Smart Cities of Future India

By siliconindia | Monday, 14 September 2015, 03:51 Hrs

BENGALURU: Uniting technology and democratic governance can chart a course for the future of inclusive economic growth of India. The Government of India has identified 98 urban locations to be converted as smart cities, covering 13 crore people, and accounting over 35 per cent of the country’s total urban population, according to rediff.com.

With the vision premised on tapping the potential of urban India’s continued ascent. By the year 2030, the population of Indian cities is expected to leap from 375 million to 590 million, and share the national GDP from the present 60 Percent to 70 percent. To build smart cities, India has been allocated 6,000 crore and this huge investment is expected to transform the existing cities into high-class urban areas.

To actually upgrading these cities, the smart cities vision combines proposals familiar to urban planning with new thinking on how technology can help power the productivity that cities make possible. PM Modi’s smart cities vision includes a maximum travel time on public transportation of 30 minutes in small and medium-size cities and 45 minutes in metropolitan areas and 100 percent household access to Wi-Fi.

However the question here is that, do the people in these smart cities have enough financial support to live? As majority of the people are from lower class and some are from middle class families too and are they suited to stay in this modernized smart cities is the real question to debate on.

Here the government should ensure that such cities get a proper sanitation facility and its people breath clean air and drink clean water, along with 24/7 power supply at an affordable price. This will make more sense for smart cities to be inclusive.