Soon after assuming the reins of power Narendra Modi announced various developmental schemes for the country. Among more publicized and impressive schemes was that of raising one hundred cities in the country to the level of smart cities. What is a smart city? It means providing all such facilities to a city that make it of international standards. Among significant components are roads, electricity, health and education services, environment and ecology, smart banking facilities, recreational facilities like parks, play grounds, museums and clean wayside eateries etc. The first stage in implementing this scheme was to identify the cities that would be categorized among future smart cities. Naturally, States would want to have as many as possible smart cities. That was not possible in practice. Finally a criterion was laid down and in second phase, two capital cities of our State, namely Jammu and Srinagar have been selected as two cities that are entitled to get the status of smart cities. We are happy to know that this decision has been taken and both the cities have been selected. The Centre will be allocating 500 crore rupees for each smart city. In the case of J&K, it has been decided that 500 crore rupees would be provided out of the Prime Minister’s Package of 80,000 crore rupees and the remaining 500 crore rupees would be provided by the Union Ministry of Housing.
The people in the State are very happy with this decision and they hope that work on smart cities will begin as early as possible. However, it has to be remembered that a smart city does not come up overnight. It takes so many years besides vision, efficiency and planning. Nevertheless we hail this decision and hope that the State Government will not lose time.
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