Smart Cities Six years and counting

The Smart City Mission was conceptualized with a vision to develop 100 lighthouse cities with ICT enablement of projects and service delivery models

By NSN Murty & Abhijit Pandey

The world is witnessing rapid urbanization and India is not untouched by this phenomenon. As per World bank’s analysis by 2050, the population living in cities could swell to about 66%, adding more than 2.5 billion people to the urban population. Whereas for India, at the current rate of growth, the urban population will reach around 60 crores by 2030. It is estimated that about 50 percent of the country’s population (around 80 crores) will be urban by 2050 (World Urban Prospects, 2018). Rapid urbanization thereby is putting tremendous pressure on population centers and presents a challenge for cities to provide sustainable livelihood to their citizen. To enhance livelihood, most thriving cities seek sustainable, resilient, and safer growth.

Rapid urbanization is putting a tremendous pressure on population centers and presents a challenge for cities in our country. At the current rate of growth the urban population will reach around 60 crore by 2030 and 80 crore by 2050

Keeping this in mind and to make the cities more resilient, inclusive, and sustainable, the Hon. Prime Minister of India launched an ambitious Smart City Mission (SCM) for the development of 100 cities across India. It is for the first time that a Mission was launched where the projects for the development of the city and the key success factors were decided by “Jan Bhagidari” and where the allocation of funds was to be decided on the basis of competition.

Infrastructure Development

The Smart City Mission was conceptualized with a vision to develop 100 lighthouse cities where key Infrastructure development along with ICT enablement of the projects and service delivery will be implemented. The projects were identified with three pillars as their core: Quality of life, Economic Ability, and Sustainability.

The key performance indicators (KPI) were framed to evaluate the impact of these projects on the livelihood of the citizens and the Liveability Index of these cities was identified.

The Smart Cities mission right from its inception has brought ground shifting impact on the livelihood of a few cities. It changed the way projects are conceptualized, brought in digital methods of tendering thereby rooting out corruption and bringing in transparency. The central and respective state ministries have also kept a vigilant eye on the project time periods, thereby expediting the implementation cycle.

As per the Smart Cities data available with the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, across the length and breadth of India, the 100 Smart Cities have envisioned to implement almost 5151 projects with a proposed investment of INR 2,05,018 Crore.

As of January 2022, almost 92% of approved mission projects are tendered, and around 70 percent had either been completed or were under advanced stages of implementation. The projects envisaged by various smart cities not only ranged from various sectors but also catered to the basic requirement of citizens.

The projects comprised of ICT driven Pan City interventions such as digitization of delivery of basic municipal services through e-governance, setting up of Integrated Command and Control Center (ICCC), Supervisory Control & Data Acquisition (SCADA) enablement of Water Management System, ICT enabled Solid Waste Management System, and many more.

These ICT-enabled projects have made the service delivery efficient and sustainable. The digitization of service delivery enabled to the government to cater to the last citizen in the queue without the middleman, the ICT-enabled SWM project brought revolutionary results in the cleanliness drive. The Integrated Command and Control Centre became the brain, arm, and legs for the cities during the COVID pandemic and the CCTV surveillance provided a sense of safety and security to the citizens

The Mission also comprised of infrastructure-related projects which focused on the development of a pre-defined area through infrastructure-based projects such as the development of the central business district, Incubation centers, Vending Zones, Multi-Modal Hubs, etc. These projects utilized the concept of mixed land use and implemented through a public-private partnership (PPP) model. They have a strong focus on economic returns thereby uplifting the liveability of residents of a city.

A few examples of ICT led interventions which have brought significant change in the way services are delivered are as follows:

• New Town Kolkata Development Authority (NKDA) has successfully introduced blockchain technology for its online birth registration process since December 2018. The city has also implemented a one of its kind LoraWan based Smart Energy Efficient streetlights which enabled the city to save approximately INR 65 Lakhs. The city also implemented an App based Public Bicycle Sharing (PBS) System for citizens -- thereby encouraging green growth and non-motorized zones.
• Solid Waste Management project in the Varanasi Smart City (VSCL) utilizes the India Urban Data Platform exchange. VSCL utilized the data collected through various sensors, GPS based automatic vehicle location system (AVLS) devices and provided various priority areas as well as solutions to mitigate SWM related issues in the city. The data assisted VSCL to come up with an app to predict accurately the estimate of dry and wet waste thereby assisting the authority in better planning and resource utilization.

On the infrastructure front a few of the interventions need to be highlighted.

Like restoration and rejuvenation of lakes in the city of Coimbatore. The project consists of clean water, open areas, parks, food stalls etc. Whereas cities like Warangal and New Town Kolkata have created cycling and walking facilities for 40 kms as well as graded barrier-free three km cycle track respectively.

The cities identified in the mission are moving towards data driven governance. So far 75 cities have established command and control centers integrating other components such as Traffic, Surveillance, Street Lights, E-Governance modules, SWM, SCADA, etc. The ministry is also thinking of moving toward utilizing existing infrastructures as a service for other cities within and beyond Smart City.

A good example of this is Bhopal Smart City. Here the ICCC platform is on a cloud and the ICCC platform is shared as a service with other 6 smart cities in the state of Madhya Pradesh. This brings down the overall upfront capex expenditure from the cities as they don’t have to spend on the ICCC platform, the cloud services, the security components, etc.

Though, the Smart City Mission in the last 6 years has been instrumental in managing a rapid urbanization and has impacted the livelihoods of millions of citizens, it will not be wrong to say that the last 6 years of the Smart City Mission have also been a huge learning curve and this learning can be leveraged and utilized to make the program even more effective and outcome-oriented.

The 100 Smart Cities have envisioned to implement almost 5151 projects with a proposed investment of INR 2,05,018 Crore.

Next Phase

The next phase of the mission is likely to start focusing on:

•  bottom to top approach for the Smart City projects where the end-to-end mapping of the projects right from the GIS mapping to integration with command-and-control center is considered so that proper analytics is run to get a tangible output
• the outcome-based approach and the evaluations being done on the tangible output coming from the projects and the initiatives. Currently we citizen’s don’t have a view of the impact that will be created through a project. A paradigm shift is required in the approach of the project implementation and evaluation
• Within a state, multiple cities are doing same project differently, some places they fail, some places they succeed. There is a need for data-driven management and monitoring of both the projects and the funds utilization at the State level for higher efficiencies and more transparency. This State level City-Data Center will also help other important programs like AMRUT, Namami Gange, Jal Shakti, PMAY etc. to be integrated together for seamless implementation at the city level. City-Data Driven approach will make decision makers to get a holistic view of the whole state and help them in making pro-active decisions.
•  The next important step beyond creating digital & future-proof physical infrastructure is to understand the changes that Citizens & Businesses would like to see in the city in the next 5/10/30 years accordingly cities need to get ready with changes in their processes. E.g. will anyone will or need to come to the city municipal office for any citizen service in 5 years? How will I utilize the concept of “Digital Rupee” in my processes? Why can’t the entire city data (non-personal) in the open domain enable businesses and startups to use them for economic growth in the city? Why should City Administration run city apps, can I get a private sector under an “Operate” model?

Sustainability

One of the pillars of Smart Cities is sustainability. Though the focus is to make livelihood sustainable, it is important for the projects being implemented to be financially sustainable. Thus, the approach should slowly be more on self-sustainability of projects.

Towards this, the mission has to come up with an accountability framework for timely completion of projects and better utilization of central/state funds. Secondly, city SPVs need to think about collaboration to create hub-spoke models, not every city needs to implement everything, it can “share”. E.g. can I have a single operation for municipal property tax services as a shared and operate model for multiple cities. Therefore, saving a lot of open and using it somewhere else efficiently. Clubbing a few projects also help in creating extra funds for operations e.g. Streetlights with roadside street furniture or City Fiber project with City WiFi.

Finally, another important aspect is the focus on social impact projects around healthcare and education, since these are usually delivered by para-statal bodies hence they are not included but without a transformation of these at the city level, we cannot have a smart city. In my view, we should carve out special thematic versions with funding from Ministry of Education and Ministry of Health & Family Welfare integrated with Smart Cities Mission focused on creating world-class learning environment and healthy environment at the city level.

In conclusion. the Smart City Mission, one of the world’s largest urban rejuvenation programs, has been a lighthouse for cities not only in India but across the globe, 6 years is just a seeding stage we must ensure that these projects are well managed so that they deliver the desired outcomes in coming years.

We will track this progress further in the months and years ahead.

Murty, Partner & Leader, Government & Public Services, Deloitte Consulting

Pandey is Associate Director, Government & Public Services, Deloitte

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