With the formation of 97 Special purpose vehicles (SPVs), the Smart Cities Mission SCM), a key programme of the Narendra Modi government, is finally seeing some movement. The mission, which was launched in the summer of 2015, is an ambitious urban renewal and retrofitting project that aims to smarten up 100 cities in India.
The first year was spent in the selcetion of these cities through competitions, by reviewing the proposals they submitted. The second year saw no much progress in actual work, and in 2017, only seven per cent of the budget allocated for the mission was actually spent.
Under the SCM, each city has to form an SPV to execute the smart plan, and this had to be headed by a chief exectuive officer who will be the interface between the Centre, state and municipal organiations, as well as the various other private and public stakeholders in the plan. Cities took time to form SPVs, and in 2017, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) actually had to hold another round to competitions to reinject enthusiasm in the mission. Surat won the first India Smart Cities award last summer for "showing great enthusiasm in implementing of projects under India Smart Cities Mission", especially in areas of urban environment, transport and mobilityand sustainable integrated development.
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To further prod cities to begin issuing tenders for implemeting projects in the smart city scheme, the centre organised implementathons, with the result that by end of last year, tenders worth one lakh crores were issued.
Urban planners are hoping that budgetary allocations will be increased this year. In the last budget, there was a financial outlay of Rs 6,169 crore for the SCM with the expected deliverable of formation of SPVs for ten smart cities and 115 projects to be implemented in 60 cities for Smart Road, Street Redesign and Smart Parking. It is believed that the outlay could rise by another Rs 500 crore in the coming budget.
While the SCM is one of those projects which will have long incubation periods, some of the deliverables are almost done. For instance, New Delhi Municipal Council has achieved a 100 replacement of electricty meters with smart meters, an initiative with which it hopes to save over Rs 12 crore per year with removing data entry errors and the manual cost of metering. From the consumer's point of view, the new metering scheme will help them monitor energy consumption and habits.
When launched, the SCM had a budget of Rs 48,000 crore, with the centre planning to invest Rs 500 crore per city, with a matching investment by the states. The states could raise these funds through private investments. Many of these cities are raising municipal bonds to get the funds required.
As per the most recently available report, the SCM saw a big implementational surge in the last financial year (2018-19), with over 2,300 projects worth around 91,000 crore tendered. Nearly 72 per cent of these projects (over 1,600 of them) worth around Rs 51,000 crore are under implementation or done. The Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy believes that if this momentum is maintained, the SCM projects could see a faster completion. The big achievements in the last fiscal are a three-fold rise of projects tendered, and another three-fold rise in projects completed.
The duration of the mission is five years. Since the first 20 smart cities were announced in January 2016, the first lot of "smartened cities" should be ready by 2021.
