Bloomberg Philanthropies to help India in Smart City project

 The Dollar Business Bureau Bloomberg Philanthropies has become the official knowledge partner of the Indian government’s smart city project and the organisation will soon start preparing list of possible cities. The ministry of urban development has accepted the offer of Bloomberg Philanthropies (BP) for cooperation in conducting the ‘Cities Challenge’ competition for selecting the cities for financing. Bloomberg Philanthropies will act as the knowledge partner for the smart cities mission, a government state said. BP will assist the ministry in design and implementation of the selection process. It will also help the government in designing and delivery of a capacity development programme for urban local bodies of aspiring cities. The organisation will also help the government in formulating and execution of effective communication and branding strategy for cities. The project for building 100 smart cities was approved by the Union Cabinet in April this year. Under the mission, the central government will spend Rs 48,000 crore over the next five years for providing an assistance of Rs100 crore per year for each selected city. In the first phase of the selection of smart city aspirants, each state will nominate a set of cities based on urban population and number of statutory cities. This nomination will be based on a set of identified criteria to be suggested by the ministry of urban development. All such nominated cities will be rigorously scrutinized against identified criteria for extending financial support by the Centre. Cities which are found to be deficient in some aspects would be given assistance to address the same and participate in the next round of competition. States and urban local bodies will be required to match Centre’s contribution for the development of each city and mobilize additional resources required from various sources including through PPP model. The Centre and states will spend about Rs 1 lakh crore on development of smart cities over the next five years. Bloomberg Philanthropies, founded by former mayor of New York Michael Bloomberg has been involved in smart cities development programme in different parts of the world.    

May 15, 2015 | 4:55 pm IST.