In 2015, India’s government made a forward-thinking move with the Smart Cities Mission (SCM), holding the potential to revolutionize the urban scenario. This ambitious initiative aimed to intersect technology, creativity, and improved urban planning to construct 100 cities, acting as paradigms of sustainability and efficacy.
Fast forward to today, with approximately ?1.5 lakh crore invested into this initiative, the ramifications tell a different tale. Intense monsoons have left cities like Gurugram, Bengaluru, and Mumbai inundated, leaving commuters stranded on flooded highways, with ‘smartness’ seeming far from reality. The initiative, initially seen as a stepping stone for the future, appears to have deviated towards selective aesthetics and misplaced emphases.
The World Bank highlights that by 2050, India’s urban population is projected to nearly double from its current figure of 480 million. With enormous cities such as Delhi, Mumbai, and Bengaluru continually expanding, it’s apparent that India is grappling with an expansion problem. Simultaneously, Tier-2 cities like Bhubaneswar, Coimbatore, Indore, and Jaipur are rapidly developing as new growth frontiers.
However, this swift pace of urban metamorphosis is not without its problems: informal settlements are booming due to housing deficits, transportation systems are crumbling under the surge of traffic, and haphazard construction has blocked drainage systems, causing severe congestion. With these factors at play, SCM had an opportunity to focus on sustainable satellite cities around these emerging growth points.
However, rather than building sustainable new urban hubs, the mission has focused mainly on superficial upgrades in existing cities – overhauling bridges, transforming traditional streetlights into ‘smart’ ones, and equipping command centres. Despite these interventions, the deeper issues related to housing, waste management, and flooding have been largely untouched.
Unfortunately, the SCM seems to have commandeered a disproportionate amount of resources on these ‘smart’ areas, failing to address the immediate need for developing completely new urban areas, which could efficiently absorb the ballooning urban population. This is a missed opportunity to plan for the inevitable influx of rural-urban migration.
Coinciding with the SCM, the governmental initiative—Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT)—has been working to improve the basics of urban living, including providing clean water, developing green spaces, and overhauling sewerage and stormwater drain systems. It initially received a budget of ?50,000 crore over five years, which was later bolstered with a colossal outlay of nearly ?2.9 lakh crore aiming to achieve universal water and sewerage coverage across urban India.
Yet, the reality on the ground dissents from these grand plans. Every monsoon season, cities like Mumbai are brought to a standstill. Roads in Gurugram are also transformed into waterways during heavy rainfall, while several other cities, including Vijayawada and Ludhiana, frequently turn into islands after heavy rainfalls.
This setback is not simply a matter of slow progress but reflects fundamental structural deficiencies. India’s urban development missions are still in silos instead of being interconnected. Various schemes, digital services and residential infrastructure are developed by separate missions, resulting in solutions which do not consider the unique needs of each city.
Furthermore, a disconnect exists between plans envisioned in New Delhi and their practical implementation in diverse cities. The essence of urban policy should be long-term planning and empowering local governments rather than pushing them to the outskirts. If neglected, there remains the risk of creating ‘smart’ cities that are unfit for habitation.
Moreover, the Mission failed to prioritize greenfield projects. Most of the 100 chosen cities were selected for retrofitting, not establishing new centers for growth. While large-scale greenfield projects did receive attention in areas like Dholera, Aurangabad Industrial City (AURIC), GIFT City in Gujarat, and Greater Noida, these initiatives prioritized finance and industry over inclusive and sustainable urban living.
Pioneering projects aimed at constructing new industrial corridors under the National Industrial Corridor Development Programme (NICDP) received approvals. But there was a struggle to shift priorities from retrofitting to creative city-building, aiming to mirror China’s impressive transformation of Shenzhen, a fishing village into a booming financial and technological metropolis.
The future cities’ appeal should not be judged solely by the existence of high-rises and highways, but by easy living, good governance and affordability. Providing fiscal incentives could stimulate such cities’ viability. For instance, a decrease in property taxes and stamp duties, along with streamlined approvals, can stimulate new city growth.
In the current scenario, Indian property tax compliance is unsatisfactorily low, while the stamp duties are among the world’s highest, discouraging formal transactions. This potentially deleterious situation for new smart cities could be mollified by introducing tax breaks, making the initial financial burden of the cities more bearable.
If executed correctly, the short-term loss in revenue might be compensated by an influx of residents, a stimulated real-estate market, and eventually, a wider, more stable tax base. With the right roadmap, satellite cities around more prominent urban hubs could eventually flourish into well-governed, resilient centres of urbanization.
As the water recedes in the aftermath of floods that swept many of India’s most populous metros, the verdict should be clear: these were not just climatic events, but manifestations of an urban imagination gone wrong. The urban revolution in India is coming at lightning speed, and the stark choice that lies ahead: continue the superficial augmentation of overwhelmed metropolises or courageously build new, well-funded and honestly habitable cities, is crucial to charting the future course of the nation’s urban metamorphosis.
The post Rethinking the Indian Urban Development: The Visions and Realities of the Smart Cities Mission appeared first on Real News Now.
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