Smart Cities and India
Pragyan Youth Summit ’18: Where we are and the journey ahead
The term “Smart Cities” has gained much traction over these past few years ever since India’s Urban Development Ministry approved funding for 98 cities to be transformed into Smart Cities.
Despite this well-intentioned initiative, India initially seemed uncertain about the term itself. Even the Smart Cities Online Portal agreed that they were unclear on what a Smart City is.
The mission statements declare, “There is no universally accepted definition of a smart city. It means different things to different people… Even in India, there is no one way of defining a smart city.”
Instead of defining standards for a smart city, the ministry opted to create a livability ranking to determine the smartness of these cities, leaving many doubtful if the mission was truly intended to make the cities smarter.
But Indians are nothing if not adaptable. Even when faced with vague terms and blurred standards, many organisations and cities have joined forces to answer the call to action.
Bhopal has developed a bicycle sharing scheme where users can hire a cycle for a dedicated bicycle track around 50 locations using a mobile app. Gaia Smart Cities, a venture of former Reliance Jio President, Bipin Kumar, and Chief Information Officer, Sumit Chowdhury, plans to raise $15–20 million from global institutions for product development targeted at smart city initiatives.
India’s youth have proven that they are not to be overlooked. On 20th January, the city of Chennai will experience the Pragyan Youth Summit centred around the theme - Mission Smart Cities. Here, successful young individuals will empower their peers by discussing solutions for a smarter India. Conceptualised by students of the National Institute of Technology, Trichy, Pragyan is the ISO 9001:2015 and ISO 20121:2012 certified student-run organisation that conducts an annual techno-managerial fest during the month of February or March. These college students are certainly creating a positive ripple of innovation using technology.
Many of these young minds have created successful startups that suit the mood of the country and focus on the key issues such as connectivity, efficiency, and sustainability. The Internet of Things has been widely regarded as a tool to connect India’s most remote corners. Recently, India has seen an influx of many startups that use the IoT and Big Data to improve the quality of life. How India Lives, founded by John Samuel Raja, is one such startup that has tapped into the repository of data on smart cities and has also made it public, allowing others to use this data for improvement.
This digital revolution could not have come at a better time. According to the United Nations, by 2050 India will add 400 million people to its cities. Without being smart about its resources, providing urban services like education, healthcare, security, and government service will be impossible. This can be only be done by running rigorous data analyses on current investments to find new ways of increasing resource utilisation, making Open Data and Analytics one of the fundamental pillars of any smart city.
The Connected Digital Platform (CDP) is a novel technique that aggregates and correlates large amounts of data from various sources using extensive networks and IoT. At the Pragyan Youth Summit, CISCO will be taking charge by conducting a workshop on using the CDP to efficiently save and retrieve information and engineer a smart community.
While we may never come to a consensus on the definition of a smart city, we can certainly agree that India is headed towards a connected, sustainable, and smarter future.
For more information on the Pragyan Youth Summit, head to the official portal. Follow Pragyan, NIT Trichy on Facebook for more updates.
