This is what nay-Sayers and pessimists are constantly saying, that with the bureaucracy and red-tape involved in governance today, this initiative could loose steam similar to the much marketed Aakash tablet, or the multitude of other E-Schemes that lay half baked in Govt establishments.

Smart Cities has been one of the most talked about new initiatives by the Modi Govt, and has been the cornerstone of his marketing campaign in Urban areas. Lets get an objective insight into the challenges and the success drivers involved, and at the end each of us can conclude/comment on ‘if we will ever see an Indian Smart City in our lifetime’.

The Challenges

1. No Central Authority: Though the central Modi govt has the vision and the optimism to drive Smart Cities, City governance is a City subject and is generally under an elected Mayor and the governing council. The Central Govt or State Govt can only educate and enlighten but not enforce.
2. No Standards and Processes: One large concern for many cities is the lack of established processes and standards that can enable the city govt to work towards a goal irrespective of who is at the helm of affairs. Most city govts today are a reflection of who is at the helm, and every time there is a change in govt or the IAS cadre things change, this inconsistency has resulted in broken growth where long term initiatives take the brunt and are left half baked.
3. Complex Political Relations: Since most projects around Smart Cities are highly politicized and marketed, a complex political landscape with competing political parties makes it hard for a success story of one city to be adopted in a competing city, killing the opportunity to standardise.
4. Cost of Implementation vs ROI: As more and more private sector companies come into the foray to sell high end gadgetry with limited lifespan to city govts and in-turn make a killing, are not really adding value or creating ROI opportunities for govts. Also with cash being tight and budgets directly related to the size of the urban tax paying population of a city, implementation costs are prohibitively high with no or little ROI, leave alone the maintenance of such systems.

Critical Success Drivers

Apart from the obvious work required on the above challenges, here are a few critical drivers for success for Smart Cities to be a reality:

1. Involvement of Citizen Groups: It is absolutely important to market to and invite Citizen groups from different demographics and geographies of a city to contribute towards planning and development
2. Encourage local innovation: With costs of infrastructure for Smart Cities being high, city govts should invite and encourage locals to provide innovative solutions against a problem statement that haunts the city. The govt should have the necessary processes and abilities to quickly execute
3. Solve the basics first: A ton of solutions available globally are a nice to have, but the govts need to first focus on ‘must have’ solutions to create a strong platform and implement necessary processes for it to not crumble
4. Have a Vision: This is the absolute baseline, A Vision needs to be carved out for every city, so as to ensure that no matter who comes or goes, everyone is working towards that singular Vision, much like in an organisation

So being an optimist that I am (not because I am right, but because I see the bright side until I am beaten down), I feel that a Smart City is not too far away and given the will shown by both at the Centre and most States, a Smart City is a very certain reality in the near future, given the challenges are addressed and the public stays excited.

So for those who don't believe this will happen, open to understand why.

-Parikshith Reddy (Director)

Zippr – India’s Smart Address

About Zippr: Zippr is a young Indian Start-Up trying to solve the problem of addresses, Zippr is a new address format that can replace unstructured addresses in India into an 8charecter code (eg: GTSQ1489), this code can be used over internet or SMS to find any dwelling (slum or apartment) and works as a great revenue source for a City Govt. With cities of Hyderabad, Vijayawada, Guntur, etc using Zippr technology for free, other cities are signing up to provide great citizen services where any public or private company can take a Zippr to deliver a service (Food Delivery, Ambulances, Police, E-Com, etc). To know more www.zippr.in