More than nine years ago, on 28 January 2016, Guwahati, with a rank of 17 and a score of 57.66%, made it to the first list of 20 cities in India selected by the Government of India (GOI) to be developed as “Smart Cities.” On March 31, 2025, when the Smart City Mission ended, what is the future of all these “smart” cities? It was originally envisaged in 2016 that Rs 50,820 crores would be invested by the Ministry of Urban Development to develop these cities. The selected cities were to mobilize resources by forming a special purpose vehicle (SPV) for implementation and the deployment of technology and digital solutions for improving urban governance, with third-party impact evaluation by premier academic and professional institutes.
As of February 2025, according to the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) Smart City Mission, the 100 cities had completed 7,491 projects, which is 93% of the total 8,058 projects, amounting to Rs 1.64 lakh crore. In July 2024, the Mission, after receiving multiple requests from some State/City government representatives to grant more time to complete the balance projects, extended the Mission period up to 31 March 2025. This extension was given to complete the balance projects in advanced stages of implementation and those delayed due to various on-ground conditions. The cities were informed that this extension would be without any additional cost beyond the already approved financial allocation under the Mission. All ongoing projects were expected to be completed before 31 March 2025. The Mission also released full GOI financial support under the Mission to the smart cities.
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In 2016, the Smart City Mission stated: “In the imagination of any city dweller in India, the picture of a smart city contains a wish list of infrastructure and services that describes his or her level of aspiration. To provide for the aspirations and needs of the citizens, urban planners ideally aim at developing the entire urban eco-system, which is represented by the four pillars of comprehensive development—institutional, physical, social, and economic infrastructure. This can be a long-term goal, and cities can work towards developing such comprehensive infrastructure incrementally, adding layers of ‘smartness’.” Now, nearly ten years later, has Guwahati become any smarter?
The objective of the Smart City Mission is to promote cities that provide core infrastructure and give a decent quality of life to their citizens, a clean and sustainable environment, with the application of “Smart Solutions.” The core infrastructure elements in a smart city included: i) adequate water supply, ii) assured electricity supply, iii) sanitation, including solid waste management, iv) efficient urban mobility and public transport, v) affordable housing, especially for the poor, vi) robust IT connectivity and digitalization, vii) good governance, especially e-Governance and citizen participation, viii) sustainable environment, ix) safety and security of citizens, particularly women, children, and the elderly; and x) health and education.
The “Smart Solutions” that were suggested included: i) E-Governance and Citizen Service, including Public information, grievances redressal, video crime monitoring; ii) Energy Management, smart metering, renewable sources of energy, Energy-efficient and Green buildings; iii) Waste Management, including wastewater treatment, waste to compost, waste to energy and fuel; iv) Water Management, including smart meters, leakage identification and preventive maintenance, water quality monitoring; v) Urban Mobility, which includes integrated multi-modal transport, smart parking, intelligent traffic management; vi) Other solutions include Incubation/Trade Facilitation Centers, Skill Development Centers, Tele-Medicine, and Tele-education.
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Of all the listed core infrastructure development and “Smart Solutions” suggested, it seems Guwahati Smart City Ltd. (GSCL) has successfully achieved only a couple of them. Lacking focus and with a piecemeal approach in implementing the projects, the GSCL has failed to live up to the expectations of the citizens and has not made life in Guwahati city easier.
While a 24-hour drinking water supply is a distant dream, GSCL tried desperately to brighten up the city by installing LED street lights where APDCL and municipality street lights already exist. It failed poorly on the sanitation front and in implementing any solid waste management projects. The 10 Super-Sucker Trucks purchased at a cost of Rs 25 crores for de-siltation have failed to do the job. The super-suckers, handed over to GMC in December 2021, lie unused due to a lack of skilled operators and are expensive to operate, with a monthly expenditure of Rs 30 Lakh per month. With Guwahati drains clogged with discarded plastic bottles, the super-suckers totally failed to do the job of de-siltation. Similarly, the 20 Water ATMs to provide safe drinking water and 30 Smart Bio-Toilets seem to have vanished from the public places where they were installed, maybe ending up in scrap yards. The project costs for the Water ATMs were Rs 2.09 crores, and for the Bio-Toilets were Rs 9.53 crores, including operation and maintenance.
One visible area-based development proposal that is taking place is the Brahmaputra Riverfront Development with an outlay of Rs 370 crores. The other projects are the park development and the light and sound show at Gandhi Mandap. The development of the Borsola Beel area of 30 acres remained unimplemented. So also did the area-based projects of the Bharalu and Morabharalu rivers, requiring covering the rivers with green Agro-sheets to hide the dirt and shame during international cricket matches and VIP visits. The Green electric A.C. city buses provided by GSCL and operated by ASTC seem to be the most successful project, providing efficient urban mobility.
It is clear that the successful realization of the Smart City Mission requires smart and conscious citizens, along with smart civic officials. The Guwahati Municipal Corporation, GMDA, and GSCL need to work as a team in a mission mode with SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound) planning and goal setting. But now, time is up!
The Mission required citizens to actively participate in governance and reforms. Citizen involvement needed to be much more than a ceremonial participation in governance and a few consultative meetings held just for the record’s sake to show as evidence of “citizen engagement” to the MoUD Mission headquarters. But nothing such organized involved old Guwahati citizens in the planning and ideation. Now, issues have cropped up with the demolition of many early 19th-century British-built heritage structures on the Brahmaputra Riverfront, the failure to mitigate urban flash floods during the monsoon, cleaning up the Bahini-Bharalu and Mora-Bharalu rivers and other water bodies like Bor-Sola Beel and Deepor Beel.
For a city like Guwahati, involving people is tough with the large number of recent migrants. With more than fifty percent floating population, the city is not their home, and staying in the city is a compulsion for economic reasons. These people are aloof and ignorant about the history and geography of this city, so the process of “citizen engagement” is a challenge. That’s why a “socially inclusive” pan-city proposal was not realized. Guwahati missed out on implementing a key Smart City project: the “Integrated Command and Control Centre (ICCC),” an important project achieved by the top three Smart Cities—Indore, Surat, and Agra. While each city had its list of preferred projects, the majority of the smart cities have implemented the ICCC projects at a total cost of Rs 11,775 crore.
The ICCC has become the nerve center of these smart cities with live feeds from CCTVs. The AI-powered cameras show traffic offenders with their offenses and number plates and alert about accidents, encroachment of public areas, stray cows, and garbage dumps on the streets, ensuring 24/7 safety of citizens with CCTV monitoring. The intelligent traffic management system of the ICCC monitors the timings of traffic lights, and the system is integrated with the police control room. The municipality’s garbage trucks’ GPS tracking, dump sites, and solid waste management data flow to the ICCC. Citizens can connect seamlessly with the ICCC with phones, Apps, and social media to submit their grievances and suggestions.
The purpose of the Smart Cities Mission is to drive economic growth and improve the quality of life of people. It aims for ease of living in urban areas by enabling local area development and harnessing technology that leads to sustainable Smart outcomes, which creates employment and enhances incomes for all, including the urban poor and the disadvantaged, leading to inclusive Cities.
Now it is up to the GSCL to have a performance appraisal done and to submit to the citizens of Guwahati what Smart City solutions and initiatives it has implemented during the Mission period, along with a qualitative and quantitative outcome statement.