Gandhinagar: India’s push to accommodate a booming urban population and attract investment rests in large part with dozens of “smart” cities like the one being built on the dusty banks of the Sabarmati river in western India. So far, it boasts modern underground infrastructure, two office blocks and not much else.
With an urban population set to rise by more than 400 million people to 814 million by 2050, India faces the kind of mass urbanisation only seen before in China, and many of its biggest cities are already bursting at the seams. Ahead of his election last May, Prime Minister Narendra Modi promised 100 so-called smart cities by 2022 to help meet the rush.
At a cost of about $1 trillion, according to estimates from consultants KPMG, the plan is also crucial to Modi’s ambition of attracting investment while providing jobs for the million or more Indians who join the workforce every month.
His grand scheme, still a nebulous concept involving quality communications and infrastructure, is beginning to take shape outside Gandhinagar, capital of Gujarat, with the first “smart” city the government hopes will provide a model for India’s urban future.
“Most (Indian) cities have not been planned in an integrated way,” said Jagan Shah, director of the National Institute of Urban Affairs which is helping the government set guidelines for the new developments.
To build smart cities, India allocated 60 billion rupees ($962 million) in its annual Union budget for the financial year starting April 1, even as it spent just a fraction of last year’s allocation of 70.6 billion rupees, said Shah.
Existing cities like Dholera and Surat in Gujarat, and Visakhapatnam in the east, have already begun work to transform into smart cities with help from companies such as Microsoft Corp , IBM Corp and Cisco Systems . Beyond GIFT, greenfield projects are likely to face hurdles including land acquisition rights and lengthy approval processes, as well as finding the right location.
GIFT has the advantage of being flanked by a river on one side and a national highway on the other, and also sits between Gujarat`s political capital of Gandhinagar and its business hub of Ahmedabad, with a large international airport. Physical masterplanning takes time. Complexity is built into this. And my sense is it is probably going to take longer than what most people think,” said McKinsey`s Sankhe.
Bureau Report
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