Talks of smart city are cloudy, like Mungerilal's Husain's dream!

(PTI) New Delhi, Ta. Thursday, September 17, 2020

The Smart City campaign has been going on in India for the last few years. India's cities, however, have not been able to meet any new challenges. According to a recent report, India's cities are lagging behind in the Smart City Index. Singapore ranks first in the index.

India's first city in the list is Hyderabad, which is ranked 85th. The global report was prepared by Switzerland's Institute for Management Development and Singapore University of Technology for Design.

According to the report, Hyderabad is ranked 85th, Delhi 86th, Mumbai 93rd and Bengaluru 95th. All these cities have fallen into disrepair. According to the 2019 index, these four cities were ranked 67th, 68th, 78th and 79th respectively. The cities of India have no readiness to handle an epidemic like Corona.

This time, however, the main reason for the return of Indian cities is the epidemic. Even though there was no epidemic, Indian cities lagged far behind in the list. The index was prepared on the basis of fifteen different criteria. In which issues like transport, safety, health, capacity of local authorities, development opportunities, etc. were taken into consideration.

A total of 120 cities around the world were selected and surveyed by their residents. The index is based on that. The report says that the smart city is the one that is ready to deal with an unforeseen calamity. As such, India's metros are not even capable of coping with the disasters that occur every year.

The first ten cities

1 Singapore

2 Helsinki (Finland)

3 Zurich (Switzerland)

4 Auckland (New Zealand)

5 Oslo (Norway)

6 Copenhagen (Netherlands)

7 Geneva (Switzerland)

8 Taipei (Taiwan)

9 Armstrong (Netherlands)

10 New York (USA)