Claim: In 2015, the Government of India had promised to build 100 smart cities within five years.
FACT: The deadline of this project has slipped forward, because the cities which have to be made smart could not be decided at the same time. Not only this, a very small portion of funds out of total allocated funds for the smart city project have been used.
The Indian General elections have begun on last 11th April 2019.Has the NAMO Government has kept what the party had promised during 2014 before coming to Power in the center.
The government announced the investment in smart cities to the people during the campaigning of Lok Sabha elections in 2014. After this ‘smart city scheme’ was launched in the next year i.e. 2015.
Opposition parties have told the government’s ‘smart city scheme’ mere a publicity stunt and also alleged that the outcome of smart city is not showing on the ground.
India’s urban population is growing rapidly and it can reach 60 million in the next decade.
The situation of Indian cities is getting worse due to poor infrastructure and poor public conveniences.
What is ‘smart city’?
The Government of India has cleared that there is no definite definition of smart city. But it promised to provide funds to improve the lives of people living in 100 selected cities across India. The government had talked about the use of modern techniques and methods to make cities smart.
The government claimed that these 100 cities have only buildings but the government shall fulfill the need to meet the shortage of power and energy and also claimed the NAMO Govt. shall also use new technology to deal with all basic problems like sewage water, waste and traffic.
Modi Government selected 100 cities from across the country for the Smart Cities Mission and the final list of cities was selected in 2018.
However, the project started so late that its first deadline was left behind and now the time to complete ascended to 2023.
Under this scheme, every smart city was said to be given some annual budget from the center. Apart from this, there was a plan to get some amount from the states and local bodies too for the sake of smart city project.
Did the project complete?
By December 2018, the government had approved 5110 plans of smart city Mission whose budget was approximately 2000 billion rupees.
In January 2019it was absolutely claimed by this government that 39 Percent of it’s plans were either released or have completed. Apart from this , the government even did not provide any solid information in regard to their claim about the Smart City Project.
Although official figures show that the budget allocated for the smart city mission, the cost was much lower than actual.
In between 2015-2019 166 Billion of Rupees were sanctioned and allocated. But in January of 2019 the government itself admitted that only 35.6 Billions of Rupees have been spent on this scheme which is in fact , mere 21 Percent of the total budget.
Apart from this, these questions are also rising that how much money was spent and where did it use?
80 Percent of total Money allocated for the above all development of the cities were used in some specific areas of the city.
This is the reason for which , a NGO named Housing and land Rights Network named the Smart City Mission as ‘Smart Enclave Scheme’.
Some analysts say that smart city missions focus more on new plans rather than increasing the existing capacity of the cities.
A report of the Parliamentary Committee has urged that the agencies who are responsible for implementing these schemes and due to lack of proper coordination with these implementing agencies ,people are not able to see the impact of expenses made for Smart City Mission.
The government says that it has offered local bodies training to increase their existing capacity under this Smart City Mission. But it is not clear how successful these proposals of the government are.
