Last year, soon after the Modi government was sworn in, Mr. Narendra Modi announced his vision of setting up 100 smart cities across India. And just the word smart gave us wonderful ideas, and left many of us wondering that what exactly did he mean by smart!
A smart city means a city equipped with basic infrastructure, to give a decent quality of life, a clean and sustainable environment through the application of smart solutions. Such a city would boast of assured water and electricity supply, sanitation, solid waste management, effective urban mobility, good and safe public transport, robust IT connectivity, e governance and the list goes on. Such a city would also give citizens a full chance to participate in the community development and also ensure their full safety and security.
Since the time, our honorable PM put across his vision, a race has been on among cities to land on that list and be given the ultimate smart transformation. Ministry of Urban development is compiling a list. The basic idea behind 100 smart cities mission is to promote adoption of smart solutions for efficient use of available assets, resources and infrastructure.
Smart solutions that the Modi government is trying to promote are as follows-
- Public information
- Grievance redressal
- 100 percent treatment of waste and water
- Electricity service delivery
- City’s engagement
- Renewable source of energy
- Smart parking
- Intelligent traffic management system
These smart solutions will change the way a city functions and the way people are accustomed to live in a lot of ways. The next step is the identification of those 100 cities. It has been decided that all states will get 1 city.
For carrying out this entire drive, Smart cities council India has been formed just like US based smart cities council.
After government announces guidelines, states will be asked to nominate names of cities for a city challenge competition. The selected 100 cities will get central funds worth 100 crore for the next 5 years.
This entire competition cum drive seems very exciting and promising. Let’s see which cities make it to the end and go through the transformation and become the super smart cities! 😀
11 Comments. Leave new
Great vision of government and well written article
The article highlights all the relevant points. In addition to it, I would like to say that Narendra Modi, the Man of Action has left no stone unturned to make India a better place to live in.
Good article. I think smart cities will be better than SEZs.
Thank you Rahul. 😀
And yes Shatakshi, completely agree with you! He’s actually bringing reforms in many areas.
Thanks Akul. And let’s see how everything turns out to be! 🙂
Nice Article!
I personally think that smart cities is a evolving concept though…i liked the article anyway…good effort
Very nicely explained …nice article.
well explained
smart article! 😀
good effort!