires consideration on its own motto. How to monitor and implement equipment to maximize emissions from limited resources? Citizens should be at the center of innovation and their suggestions should be taken to ensure this. A city model should be small, easy to operate and self-sufficient. Small towns are perfect for smooth administration where people skilled in technology, management and finance come together. There is also a need for a transparent platform. There will be no collective benefit from a complex and large-scale project, special vehicle purposes will have to be created on a small scale and a more explicit project should be launched to deliver a targeted solution in less time.