Dimapur out, Kohima in: M Venkaiah Naidu announces selected Smart City

Al Ngullie
Dimapur, August 27

The commercial center of Dimapur–perceived to be the most sensible and suitable choice for a town in Nagaland that could carry the demands of a ‘Smart City’–has lost out to her geographically-unstable, imploding, and stressed sister, Kohima town.
During a press conference with media persons in New Delhi on Thursday, Minister of Urban development M Venkaiah Naidu announced the towns and cities in the country that the centre has selected to be the torchbearer of the subcontinent’s urban estate revival scheme, the Smart Cities Mission.
The Smart Cities Mission is an innovative initiative by the Government of India to drive economic growth and improve the quality of life of people by enabling local development and harnessing technology as a means to create smart outcomes for citizens.
The union minister issued a list containing of 98 cities selected under Smart Cities Mission. Among them is Nagaland’s capital town, Kohima. The government has accommodated a town from each of the 7 northeastern region states in the scheme.
In his statement on August 27 marking the announcement, M Venkaiah Naidu said that the cities and towns were nominated by respective states and union territories at the end of first stage of the ‘City Challenge’ competition. In the ‘completion’, all the urban local bodies in each state and union territory were evaluated based on their financial and institutional capacities and past track record, the union minister said.
The list includes 24 businesses and industrial centers, 24 state capitals, 18 cultural and tourism cities, 5 port cities, 64 small-and-medium-category cities. Three cities / towns are educational and healthcare hubs. So far nine capitals of states failed to make it to the final list, a copy of the documents made available to this reporter on Thursday shows.
Lending weight to the notion that a town being the capital doesn’t necessarily mean it was suitable, the minister said that nine capital cities were not selected. Itanagar, Patna, Shimla, Bengaluru, Daman, Thiruvananthapuram, Puducherry, Gangtok and Kolkata failed to be selected and this goes to prove that the smart city selection was not influenced by the stature or importance of the cities,’ he said. However, the minister did not elaborate what influenced the decision taking the selected towns.
In his statement the union minister said the state must not be ‘practical and realistic’ as the thrust for developing the cities begin. In his words, the states / urban local bodies should rise to the ‘smart challenge’ and ‘perform or perish’.
After releasing the list of selected cities Naidu complimented states and union territories ‘for conducting objective evaluation in the first stage of competition’.
India’s humanity of 13 crore
Naidu’s statement also detailed the populations of the selected towns. Eight have a population up to one lakh. 35 have populations between one and five lakh. 21 cities are in the population range of five to ten lakh. 25 towns have populations of above 10 lakh but below 25 lakh. Five cities have a population each in the range of 25 to 50 lakh while four metropolitan cities namely Chennai, greater Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and greater Mumbai have population above 50 lakh.
Naidu observed that 65 small and medium towns and cities making to the list of smart city aspirants is a welcome feature since making them smart would lay good foundation for better urban management when they further expand.
Venkaiah Naidu also informed that two more cities would be announced after the government of Jammu & Kashmir sought more time to make up its choice while additional information was sought from the government of Uttar Pradesh regarding the 13th smart city slot allotted to that state.
According to the minister, the 98 cities selected under the Smart City Mission have a total population of about 13 crore accounting for over 35% of the country’s urban population.
Further, he said that under Smart City Mission and Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT), 80% of the total urban population would benefit from ‘enhanced quality of living’.
“With the selection of almost all the cities under the Smart Cities Mission, all the selected cities will have to prepare city level smart city plans and these will be evaluated in the second stage of competition based on a broad set of criteria to pick up the top scoring 20 cities for financing during this financial year,” Naidu said.
“Funds may be released to these 20 cities by the end of this year, he said. Others will be asked to improve upon the identified deficiencies before participating in the next two rounds of competition”.
The cities that will be selected during the second stage of competition will be provided with financial assistance from the center. The funds would amount to Rs.200 crore in the first year followed by Rs.100 crore each year during the next three years, the minister said.
Smarty city’s not about flash and fancy–Naidu
Elaborating the concept of Smart City, Venkaiah Naidu said, ‘A smart city would ensure core infrastructure needed for decent living in urban areas’.
“We are not aiming at making our urban landscape look fanciful and flashy.
The prime objective is to enhance the quality of urban life by addressing deficiencies in core infrastructure. Expectations in various quarters may be high but the Mission is very practical and realistic in its intentions and objectives.”
Naidu said that making smart cities would be a ‘challenging task and states and urban local bodies have to rise to the challenge’. The central government has undertaken measures to empower them to meet the challenge through substantially enhanced central assistance and decentralizing decision making besides assisting in capacity building of urban local bodies, the union minister said.
As against the central assistance of only Rs.36,000 crore during the 10 years of JNNURM, the central government will be providing about Rs.3.00 lakh crore under various new urban initiatives.
Naidu observed that the country cannot afford to miss this opportunity of recasting India’s urban landscape; the situation is to ‘perform or perish’ for the states and urban local bodies, he said.
The formulation of new urban sector initiatives is based on ‘bottom up’ planning, based on consultations with citizens as desired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.