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How is the development of smart cities in the DMIC coming up?

Look at some of the planned cities in India, Chandigarh and Gandhinagar, for example. Gandhinagar was declared Gujarat’s capital in 1969. Even today if you go to Gandhinagar, you will see that not many ancillary facilities have developed. Till a few years ago, there wasn’t even a proper place to eat there. Even today there is only one hotel in Gandhinagar. Developing a city is always an organic process. Internationally take the example of Chengdu in China, which is spread over 54 square km and was started in 1992 as a smart city, and Milton Keynes in the UK, started in the 1960s. Milton Keynes was run by a special purpose vehicle (SPV) till the 1990s, when it was transferred to the municipality. I had visited Chengdu in 2016 and they had completed only 23 square km. I saw that not many industries had come up there except information technology companies. Chengdu has a couple of good universities in the developed area. Now compare these to smart cities envisaged in the DMIC.After the master plans were drawn up in 2011, the groundbreaking ceremony for four smart cities under the project was done in 2016. We have activated 22 square km in these cities and planning has been done for more than 150 square km. One of the criticisms of the Chinese model of smart cities is that they have spent a lot of money on building them but there are hardly any occupants. These have become ghost towns and utilities built there have started rusting. We wanted to avoid these kinds of mistakes. Building a city takes a lot of careful planning. Investors will not come until they see something coming up on the ground. So we have started work on the 22 square km, where we have got land from the respective state governments. For the remaining area, which has been planned, we are ready to give contracts anytime.

What’s the DMIC’s underlying philosophy behind developing a smart city?

These are industry-driven townships. We have to develop social infrastructure. Schools, colleges, and hospitals will come. People are willing to build residential facilities. Residents will be willing to buy flats even if for speculation, as is happening in Greater Noida. We have been approached by builders to give them 2,000 acres to build townships. But we want industries to come up first, followed by social infrastructure. After that residential facilities can be set up. We have also done digital planning for these cities — the first time it has been attempted anywhere in the world. CISCO and IBM did the digital master plan. Through this we know where to install sensors, where to put up SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) systems, install CCTV cameras, and set up a master control room to coordinate all these systems. In Shendra smart city in Maharashtra, we have appointed a master systems integrator. This will be the first fully smart greenfield city in India. We have given the contract to build all these smart systems in June.

How do you deal with land acquisition for this huge project? 

We have signed state-support agreements and shareholder agreements with states. SPVs were formed after this. These SPVs were also to be made a planning authority. Land allotments, planning, and use are now vested with the SPV. SPVs also have to perform municipal functions, for which Article 43 of the Constitution will have to be amended. Land acquisition is the most difficult thing in this project. Our work starts only after receiving an assurance from states that land will be available. For instance, work on Gujarat airport started only after getting an assurance that land will be available. In Bhiwadi, Haryana, land acquisition began recently because there was a change in government. 

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