Smart Cities

''The new NDA government under the leadership of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had announced that the UPA government’s Scheme of RAY would be discontinued and the liabilities of this scheme are proposed to be subsumed in the proposed new scheme, i.e., 'Sardar Patel National Housing Mission. ‘In fact, the NDA Government has proposed to provide Housing for All by the year 2022 and the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation is in the process of developing a new scheme to cater to housing for all by 2022, by building 30 million houses, mostly for the economically weaker sections and low income groups. The projects already proposed under RAY are planned to be subsumed in the new scheme. Experts believe that it will be tough task to fulfill the NDA government’s promise of “housing for all by 2022,” considering the track record of different government programmes in the recent years. The Standing Committee on Urban Development in its recent report (18 December, 2014) has urged upon the Ministry Urban Housing and Poverty Alleviation to make concerted efforts “to remove all the bottlenecks and implement the scheme in true spirit otherwise, the target for “Housing for All” would remain a distant dream.” The NDA government has also come out with the ambitious plan of building 100 smart new cities in the country. Smart cities are projected to be equipped with basic infrastructure and will offer a good quality of life through smart solutions. Assured water and power supply, sanitation and solid waste management, efficient urban mobility and public transport, robust IT connectivity, e-governance and citizen participation along with safety of its citizens are some of the likely attributes of these smart cities. The government seems to look forward to the building of the smart cities that will have better facilities, better connectivity and better environment. In 2015, the NDA government has unveiled a list of 98 cities, including 24 state capitals for its Smart Cities project. Moreover, there is also no reference about how far the concept of smart cities will help to make the Indian cities slum-free. In fact, it has to be noted that the strategy for the development of Indian cities, including the concept of smart cities, will not be fruitful unless it includes a plan for making the cities slum-free.