The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Urban Development said it was “perplexed about the actual progress made so far under the mission at the ground level” and it also “observed numerous instances of one agency undoing the work of another”.
Published Nov 06, 2025 | 10:22 AM ⚊ Updated Nov 06, 2025 | 10:22 AM
Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the launch of Smart Cities Mission in 2015
Synopsis: The smart cities project, a 10-year programme that ended this year, has made no practical impact. The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Urban Development said it was “perplexed about the actual progress made so far under the mission at the ground level” and it also “observed numerous instances of one agency undoing the work of another”.
I walk out of my house and onto the street and look around. Not much is different from 10 years ago, except that there is much more traffic. “Crores spent, Smart Cities Mission leaves behind more bills, superficial infrastructure”, reads a headline from a couple of days ago.
The report says what is obvious to those who examine what is around them — that a 10-year programme that ended this year has made no practical impact. Now that it is dead and buried and no further promises will be made over it, we can sift through its remains.
The “Smart Cities” mission was set up with a concept note that said the aim was to make cities that would offer “decent living options to every resident”, which would provide a “very high quality of life comparable with any developed European city”, according to the urban development ministry’s concept note on Smart Cities.
The government said this would happen by 2020. These Smart Cities were required, Arun Jaitley had informed Parliament in 2014, to serve the middle class that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s economic policies would greatly expand.
The following year, 2015, the language was tweaked to make the target more modest and, instead of emulating a European city, we were told that the Smart City of India would provide citizens with adequate water supply, assured electricity supply, sanitation, public transport, affordable housing for the poor, safety of women, health and education.
This was, of course, not different from what municipalities in all cities were focused on in any case. The problem was one of hard governance and not logo and nomenclature alone. This may be why the Modi government’s interest in this waned almost immediately.
It was reported in 2021 that the “Smart Cities project had failed to take off, with half of its funds unspent”. The project “should have been on its winning lap come 2020”, the report said, but instead the reality was that by 2019, of the total ₹48,000 crore “approved” between 2015 and 2019, only half was actually allocated.
Of this half, only three-fourths was then actually released, and of what was released, a mere 36 percent was then utilised. While ₹48,000 crores had been “approved”, only ₹6,160 crores was actually spent.
The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Urban Development said it was “perplexed about the actual progress made so far under the mission at the ground level” and it also “observed numerous instances of one agency undoing the work of another”. Out of the 35 states and Union Territories, 26 had utilised less than 20 percent of the funds released.
The usual problems associated with India also came to light. The standing committee said it was “surprised to find that in spite of available mechanisms, the complaints about poor work under the mission are still pouring in before the committee”.
It recommended that “all those cases questioning the claim of work done under Smart Cities emanating from local MPs be probed expeditiously and the guilty be brought to book”.
News reports from organs that were still interested in the issue pointed out some primary flaws with the Smart Cities mission. It emphasised the high-end infrastructure and technology-driven surveillance, but did not address the basic amenities — water, schools, public hospitals and housing.
With its area-based development, it was focused on spending most of the money on small patches of city centres that were already developed.
In Bengaluru, for instance, the Smart Cities allocation was used on developing Church Street — which was already much more developed than most of the rest of the city — and elite neighbourhoods like Infantry Road, Kamaraj Road, Tata Lane, Wood Street, Castle Street, Dickenson Road, Kensington Road, St John’s Road, Residency Road, Kasturba Road, Bowring Hospital Road, Millers Road, Lavelle Road, McGrath Road, Convent Road, Queen’s Road, Hayes Road, Raja Ram Mohan Roy Road and Race Course Road.
In New Delhi, it was the area under the New Delhi Municipal Corporation, which was also already the most developed part of the National Capital Region. The mission was aimed at a particular section, the upper class, which comprised a very small part of the population and not any neo-middle class, which Prime Minister Modi’s economic policies in any case didn’t produce.
The elitism showed elsewhere, for instance, in the public bicycle sharing project implemented by many cities, including Pune, Delhi, Bhopal and Coimbatore. The instructions for hiring a bicycle on the company’s website were only in English, and it only accepted online payment. Smart Cities were pushing India’s urban poor further to the margins.
The “allocations” in 2019 remained the same as those of 2018. And, in the 2021 Budget, the phrase “Smart Cities” was not used at all. The former deputy mayor of Shimla, Tikender Singh Panwar, explained why: “These smart cities were supposed to be the lighthouses for other cities in the country. The Budget is completely silent over it owing to the fact that it has become one of the biggest embarrassments to the Modi government.”
This is why you likely did not know what the programme was intended to do (other than having a glitzy name), what change it actually achieved, or indeed that the programme had been ended, never to be spoken of again.
(Aakar Patel is the chair of Amnesty International India. This article was originally published in the Deccan Chronicle.)
