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Politics
‘Smart’ outside, shoddy inside
A year after the Centre’s Smart Cities Mission ended, it is clear that it changed only parts of some cities, while residents continue to grapple with basic problems such as drainage, waste disposal and public transport.
All major locations in Faridabad, be it the metro station, bus station, or the major four-way crossing, have an open waste dumping ground, boldly announcing the metropolis’ newly acquired “Smart City” status.
Faridabad was among the 100 cities that the Narendra Modi government chose to develop and improve through its Smart Cities Mission (SCM) urban renewal programme, launched in 2015, by providing efficient services, robust infrastructure, and sustainable solutions. But a quick visit to the city reveals that the stench of filth, muck, and wretchedness pervades every urban attraction here. They are an inseparable part of every Faridabadi’s urban existence.
The discourse of “double engine sarkar” of the Central and State governments is used to put a veneer of “Viksit Bharat” (developed India) on this picture of indifference. But all it took was a few tweets by an X user who goes by the name “Biased Indian” in March 2026 to highlight just how far from being truly developed it really is.
From his handle, @RakeshK32229480, he posted pictures with captions of broken roads and waste dumping grounds in posh areas of Faridabad, calling the city “the most disgusting place on earth”. He wrote about moving to the city as an intern and how shocked he was by “the horror” of collapsing services and a “corrupt and vile” political and administrative leadership. His posts hit two million views.
What followed was a barrage of complaints by other Faridabad residents showing potholed roads, overflowing drains, garbage, and waterlogged streets. Biased Indian’s reality check became the topic of conversation at dinner tables and in city clubs. Soon afterwards, Biased Indian wrote that he had received several threats, had been called to the police station, and was asked to tone down his language.
The Modi government hyped the promise of Faridabad as a “Smart City”, and the district administration advertised it as such. People bought into the dream, and some also bought flats in the city. A decade after buying a flat in Faridabad, Ashutosh Singh is frustrated with the market reality. Speaking to Frontline, he said: “I bought this flat for Rs.48 lakh; now I won’t even get Rs.30 lakh for it.”
The SCM, launched by Modi on June 25, 2015, formally ended on March 31, 2025. But as of 2026, the government is still completing projects, figuring out who will maintain the infrastructure, and deciding what happens to the institutions created by the mission.
According to the latest government figures, released in August 2026, 8,064 projects with a total value of Rs.1.648 lakh crore were taken up across 100 cities as part of the SCM.
The Centre has said that 100 Integrated Command and Control Centres (ICCCs) were established in which more than 83,000 CCTV cameras were installed. The ICCCs were conceived as integrated command rooms that linked cameras, sensors, and IoT devices (specialised hardware objects) on a single dashboard for traffic management, flood monitoring, waste management, grievance redressal, and emergency response.
As per official figures, more than 1,700 km of “smart” roads was built as part of the mission, while more than 17,000 km of water networks was monitored, and more than 1,300 public-space projects and 484 heritage-site projects were completed.
Although the mission itself has ended, the government is now asking the special purpose vehicles (SPVs) created for the 100 cities to ensure completion and maintenance of the remaining assets. The government has also proposed that these SPVs be repurposed to address emerging urban challenges, while keeping the ICCCs functioning.
A 2026 academic study in Asia-Pacific Journal of Regional Science, titled “Uneven smartness: assessing infrastructure capabilities and size-class disparities in India’s Smart Cities Mission”, examines how unevenly the promised “smartness” was actually distributed among the 100 cities. And that inequality lay at the heart of the original design.
The mission largely used an area-based development (ABD) approach, under which selected parts of a city, mostly posh and elite areas, were to be transformed and then supposedly provide a model that could be replicated elsewhere. That created the paradox that lies at the core of the flagship scheme.
A programme meant to make 100 Indian cities “smarter” often ended up concentrating resources in relatively small pockets of those cities. Many researchers examining the mission’s impact have asked whether it was meant to transform entire cities or just create islands of technologically upgraded infrastructure inside otherwise dysfunctional cities.
The problem lies in the very name. The term “Smart City” is misleading, going by the government’s own claims. The project was never about transforming cities. Rather, it was aimed at developing a small area within the chosen cities. Even the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs has clarified that the SCM was not aimed at developing entire cities but was aimed at area-based development.
Thus, an assessment of the SCM in 60 smart cities by the New Delhi-based think tank Centre for Policy Research (CPR) noted that a decade after the launch of the mission, the programme transformed only parts of these cities, leaving large sections of their populations outside its ambit. The concentration of funds in small pockets, weak public participation, and the disruption caused by redevelopment have raised questions about what exactly India’s experiment with “smart” urbanisation achieved.
According to the assessment, the ABD covered only about 7 per cent of an average city’s area but received roughly 80 per cent of the funding. The areas selected accounted for only about 9 per cent of the population. The result was that the programme often concentrated resources in particular neighbourhoods rather than on improving the overall urban systems on which the majority of residents depend.
For instance, Delhi’s New Delhi Municipal Council area was selected for development despite already having relatively strong infrastructure compared with much of the capital.
Persis Taraporevala, an independent urban planning researcher, said that the outreach and structure of the mission, particularly its focus on digitisation and on select areas, played a key role in deciding who could participate and who eventually benefited. Similarly, the CPR assessment found that projects linked to economic growth and technology received greater attention than those related to social infrastructure.
When the SCM was launched, its promise, as touted in political terms, was ambitious: 100 cities would be transformed into modern, resilient, and citizen-centric urban centres. The programme was meant to bring together technology, better infrastructure, and improved urban governance. Ten years later, the record is more complicated.
There have been some visible gains, though. Cities have acquired digital governance systems and upgraded roads and public spaces, while surveillance networks have been installed and new transport and water infrastructure has been built. A study by IIM Bangalore found that Smart Classrooms were associated with a 22 per cent increase in school enrolment across 19 cities between 2015–16 and 2023–24.
ICCCs, in particular, have become an important part of the urban administrative machinery and proved useful during the COVID-19 pandemic. Their effectiveness differed from city to city, depending on administrative capacity, funds, and how well they were integrated into existing institutions.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the centres in Ahmedabad, Pune, Bhopal, and Varanasi were repurposed into emergency response hubs. They were used to track the spread of the disease, coordinate resources, and monitor health information. City administrators often point to this as one of the mission’s clearest successes.
But the spread of technology into everyday urban administration has also brought with it new questions about who controls a city’s infrastructure. Another area of concern, according to experts, is that the ICCCs in 100 cities have led to the creation of a nationwide architecture for real-time urban surveillance.
The effects of surveillance are not uniformly positive. While Nagpur reported a 14 per cent decline in overall crime following the expansion of surveillance infrastructure, as per a government assessment, in Tumakuru, sex workers reported increased police harassment after the deployment of CCTV cameras.
One of the central features of the SCM was its governance structure. Instead of leaving projects entirely to elected municipal bodies, the government created SPVs, which are corporate entities tasked with planning and implementing the mission’s projects. Urban governance scholars have questioned the relationship between these SPVs and elected municipal governments. The arrangement, they argue, created another layer of decision-making in cities where constitutional reforms have successively sought to strengthen elected local bodies.
The mission also promised citizen participation. In practice, that participation varied considerably. In Surat, Sharad Jagade, leader of a union representing migrant workers, said that consultations were limited and tended to favour residents of better-off neighbourhoods. In several cities, groups who live on the margins, such as sanitation workers or street vendors, were not consulted during the “Smart City” planning process. A University of Sussex study of New Town, Kolkata, found that participation often took the form of digital feedback rather than meaningful involvement in decisions about transport and urban design.
The experience in Indore was more contentious. Redevelopment projects affected historic neighbourhoods, including Rajwada, Imli Bazaar, and Lohar Basti, displacing hundreds of families. Of the city’s 146 “Smart City” projects, 94 have been completed while 52 remain under implementation after the formal end of the mission.
The Smart City Advisory Forum, which was intended to provide stakeholder oversight, was not constituted in Indore. Residents affected by the redevelopment also found themselves in a difficult legal position: because the work was carried out under the Town and Country Planning Act, they were eligible only for construction certificates, documents recognising the structures in which they had lived, rather than monetary compensation. Activists said that since Madhya Pradesh does not have its own resettlement law, the national Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013, should have been applied. Instead, many residents were classified as “encroachers”, which reduced the protections available to them.
Sixteen months after the SCM officially ended in March 2025, with the cessation of Central funding, the mission’s digital backbone—such as the ICCCs and Intelligent Traffic Management System (ITMS)—is now under severe strain.
The ITMS detects red-light violations and other traffic offences through cameras. In Jabalpur, for instance, the ITMS has remained non-functional for over a year because of funding shortages. The city’s grievance redressal platform also suffers from frequent server issues. A temporary State grant has kept some operations alive, but officials said funds are likely to run out by September.
Some 1,600 km away, Shivamogga in Karnataka faces a similar challenge. Its ICCC was designed as the city’s digital nerve centre, integrating traffic management, GPS-based solid waste monitoring, RFID (radio frequency identification) tracking of garbage vehicles, surveillance at waste collection points, smart water meters, drainage alerts, parking systems, LED street lights, police kiosks, and “smart classrooms”. Today, only the traffic management component remains operational.
These examples reflect a broader trend. Officials from more than 10 “Smart Cities” across multiple States said that just over a year after the Centre wound down the 10-year mission, the future of ICCCs, which are its biggest technological legacy, is increasingly uncertain.
According to a municipal official overseeing Shivamogga’s ICCC, operating the command centre costs about Rs.1.5 crore annually. It risks becoming a white elephant. Only the traffic challan system is functional; other components are dying.
Cities such as Rajkot, Vadodara, Bhopal, Ujjain, and Chennai have evolved different models to sustain their digital infrastructure.
Rajkot is actually expanding its ICCC rather than scaling it back. A senior official with the Rajkot Smart City SPV said that the city was installing additional cameras with analytics to improve law enforcement, mobility, and municipal services. The city is also consolidating servers into a central data facility to strengthen cybersecurity while adding a centralised street light monitoring system.
Vadodara expects to remain financially self-sustaining until at least 2029 through intelligent pole partnerships, imposing vendor penalties for failure to meet standards, and revenue from enforcement of traffic rules.
Bhopal has relied on monetising its 342 acre land bank to finance operations after the Central grants ended, but officials admitted that staffing has been reduced significantly.
Waste management offers another example of the gap between technological intervention and basic urban services. In Dharamshala, sensor-operated underground garbage bins stopped functioning within months, with poor drainage planning contributing to their failure. The city continues to lack a functioning waste processing unit. “Many interventions prioritised visible urban upgrades over systemic waste management,” said Manshi Asher of Himdhara, a Himachal Pradesh–based collective of researchers and activists.
Several “Smart Cities” introduced GPS tracking and RFID systems for waste collection. In Mangaluru, sanitation workers were required to scan QR codes at every stop. A study published in South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal found that the system added to workers’ workload without bringing corresponding improvements to the waste management system. A similar issue appeared in projects involving lakes and riverfronts.
In Jhansi, the redevelopment of the 400-year-old Laxmi Tal lake resulted in a reduction in its area after the construction of a man-made island. At the Godavari riverfront in Nashik, hardscaping covered 65 per cent of the area, far above the 15 per cent guideline, and extended infrastructure into flood-prone zones, according to an assessment by the School of Planning and Architecture.
Projects promoted in the name of beautification and environmental improvement sometimes came into conflict with the ecological functions of the very spaces they were intended to restore.
The SCM’s record on urban mobility has also been mixed. This year’s urban flooding brought renewed parliamentary scrutiny of several infrastructure projects. In some cities, street redevelopment resulted in street vendors being moved to peripheral locations without adequate consultation.
Chandigarh’s 24-hour water-supply pilot programme was plagued by complaints of muddy water. Surat’s cycle tracks have frequently become parking spaces and, according to local assessments, do not connect effectively with the textile mill areas that thousands of workers travel to every day. Bhopal’s e-bike sharing programme, launched with 500 bicycles in 2017, also saw a sharp decline in use after the first year.
The spending priorities reveal another imbalance. The CPR assessment found that 40 per cent of transportation expenditure went towards roads and parking, compared with 20 per cent for public transport and only 2 per cent for buses.
There are exceptions, though. Jhansi’s electric bus network has received quite a favourable response from residents because it has improved affordability and connectivity for lower-income commuters.
Other small interventions also appear to have had a more direct impact. “Pink Toilets” for women that were built under the programme initially offered free use and were maintained through the SCM. After being transferred to the municipal corporation, however, maintenance problems began to emerge. For instance, in Chennai, the pink toilets are often kept locked up or do not have water or have not been maintained.
Several cities have installed air quality monitoring stations under the SCM, but monitoring pollution is not the same as reducing it. A study by Parisar, a Pune-based civil society organisation, covering six cities in Maharashtra found that many of the recommended measures for controlling pollution had not been implemented. This is perhaps the large contradiction at the heart of the mission. A city can have sensors, command centres, surveillance cameras, and digitally managed services and still struggle with issues involving drainage, waste disposal, public transport, housing, and pollution.
The SCM changed the physical and technological landscape of some parts of some cities, and it also demonstrated what centralised funding and technology-led urban planning can accomplish in a relatively short period.
But a decade of the programme has left a far more difficult question behind: does a city become “smart” when its technology improves, or is it when the everyday lives of the people who live and work there improve as well? The evidence from across the 100 cities suggests that the answer is far from settled.
Mohammad Ali is an award-winning journalist and writer based in Delhi.