Evaluation of India’s Smart Cities Mission

Project Overview

In 2015, the Indian government launched the Smart Cities Mission, a $15 billion initiative to upgrade 100 Indian cities into world-class habitable places within a five-year timespan. Notably, the mission emphasized local governance as opposed to centrally-issued directives in line with the 74th Constitutional Amendment Act, and technology as an enabling agent in delivering better services to urban residents.
The Smart Cities Mission introduced a City Challenge Competition for the first time in India, wherein cities submitted proposals and the top cities were chosen through a competitive process of selection. We evaluated these proposals based on a scoring index we developed.

Challenge:
At Brookings, we sought to evaluate the status of the Smart Cities Mission at the end of Phase I where 20 cities had been chosen.

My Role:
I served as the lead researcher from India on this project jointly conducted with Brookings Institution DC and mentored 3 interns over the course of the project.

Research Process

1. Defining the Problem

• Context:
  The idea of bringing the smart city concept to India was part of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s election manifesto in 2014. Research has demonstrated the evolution of the application of this concept to Indian cities over time – what started as a push for 100 greenfield cities evolved into a brownfield retrofitting and redevelopment project after the election.
  
• Research Questions:
  • How do smart cities evaluate themselves and set policy priorities?
  • How do the smart city benchmarks for key city features compare to existing national benchmarks?
  • How is the implementation of proposed projects progressing, and what barriers exist to continued progress?

2. Methodology

• Quantitative Analysis:
  Drawing from Census 2011 data, Ministry of Urban Development Service level indicators, Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) Smart City Indicators, and MoUD Urban and regional development plans formulation and implementation (URDPFI) guidelines, we analyzed the benchmarks for key city features and evaluated the proposals submitted by 20 cities.
• Stakeholder Interviews:
  Over 20 interviews were held with bureaucrats, consultants, and policymakers. These interviews helped determine the progress of the Smart Cities Mission

Key Findings

• The benchmarks for the 24 smart city criteria meant to guide the self-evaluation of cities are inconsistent with existing national benchmarks.
• The formation of Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) has been slow, inconsistent and lacking in technical expertise.
• In the same way, as institutional structures are not completely formed, progress in implementation is highly varied across cities.
• The implementation of city-wide key basic infrastructure projects is mostly dependent on parallel initiatives, limiting the smart city projects to just one area of the city.
  

Impact and Recommendations

• Policy Recommendations:
  Based on the research, we recommended the following interventions:
  • Address basic infrastructure issues to truly enable smart city projects to have an impact – this has to go beyond convergence with existing projects to better coordination and integration efforts across vertical and horizontal levels of government and with other initiatives
  • Ensure consistency with existing benchmarks; Incorporate robust data collection and analysis as part of the implementation process so progress is tracked
  • Focus on full formation of the SPV Board so as to make progress on implementation; equip the SPV with more technical staff members
  • Update procurement policies and enable ease of business to improve RFP processes and actual project implementation
• Impact:
  The project resulted in two newspaper op-eds – one in India’s leading business newspaper The Mint, and another on Conversations Global, an online platform. A policy brief was also published by the Brookings Institution DC.

Visual Artifacts

Conclusion
My work at Brookings India is a testament to the impact of qualitative interviews in understanding the implementation and efficacy of policy guidelines. Using mixed methods, we were able to identify the key issues that were faced by cities in implementing projects proposed under the Smart Cities Mission and recommend interventions to fix some of these issues.