Aakar Patel | Why ‘Smart Cities’ Project Never Took Off In India, And Was Quietly Shelved

I leave the house, go out into the street and look around. It’s not much different from 10 years ago, except there’s much more traffic.

A headline a few days ago read, “Crores spent, Smart Cities Mission leaves more bills, shallow infrastructure.” What is obvious to those who study what is happening around them is that the 10-year program ending this year has had almost no impact, the report says. Now that he is dead and buried and no more will be said about him, we can examine his remains.

The “Smart Cities” mission was established with a concept note stating that the aim is to create cities that will offer “decent living options to every resident” and provide “a very high quality of life comparable to any developed European city,” according to the ministry of urban development’s concept note on Smart Cities. The government has said this will happen by 2020. Arun Jaitley had informed Parliament in 2014 that these Smart Cities were required to serve the middle class, which would be greatly expanded by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s economic policies. The following year, 2015, the language was changed to make the target more modest, and instead of emulating a European city, it was said that India’s Smart City would provide citizens with adequate water supply, guaranteed electricity supply, sanitation, public transport, affordable housing for the poor, women’s safety, healthcare and education. This, of course, was no different from what municipalities in all cities focused on. The problem was not just with the logo and naming, but with strict management. This may be why the Modi government’s interest in this waned almost immediately. In 2021, it was reported that “the Smart Cities project could not be implemented due to half of the funds not being spent.” The report said the project “should be on a victory lap in 2020”, but the reality is that only half of the total Rs 48,000 crore “approved” between 2015 and 2019 has been allocated by 2019. Only three-quarters of this half was actually released, and only 36 percent of what was released was used. Although R48,000 billion was “approved”, only R6,160 billion was actually spent.

Parliament’s Standing Committee on Urban Development said it was “surprised at the actual progress made so far under the mission at the grassroots level” and also “observed numerous examples of one agency subverting the work of another.” 26 out of 35 states and Union territories used less than 20 per cent of the released funds. The usual problems with India also came to light. The standing committee said it was “surprised to see that despite existing mechanisms, complaints about poor work under the mission are still pouring in before the committee”. He recommended that “all cases questioning the claim that the work carried out within the scope of Smart Cities originates from local MPs should be promptly investigated and the guilty held accountable.”

Reports from bodies still involved in the issue have highlighted some fundamental flaws in the Smart Cities mission. He emphasized high-level infrastructure and technology-driven surveillance but did not address basic amenities such as water, schools, public hospitals and housing. With its area-based development, it focused on spending most of the money in small, already developed areas of city centres. In Bengaluru, for example, the Smart Cities allocation has been used to develop Church Street, which is already much more developed than much of the rest of the city, and elite neighborhoods such as Infantry Road, Kamaraj Road, Tata Lane, Wood Street, Castle Street, Dickenson Road, Kensington Road, St John’s Road, Residency Road, Kasturba Road, Bowring Hospital Road, Millers Road, Lavelle Road, McGrath Road, Convent Road, Queen’s Road, Hayes Road, Raja. Ram Mohan Roy Road and Race Course Road.

In New Delhi, it was also the area under the New Delhi Municipal Corporation, which was already the most developed part of the National Capital Region. The mission was targeting a specific segment, the upper class, which constitutes a very small portion of the population, and not any neo-middle class that Prime Minister Modi’s economic policies have not already produced. Elitism was seen elsewhere as well; for example, in the public bike sharing project implemented in many cities including Pune, Delhi, Bhopal and Coimbatore. The bike rental instructions on the company’s website were only in English and only accepted online payments. Smart Cities were pushing India’s urban poor further to the margins. “Allocations” in 2019 remained the same as in 2018. In the 2021 Budget, the phrase “Smart Cities” was never used. Tikender Singh Panwar, former deputy mayor of Shimla, explained why: “These smart cities are supposed to be lighthouses for other cities in the country. The budget is completely silent on this issue as it has become one of the biggest embarrassments for the Modi government.”

So you probably didn’t know what the program intended to do (other than have a flashy name), what changes it actually made, or whether the program was actually terminated, never to be talked about again.

The writer is the president of Amnesty International India. Twitter: @aakar_patel