Will smart city concept really work in India where about 35% of urban poor are living below poverty line?

Maybe, If we start to think about a integration between public transportation, energy efficiency and water provision, and then planning to make them more interconnected. Other thing is to distribute the rent. The environmental issues are directly connected to poverty.

Beware of buzzwords as policy. "Smart" is one of these buzzwords that substitute for thought. In allocating funds, always have an overview of what your priorities are: providing potable water, collecting garbage, treating sewage, transportation improvements, education, policing, and so on. In acquiring funds, one should develop a sense of what various taxes do to the local economy: user charges, sales taxes, income taxes, etc. What revenue devices contribute to allocating scarce public capital? Is parking priced appropriately? What about water, is it priced appropriately?

The concept of "smart city" is not exactly my speciality, but with respect to the technological evolution of cities I think that it is important to analyse the concept of “inclusive innovation”. “This is the means by which new goods and services are developed for and/or by those who have been excluded from the development mainstream; particularly the billions living on lowest incomes” (HEEKS, Richard; AMALIA, Mirta; KINTU, Robert; SHAH, Nishant. Inclusive Innovation: Definition, Conceptualisation and Future Research Priorities. Development Informatics Working Paper Series, n. 53, 2013. p. 1. < http://www.seed.manchester.ac.uk/medialibrary/IDPM/working_papers/di/di_wp53.pdf >). This is a good reference. This concept is new but it can be an interesting perspective in the sense of cities–innovation–poverty relations.

Best

Dear sir,

I am not a scholar of this field but, It is difficult to say anything about a success of "Smart City" concept in our country. In my point of view,  "concept of Smart Village will be definitely applicable in our country

A smart city is an urban development vision to integrate multiple information and communication technology (ICT) solutions in a secure fashion to manage a city’s assets – the city’s assets include, but not limited to, local departments information systems, schools, libraries, transportation systems, hospitals, power plants, water supply networks, waste management, law enforcement, and other community services.

So, to find out to what extent a country has achieved the status of a smart city, you may refer to some indicators such as the spending of IT in every sector of the country, or the IT spending as a percentage of revenue by industry, and compare these figures with the one obtained from other countries, either among low income countries, middle income countries, and high income countries.

I am sure that this is a fast, easy, and reliable way to examine whether the concept of smart city is applicable in your country - India.