IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

The ‘Smart City’ had never seen anything like it before. Marooned people being rescued by fire and ODRAF personnel; bikes, cars and even buses with passengers floating in water bang in the middle of busy roads; people having to move upstairs after inundation of the ground floor and going without electricity, food and drinking water for days on end; pumps being pressed into service to drain out accumulated water .. you name it. As a wag commented, the day is not far off when stranded people in Bhubaneswar will have to be airlifted and food packets would have to be air dropped for marooned people!

While city’s long wait to have a robust public transport through state-of-the art technology driven buses is about to be over with rolling out of ``Mo Bus’’ service on November 6, Capital Region Urban Transport (CRUT), the company to manage the show, will come up with the route network in three phases, starting the first one from the launch date.

The Mo Bus Phase-I Network will be launched on November 6 with nine routes. The Mo Bus Phase-II Network will be launched from 15th November and Mo Bus Phase-III Network from 10th December.

Rourkela has been allotted a total of Rs 939 crore of which nearly Rs 793 crore has been utilised for execution of 59 projects.

Over 91 per cent of funds released for the implementation of smart city projects have been utilised in the state capital, while Rourkela has also spent around 84 per cent of the funds under the Smart Cities Mission (SCM) so far, reveals statistics of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs.

A team comprising 17 young probationers of 2018 Batch Indian Administrative Service (IAS) from Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration , which is on a study tour-cum Bharat Darshan, arrived here in the city to visit the office of Bhubaneswar Smart City Limited (BSCL) and see some of the key projects of BSCL.

The young IAS probationers were briefed about the various projects under the Area Based Development, Pan City Programmes, making Bhubaneswar Socially Smart. After the brief on various projects by General Manager BSCL Saroj Kumar Swain and Technology Officer Asit Rajhans, the probationers also saw the Bhubaneswar Operations Centre (BOC) or the command and control centre for the city. They also visited sites for gathering field experience at Adaptive Traffic Signalling System at Rupali Square, Smart Janpath near Sishu Bhawan Square, Bus Queue Shelters, Public Bicycle Sharing (PBS) station near Sishu Bhawan Square and Mo Bus Service.

The smart cities mission, launched in 2015, aims to tackle the escalating problems in urban areas with regards to transportation, energy supply, governance, basic urban infrastructure services and overall quality of life.

The ambitious smart cities mission of the government has "failed to make remarkable progress" as only 5 per cent of the proposed projects are completed so far, according to Anarock Property Consultants.

Karnataka Minister for Urban Development and Housing U T Khader on Wednesday said Rs 91.34 crore has so far been spent on seven cities in the state that have been selected under the Smart City project.

The central and the state governments have each earmarked Rs 886 crore for the project.

Smart grids can help in reducing the accumulated technical and commercial losses, unscheduled outages and peak demand

Under the ambitious smart city mission, cities are scrambling to put together their plans to transform themselves into smart cities. The smart cities programme is a key initiative of the government that aims to make Indian cities more efficient, livable and vibrant and to infuse economic activity in the country.

The government has constituted a committee under chief secretary R K Srivastava who is also the secretary, urban development, to enable Goa to avail of benefits under the recently launched smart city scheme. Panaji, Vasco and Margao have qualified in the first round of the scheme, and will have to compete with other cities in the country to get funding, in the second round.

Under the smart city scheme, a selected city will get funding of 500 crore distributed over five years. An official from the urban development department, said they will submit a proposal to the Union ministry of urban development requesting it to consider three cities— Vasco, Margao and Panaji—as one unit and leave them from out from the competition, as a special case.

While the mission promotes citizen participation, limited involvement can skew opinions

People’s participation in Central government’s Smart City Mission (SCM) worth ₹2,05,018 crore is limited to digital literates, potentially skewing opinions, observed a World Economic Forum (WEC) paper.

WEC recently published acommunity paper titled ‘Transforming Infrastructure: frameworks for bringing the fourth industrial revolution to infrastructure’ which has cited the analysis of SCM policy framework. “SCM promoted city-specific local solutions prepared in consultation with the city residents to meet the nation’s diversity challenge. While SCM promoted citizen participation, it was limited to digital literates, potentially skewing opinions” it observed.

Pasighat Smart City Development Corporation Limited (PSCDCL) on Friday has appointed the ‘Project Management Consultant’ (PMC) for Pasighat Smart City post competitive bidding. The consortium of International Consulting companies Tractebel Engineering from Belgium and Price water-house Coopers (PwC) Pvt. Ltd from USA have been selected as PMC to deliver smart and sustainable designs, with State of the art technology and engineering towards successful and timely implementation of the Pasighat Smart City Project.

After 'smart cities', it is now the turn of Haryana's villages to don a spiffy look.The state's five villages, which have been adopted by President Pranab Mukherjee, will be developed into 'smart grams' in two phases, said the President's secretariat team members who visited the areas on Friday along with chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar.

A 'smart gram' is a village that is self-sufficient, is enabled with technology and has communal harmony.

The progress report that has tracked progress in eight smart cities namely Pune, Surat, Ahmedabad, Jabalpur, Vishakhapatnam, Chennai, Ludhiana and Bhopal

Pune has achieved maximum progress in projects launched by it under the smart cities mission followed by Bhopal and Ahmedabad, says the AmCham and PwC report titled Snapshot of projects under Lighthouse Smart Cities.

“IT inventions are the bedrocks are the base of smart cities development. Andaman has a submarine under-cable project underway, and by June 2020, the lack of connectivity may be a thing of the past. We are in the process of bringing about Rs 20,000 crores of investment to the islands from private stakeholders in the next 4 years, and Rs 30000 crores till 2025”, asserted an optimistic Chetan B Sanghi, Chief Secretary, Andaman & Nicobar Administration in a tete-a-tete with Poulami Chakraborty of BW SmartCitiesWorld. Excerpts below:

As the bureaucratic chief of Andaman and Nicobar Island, please elaborate to us of the key strengths of the Union Territory, over its mainland counterparts or states.

Puducherry is in the process to evolve from E-Governance to Digital Governance and building digital capacities, achieve the digital dividend for each and every citizen through digital literacy accessibility for all, says Padma Jaiswal, Secretary, Directorate of Information Technology, Government of Puducherry, in conversation with Elets News Network (ENN).

The Oulgaret Municipality would conduct a public voting here to know the views of the people with respect to converting area into a smart city.

Chief town planner S Raghunathan said that since the draft plan was to be prepared for with the inclusion of the views of the people, a voting would be conducted. The views of the stakeholders are being elicited for selecting three smart applications for infrastructure improvement. Of the 24 solutions provided under the Smart city scheme, Puducherry has shortlisted five.

Citizens need to choose from among solid waste management, ICT and e-governance

The polls to determine citizen choices for the smart city project got off to a low-key start on Tuesday.

The opinion poll campaign is being run jointly by the Oulgaret Municipality, which ranked among the 20 cities that made it to the first list of smart cities selected by the Ministry of Urban Development, and the Town Planning Department.

The preliminary work of the second phase of the Smart City project is likely to begin soon, guardian minister Girish Bapat said on Friday.

He convened a meeting of the advisory forum of the Pune Smart City Development Corporation Limited (PSCDCL) and he told the authorities to speed up the work of the first phase of the project. Bapat said preparations for the second phase were expected to begin in the next couple of months.

To encourage the participation of citizens, the MC has released the web links for the public which would enable them to post their comments about the proposed Smart City concept for Amritsar.

The MC is under the process to formulate the vision document for transforming Amritsar into a Smart City. This document would be submitted to the Centre by December 15. The Smart City project broadly covers 24×7 water supply, assured power supply, sanitation/solid waste management, IT connectivity and digitisation, good governance particularly e-governance and citizen participation, safety and security of citizens, efficient urban mobility and public transport, health and education .

The state's local bodies department has finally settled on Jalandhar, Ludhiana and Amritsar to be developed under the Centre's 100 smart cities project, and sent the proposal to New Delhi on Monday.

Under the project, the city will soon have a smart grid system, well maintained roads, smart traffic lights, advanced CCTV cameras installed on traffic signals, good water and sewerage system, and e-governance systems for all major public services.

In a bid to provide green lungs to the city for checking environmental pollution, the district administration has selected 10 locations in the city for sprucing them to enhance the green cover in the city under the ‘Smart City’ project.

Divulging details, Chief Executive Officer of the project Vishesh Sarangal said 10 locations — Beant Singh Park, Tobri Mohalla Park, Dr BR Ambedkar Park, Industrial Area Park, Tankiwala Park, Urban Estate green belt, DAV Bridge flyover, Hoshiarpur road flyover, Pathankot Chowk flyover and Canal Area — had been selected for enhancing the green cover in the city.