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businesstoday.in/smartcities-india
A Tale of 100
RACHIT GOSWAMI
Smart Cities
` 7,060
crore
45 Minutes
` 40 lakh
crore
100 Mbps
135 Litres
Water supply to
each individual everyday
200 Beds
Number of beds in a multi-speciality
hospital for every one lakh people
living in a smart city
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businesstoday.in/smartcities-gift
smart citizens where citizens have all the information they need to make informed choices about their
lifestyle, work and travel options.
For many Indian municipalities, smartness thus
far meant e-governance+, or anything a bit more
than e-governance services. That view is changing.
Smart city is a place which is integrated consumer
to government to business; where there is optimal
employment and growth and where you get the right
skill sets. The growth being beyond survival issues of
roti, kapada and makaan, says Jalaj Shrivastava,
Chairman, New Delhi Municipal Corporation.
As more people migrate to urban centres for employment, cities need to get smarter about how they
manage the utilities, transport and congestion, healthcare as well as education. So Indias concept note has
put together all these to come up with one of its own.
The ministry note defines benchmarks for various
services. In transportation, for instance, the maximum
travel time should be 30 minutes in small and medium-sized cities and 45 minutes in metros. The water
availability has to be 135 litres per capita per day. In
addition, 95 per cent of residences should have retail,
parks, primary schools and recreational areas accessible within 400 metres.
Advisory firm Frost & Sullivan stitches
the different pieces that make up a smart
city. It highlights eight parameters that
make a city smart: governance, energy,
homes and buildings, mobility, infrastructure, technology, healthcare, and citizen.
No city has all of these and according to
Frost & Sullivan, in 2025, there will be
around 26 global smart cities that will have
at least five of the above parameters.
Some suspect that one day a definition
could be imposed top-down from Delhi. The
Bureau of Indian Standards is working on a
smart city standard. And while standards
are generally voluntary, nothing stops the
government from making them mandatory.
We are struggling with the definition.
As a country we are struggling because its
not one definition that can fit across the
country, says Banmali Agrawala, President and CEO
of GE, South Asia. One cannot have a common definition of what constitutes smart mobility, for instance.
For a hill city, says S.B.S. Bhadauria, Secretary of
Sikkims Transport Department, smart mobility means
ropeways, and not trams or buses.
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HAMBURG Seatropolis
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ing (VGF). Interestingly, Naidu says the only area that will
be funded directly by the Centre will be the digitisation of
each smart city. VGF, in turn, will depend on ratings each
city secures on parameters such as sanitation, infrastructure, transport, education facilities, open public space and
credit worthiness. We will be engaging CRISIL and a lot
of [ratings] organisations. Certain states already have
credit ratings, says Naidu.
An SPV model will typically have three-four equity
partners the central government, the state government,
municipal bodies and the private sector. A city can have
multiple projects. Each of those projects can be dealt with
by an SPV, which would become the nodal agency. But
forming project-specific SPVs has its own challenges. It
would mean devolution of power from the municipal
commissioners, MLAs and other government officials to
the person heading the SPV who will have executive powers. SPVs should be delegated powers to plan, develop,
execute, implement, operate and maintain. All six are
equally important. Some people will not be comfortable
with relinquishing their power but ultimately, the governments job should be restricted to making policies, says a
government official who does not want to be named.
As far as PPP is concerned, they can go for joint interest in which private sponsors consisting of a consortium of private companies will contribute equity to the
Visionary leadership is very important... If they (the leaders) dont have a clear
idea and are just mouthing smart cities, you know nothing is going to happen
44 BUSINESS TODAY March 15 2015
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businesstoday.in/smartcities-selection
industan Construction
Company has invested
around `5,000 crore till
March 2014 to construct Lavasa,
a planned hill city near Pune.
Besides ensuring a good walking
town, Lavasa has a well laid out
plan for water sustainability. It
is setting up a command centre
that monitors water treatment
and sewerage systems, on a realtime basis.
RACHIT GOSWAMI
the Delhi airport metro line. Reliance Infra said that DMRC
failed to cure substantial defects in the civil structure
designed and built by DMRC, within the period prescribed
under the Concession Agreement.
If the private sector invests, is there a visibility on returns? Companies are unsure if citizens will pay more for
a better or value-added service. If there is a capital investment in say GPS systems for buses, will citizens at least pay
for the operational costs in terms of higher bus fares? Or
will they pay for better-quality water?
Naidu insists there are no free lunches and that the
government is looking to get citizens to pay for better
services. Correcting service charges requires political
stamina for a leader because all these years, we are used
to free services. We made people to think sab kaam sarkar
karega, hum bekaar baithe toh chalega. We politicians have
developed this attitude over the years. Keeping that in
mind, first of all, we have to change the mindset, he says.
The key to rolling out is how we get our act together
in terms of consolidation at the government level, the institutional frameworks, the roll out plans, how innovative
we are in drawing the funds and keeping citizens engaged.
Citizens can make or break it, says Karuna Gopal,
President, Foundation for Futuristic Cities, at the BTNasscom panel discussion.
Despite the host of issues, a large number of private
players are keen to play a role in Indias smart cities story.
The governments concept note says companies including
KPMG, PwC, IL&FS, Accenture, Microsoft, IBM, Cisco,
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Retrofitting Cities
Once the cities are selected, they would either be
guided to redevelop or retrofit. Retrofitting, for instance, will be done in areas such as Defence Colony
AJAY THAKURI
Congestion, slow-moving
trafc, lack of parking lots
and high pollution levels
Efcient information
sharing between citizens
and government agencies
Extensive role of
middlemen
Competition between
cities to attract investment
through ease of rules and
clarity on regulations
Source: NASSCOM, PwC
@Goutam20; @manukaushik
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