Tech solutions make Indian cities smarter

The Narendra Modi led government's smart cities initiative is well on its way with the first 20 short-listed for facelift. Crucially, the use of technology and innovation is the booster shot for the smart cities initiative to dove-tail other government initiatives. Technically speaking, the Narendra Modi government's UJALA scheme - aimed at bringing down electricity demand by replacing inefficient incandescent and CFL bulbs with LED lamps - isn't part of the Smart Cities initiative. But it's a smart solution to a problem plaguing urban India. It has been estimated that once fully implemented, the UJALA scheme will save 100 billion units of electricity, reduce the load by 20,000 MW and cut the emission of greenhouse gases by 80 million tonnes per annum. “With India selling 770 million LED bulbs every day, the country will soon become the LED capital of the world. Prices of LED bulbs have come down 80 per cent to Rs 52 from over Rs 330 two years ago,” Indian power minister Piyush Goyal told investors in London recently. That is just one of the many initiatives by the Narendra Modi government to leverage technology to improve the lives of Indians. As part of the Smart Cities initiative, 100 cities would be retrofitted to make them “smart”. The government recently released the list of the first batch of 20 cities that will receive funding this year to convert them into smart cities over the next five years. Defining a smart city There is no one definition of a smart city but all descriptions agree on some points. Such cities should offer sustainable and high quality lifestyles for all strata of society regardless of education or income levels and a quality of infrastructure comparable to the best in the world that includes, among other things, clean air, housing, sanitation, healthcare, job and livelihood opportunities, communication and transport solutions, education, 24x7 power supply, entertainment, sports and leisure facilities. The scheme to replace incandescent and CFL bulbs with LED lamps ticks at least three of those boxes - it ensures clean air by reducing CO2 emissions, it helps keep healthcare costs down by bringing down environmental pollution and make it easier to provide 24x7 power by reducing the load on the grid. Funding the smart cities Each of the 20 selected smart cities will receive $30 million in central assistance during 2016-17 and $15 million per year over the next three years to upgrade and build the infrastructure necessary to transform themselves into smart cities. The state governments, individual urban bodies and their private sector partners will have to raise an equal amount as well as any further sums of money that may be required to meet the goals set out in their agreement with the central government. The first 20 smart cities The 20 cities selected for funding under the first batch are Bhubaneswar (Orissa), Pune (Maharashtra), Jaipur (Rajsthan), Surat (Gujarat), Kochi (Kerala), Ahmedabad (Gujarat), Jabalpur (Madhya Pradesh), Vishakhapatnam (Andhra Pradesh), Solapur (Maharashtra), Devangere (Karnataka), Indore (Madhya Pradesh), New Delhi Municipal Corporation, Coimbatore (Tamil Nadu), Kakinada (Andhra Pradesh), Belagavi (Karnataka), Udaipur (Rajasthan), Guwahati (Assam), Chennai (Tamil Nadu), Ludhiana (Punjab)and Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh). A further 40 cities will be selected next year and 38 the following year for funding and assistance under the scheme.

Handling migration An important issue the planners will have to keep in mind is the continuing influx of rural migrants into India's cities. ”As the fruits of development reach an increasingly large number of people, the pace of migration from the rural areas to the cities is increasing. A neo-middle class is emerging, which has the aspiration of better living standards. Unless new cities are developed to accommodate the burgeoning number of people, the existing cities would soon become unliveable. The Prime Minister has a vision of developing one hundred smart cities, as satellite towns of larger cities and by modernising the existing mid-sized cities,” Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said in his maiden Budget speech in July 2014. At present, a little less than a third of all Indians live in cities, towns and other urban and semi-urban centres. Experts say this figure will rise to 50 per cent by 2035. That means urban India will be home to 750 million people then, given the population growth rate of 1.2 per cent. Managing waste Handling the waste generated by this huge mass of people will be a major challenge for the smart city planners. Disposing this waste sustainably is sine qua non to ensure that these cities remain “smart”, liveable and sustainable. Planners have experimented with several alternatives. For example, Gujarat International Finance Tec City, India's first smart city, will have a high technology waste management system that will segregate organic and inorganic waste at source and process them into manure and thermal power, respectively. Using technology from Switzerland, waste from individual buildings will be transferred to a collection centre via underground vacuum suction pipes at speeds in excess of 110 kmph. The manure produced from the organic waste will be used for gardening within GIFT City while the inorganic waste will be burned to generate thermal power that will also be used locally. A successful trial run was conducted earlier last year. Booster shot for the economy The smart cities initiative will lead to a huge increase in demand for cement, steel, capital goods, household and electrical goods and provide a fillip to the 250 other industries that have backward linkages with these. The green-shoots of recovery seen in some of these sectors, notably cement and steel, can be attributed to the early demand from this programme. As the initiative gathers steam, demand from developers involved in building smart cities is expected to lead to an all-round uptick in economic growth.