With a brief background of quality of urban life in India, introduce the objectives and strategy of the ‘Smart City Programme’.

Indian cities generate roughly two-thirds of GDP, but urban quality of life has lagged: Census 2011 counted 65 million slum dwellers, and cities carry large deficits in piped water, sewerage and public transport, chronic congestion, and some of the world's most polluted air. Infrastructure investment has not kept pace with an urban population headed towards 600 million by 2031.

Objectives of the Smart Cities Mission (June 2015)

• Provide core infrastructure: assured water and power, sanitation and solid-waste management, efficient urban mobility, affordable housing, robust IT connectivity and citizen safety.
• Deliver a decent quality of life and a clean, sustainable environment through the application of smart solutions.
• Create replicable lighthouse models that catalyse similar development in other cities.

Strategy

• 100 cities chosen through a two-stage competitive City Challenge, a first in Indian urban policy and an exercise in competitive federalism.
• Area-based development: retrofitting of existing areas, redevelopment of dense zones and greenfield extensions.
• Pan-city initiatives applying ICT: intelligent traffic management, e-governance and Integrated Command and Control Centres, now operational in all 100 cities.
• Implementation through city-level Special Purpose Vehicles, convergence with AMRUT, Swachh Bharat and HRIDAY, and financing that blends central-state grants with PPPs and municipal bonds.

The Mission concluded in 2025 with over 90 percent of its roughly 8,000 projects completed. It shifted urban governance towards competitive, data-driven planning, but its lessons are equally important: deepen municipal capacity, avoid enclave-style development confined to small areas, and scale ICCC platforms citywide so that smartness serves the whole city, not islands within it.