Indian Smart Cities

The Indian Government is not short of ideas though execution on most of the infrastructure projects is quite pathetic. With most infrastructure companies showing losses and burdened by huge debt loads, it remains to be seen how 50% of the coming $1 trillion infrastructure investment, will be financed by the private sector. However the Indian Government has come out with a new plan to build Smart Cities which will have intelligent transportation and low carbon living. The Smart Cities are expected to be medium sized cities and the JNNURM plans 2 Smart Cities for every state in India (don’t know where this 2 per state idea has come from, given that the state sizes in India differ quite considerably).

Note the Solar Cities project has not been too successful given that  many of the Solar City officials are not aware that their city has now become an official Solar City of India.

India’s Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) has come out with a scheme to promote the use of solar energy in India. Known as ‘Solar Cities’, 60 cities across India have been chosen to dramatically increase the use of solar power through solar panels, heaters and cookers so that 10% of the energy usage comes from solar energy in the future. Note MNRE has not been too successful with its earlier programs namely the much hyped JNNSM which has managed to install only around 250 MW of solar capacity till date. Note Gujarat alone has managed to install 600 MW of solar energy in much lesser time. Even the Solar Cities plan looks like a over-hyped media dud to me. Only Rs 50 lakhs is being granted which is peanuts compared to the investment that will need to be made. Most of the money will go in planning and setting up bureaucratic bodies.

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