Citizens Consultation for the Smart Cities Mission
On 25 June 2015, Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi launched the Smart Cities Mission to enable the holistic development of Indian cities. This bold new initiative under the Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD) aims to drive economic growth and improve the quality of life of people by enabling local development and harnessing technology as a means to create smart outcomes for citizens. According to MoUD, the core elements of a Smart City include: adequate water and electricity supply, suitable sanitation and solid waste management, efficient public transportation, affordable housing, robust IT connectivity and digitalization, e-governance with citizen participation, sustainable environment, and safety and security of citizens with health and education for all. These objectives are proposed to be attained through a judicious mix of retrofitting, redevelopment and greenfield development.
Citizen consultation is an important pillar of the first phase of the Smart Cities Mission. The Ministry encouraged local governments to engage citizens as they worked on their city’s Smart City Proposal, and recommended MyGov as the core platform for citizen consultation. Municipal governments supplemented their online MyGov activities with meetings, discussions, and other public interactions in their respective cities.
MyGov facilitated citizen consultation for the Smart Cities Mission in two stages. During the first round, it offered cities a range of citizen consultation methodologies, such as discussion forums, tasks, online polls, public talks, and blogs. These tools served as a catalyst for citizens to participate in the Smart Cities Mission and the competition, also known as the India Smart Cities Challenge, and offer suggestions for the development of their city.
During the second round of the Smart Cities Mission, municipal authorities from the shortlisted cities used MyGov to collect suggestions from citizens on their vision for a Smart City to incorporate these into draft proposals. Of the 98 cities, 57 put the draft proposals online for further comments and inputs from the public. Overall, the proposals received a total of 1,42,895 comments.
The 98 cities adopted a range of measures to encourage citizen engagement. Municipalities reached out to young citizens by visiting schools and colleges to educate them about the Mission. Municipal corporations used popular social networking platforms like Facebook and Twitter to spread awareness about the mission. Still others created dedicated websites with detailed updates on progress. SMS campaigns, voice message campaigns, and airtime on radio channels helped expand a municipality’s reach. Many cities even created free Wi-Fi hotspots in crowded areas so that people could access Internet and submit suggestions. Advertisements in newspapers, pamphlets, hoardings, and the MyGov app played a significant role in making the Smart City Mission a nationwide phenomenon.
The Smart Cities Mission – MyGov collaboration is an unprecedented exercise in urban planning, which has transformed planning from a top-down centralized activity into a democratic consultative process, taking the citizens’ perspective as the foundation stone on which the city plan is built. MyGov looks forward to partnering with more cities and citizens in the subsequent rounds of the Smart Cities Mission play its part in developing Smart Cities across India.
– Gaurav Dwivedi,
CEO, MyGov
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Sir, i have seen India need funds for everything any natural cause, we need funds for development too. i see people investing in shares and stocks everyday. you can make some new rules like example 1ps/on each share buy or sell we can use this amount for developing India. I know 1ps is not a big deal for any person. Hope you look at it and implement it. it will be very useful. Thanks and regards Aashik Jain.
complete digitilasition should be done
smart business on each ana every retail shop
Hi for a smart city. I think healthcare services should be fast and prompt. I propose an idea to make the ambulance movement fast, not stuck up in traffic.link the ambulance with traffic police and when the ambulance is approach an area traffic lights at that place should be in green and traffic police helpss to clear away the route for safe passage of ambulance. For this I have an idea for an app/ technology and can discuss more on it, if anybody is interested. Thanks
Hi Smart City team,
There should be arrangements for Garbage out of city and create energy from garbage.
Comments for Smart City-Bhopal (As i am unable to post comments in that topic, i am posting here)
Like other developing cities, Bhopal too has Parking problem. It became worse when it came to the parking in the old Bhopal area as the area is very much congested. So the suggestion is to create parking spaces near major markets especially in the older Bhopal.
Since we are talking about Smart city, there must be some strict provisions to make the city clean. It should be the duty of the resident
My simple suggestion is to divide cities into local councils and help all the residents to be registered, this will also help in effective polling also for effective collection of taxes which can be used for public interest and further beautification and development of localities.
Dear Mr. Dwivedi,
The concept of smart cities really makes us all proud. The cities outside India are so well developed and have all the facilities online. We are waiting when the local council will be active & every individual can register online to pay council tax / other taxes.
I have just seen worst time in our family, my father passed away and now there is so much paperwork to transfer the property in our name as sole survivors. Net result, no registration, no transfer and hence no tax.
Local self govt should pay attention.This should not remain as saying.Because we people suffering like any thing.
Smart city should have min 4 lane intercity connectivity by road depending on present traffic volume and projected traffic growth in 10 years .international air connectivity to cover min no of hubs .domestic connectivity to min no of major cities.sea connectivity for passenger ships on regular basis with dedicated berth .cargo movement to be distributed to other ports depending on commodity and access to other cities min road movement for better fuel economy and traffic congestion as a country.
Smart city mission is a good concept.however,we need to first develop the UT,s which are directly governed by central govt as model cities.even small UT,s like dadra nagar haveli n daman,Diu are not developed properly. We need to showcase these developed UT,s as model for developing cities under smart mission.