SMART CITIES MISSION: An intersection between Competitiveness, Capital and Sustainability.

As countries move from being primarily agrarian economies to industrial and service sectors, they also urbanize. As a rising global trend, it is seen that urbanization accompanies economic development. This is because urban areas provide the agglomerations that the industrial and service sectors need. Urban areas also contribute a higher share of the GDP. It is for this reason that cities are referred to as the engines of economic growth and ensuring that they function as efficient engines is critical to development across the world.Though urbanisation is a global phenomenon but 90% of the worlds urban population growth will take place in developing countries, with India taking a significant share of that. The share of the GDP from urban areas in India has been growing. While the urban population is currently around 31% of the total population, it contributes over 60% of Indias GDP. It is projected that urban India will contribute nearly 75% of the national GDP in the next 15 years. But, recasting the urban landscape of a country like India is a formidable challenge. It is in this context that the Government has decided on developing 100 Smart Cities in the country. What is a Smart City? It is rather difficult to give a definition of a smart city. Smartness in a city means different things to different people. It could be smart design, smart utilities, smart housing, smart mobility, smart technology etc. Smart Cities are those cities which have smart (intelligent) physical, social, institutional and economic infrastructure while ensuring centrality of citizens in a sustainable environment. It is expected that such a Smart City will generate options for all residents to pursue their livelihoods and interests meaningfully and with joy.

SMART CITY AND INDIAThe global experience is that a countrys urbanization up-to a 30% level is relatively slow but the pace of urbanization speeds up thereafter, till it reaches about 60-65%. With an urban population of 31%, India is at a point of transition where the pace of urbanization will speed up. It is for this reason that India need to plan our urban areas well and cannot wait any longer to do so. The relatively low base allows us to plan our urbanization strategy in the right direction by taking advantage of the latest developments in technology especially in ICT (Information and Communication Technology). Moreover, it also offers us an opportunity to create conducive environment for creation of many times more employment opportunities and economic activities while improving the quality of life substantially. Keeping this in mind the government has launched the Smart Cities Mission under which 100 smart cities would be built and the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) for 500 cities with outlays of Rs 48,000 crore and Rs 50,000 crore, respectively. The aim of the mission is to more efficiently utilise available assets, resources and infrastructure to enhance quality of urban life and provide a clean and sustainable environment.

The architecture of the Smart Cities Mission and AMRUT is guided by the twin objectives of meeting the challenges of growing urbanization in the country in a sustainable manner as well as ensuring the benefits of urban development to the poor through increased access to urban spaces and enhanced employment opportunities.SMART CITY MISSION This Mission of building 100 smart cities intends to promote adoption of smart solutions for efficient use of available assets, resources and infrastructure with the objective of enhancing the quality of urban life and providing a clean and sustainable environment. Under this initiative, focus will be on core infrastructure services like: Adequate and clean Water supply, Sanitation and Solid Waste Management, Efficient Urban Mobility and Public Transportation, Affordable housing for the poor, power supply, robust IT connectivity, Governance, especially e-governance and citizen participation, safety and security of citizens, health and education and sustainable urban environment. Under this Mission, cities to be developed will be selected through a competition intended to ascertain their ability to achieve mission objectives. Each selected city would get central assistance of Rs 100 crore per year for five years. It will be implemented through area based approach consisting of retrofitting, redevelopment, pan-city initiatives and development of new cities. Special emphasis will be given to participation of citizens in prioritizing and planning urban interventions.

AMRUT MISSIONAMRUT is the new avatar of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM). It seeks to lay a foundation to enable cities and towns to eventually grow into smart cities.It will be implemented in 500 cities and towns each with a population of one lakh and above, some cities situated on stems of main rivers, a few capital cities and important cities located in hilly areas, islands and tourist areas.

IMPEDIMENTS IN THE WAY OF BECOMING A SMART CITY

Governments ambitious plan, has, without doubt, changed the discourse around Indian cities, generating excitement amongst business leaders and upwardly-mobile middle-classes tired of living in third-world environments. Whether the smart city program will translate into desired outcomes is, however, debatable. Issues of Land, Employment and city government capacity suggest that the task before India is not an easy one. Owing to various impediments, India will struggle to ensure that the new smart cities are able to alleviate Indias urban ills or secure broad-based economic opportunities and improvements in living standards for the majority.Some of the Impediments are as follows:

THE COST FACTORSwitching over to Smart Cities is a costly affair though in the long term, proponents argue, efficiency gains and energy savings make them well worth the investment. Smart Cities use digital technology to make urban systems more efficient, cost-effective and environmentally sustainable. Sensors embedded in buildings and infrastructure networks can help cities incorporate Renewable Energy such as solar power, or save energy by turning streetlights on only when a road is in use. But all the smart city infrastructures and management systems used in the new cities, provided by global firms, are highly expensive.

LIMITED FINANCIAL RESOURCESIndian states are eager to participate in the smart city program but in India, urban local bodies account for a third of public expenditure but just three percent of revenue. Provincial governments in India, in charge of land and urban development policy, have an incentive to undertake lucrative and prestigious smart city projects without taking into consideration their feasibility or real costs and often with little sense of what governing a city entails. State leaders are hankering to build cities that are ever taller, bigger, grander and more world-class, expensive pipe-dreams with little bearing on Indias acute urban challenges. This exercise diverts precious public resources that would be better spent improving existing urban settlements or providing public services and infrastructure in urbanized rural areas, which account for nearly 30 percent of Indias urban growth.

THE LAND ISSUESCritics are sceptical whether a land-intensive urban policythat of building new Greenfield Cities, is advisable in India. Acquiring land to build and expand cities in India is a vexed issue with numerous political undertones, as is evident from the Parliamentary logjam on the Land Acquisition Bill these days. Consensus on these issues calls for making important legal provisions like setting up higher compensation levels and instituting social impact assessment as well as an environmental one, which are not easy to come. In fact, Municipal governments across countries use land revenues to fund urban development, boosting GDP growth through infrastructure building and construction. Even this is a challenge in Indian cities.URBAN UNEMPLOYMENTWhy are rural landownersreluctant to give up their plots of land, often small and unproductive? Indian farmers may hold onto their land as security because their employment prospects in the new cities are dim, concentrated in low-wage and insecure informal work. Industrial growth has been capital rather than labour intensive, and like elsewhere in India, over 90 percent of the urban workforce is informal. Will building new cities change the dynamic? Policies to balance urban growth away from major cities to new growth poles, prevalent in India in the 1960s and 70s, rarely worked. More recent Indian efforts to build industrial parks, less complex and ambitious projects than new cities, have resulted in few successes. More often, according to a World Bank study, they generate negative spillovers, provide handouts, sit empty, or simply do not get built.

HUMAN RESOURCE BOTTLENECKSuccessful cities, as urbanist Ed Glaeser points out, are about people, rather than buildings and roads. Less than 30 percent of Indian workers are educated above the primary-level. India faces a dire shortage of high-skilled and medium-skilled workersthe sorts of workers that firms in the new smart cities will seek. The 50 million or so unskilled workers that will join the work force over the coming decade, on the other hand, are, according to a McKinsey global labour report, surplus to the requirements of Indian Economy. They face poor Employmentprospects and an urban future of poverty and insecurity, unless policy-makers take measures to expand labour-intensive manufacturing, and improve conditions in the informal economy. Strengthening basic infrastructure and social services across urban regions will be critical. But in resource-constrained India, the utility of a hundred custom-built cities with digitized built environments is questionable.

GOVERNANCE ISSUES

Could the new policy lead to beneficial competition between Indian states, producing high levels of urban and economic growth. At present, it is unclear what the governments goals are beyond building a hundred new smart cities. Metropolitan regions in India, unlike most other countries, lack autonomous governments with the power to shape their own affairs. They are controlled by provincial administrations, and managed by a patchwork of state, city and municipal government bodies, public and private corporations and village panchayats. For smart systems to substantively improve planning, coordination and governance, they will need to have a centralized metropolitan governing structure in place, accountable to city residents.

INSTITUTIONAL CHALLENGEIndia is experiencing rapid urban growth in a context where municipal institutions are weak or non-existent. Hundreds of new towns emerged as a result of in-situ urbanization over the past decade, with the population, density and economy of urban settlements, but without municipal institutions capable of collecting taxes, planning urban development and delivering public services. Most so-called smart city or new city projects underway in India develop without municipal involvement, outside official city boundaries.Most are not new cities at all, but large commercial and residential developments or self-contained industrial enclaves adjacent to major cities. The fragility of civic institutions will have a serious impact on Indias ability to deliver broad-based improvements in wellbeing to its rapidly growing urban population.QUALITY OF LIFEIndias cities drive economic growth, but fail to provide a satisfactory quality of life to most of their residents. The urban middle-classes have seen their incomes grow, but contend with erratic water and power and hazardous levels of pollution. Roads are congested and unsafe and parks and public spaces are few. India now has the worlds highest number of traffic fatalities, overwhelmingly pedestrians and cyclists. Urban poverty levels are rising and inequality is manifestly stark in Indias major cities. Indian Cities are liveable cities but disregard environmental and social considerations is poor. Till now urban planning has been short-sighted, haphazard and counter-productive. In such a situation if no proactive measures are taken then Smart City Mission may exacerbate the very problems of environmental degradation, lack of economic opportunity and unresponsive government that smart cities are supposed to resolve.

WAY AHEAD: TURNING DREAM INTO REALITYIndias urban population, by 2040, will be over 600 million. For rapidly urbanizing countries like India, Smart Cities are indeed an opportunity to harness urban growth to sustainable development. Investing in top-of the-line infrastructure is a means to leapfrog the development ladder, jettisoning older, inefficient and unsustainable systems and avoiding the costs of retrofitting. The proposed Mission is not just about creating new cities, but also overhauling the existing urban settlements. This is a step in the right direction, but it requires that the very idea of a smart city accommodates a more complex, locally-adapted and innovative set of interventions, focused not just on physical infrastructure but institutions, regulatory frameworks and local participation. A smart city is only as smart as its underlying model is a reasonably accurate representation of the urban system. Amartya Sen describes India as a place where islands of California exist amidst a sea of sub-Saharan Africa. To mitigate, rather than entrench the inequities of urbanizing India, the government needs an urban agenda that is more wide- ranging, inclusive, innovative and sustainable while using the idea of Smart City.